The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1887-12-24 00:00:00

OUR LONDON CORRESPONDENT.

rWe deem it right to state that we do not at all timos identify
ourselves with our Correspondent's opinions.]

"A merry Christmas !" From how many
millions of tongues and pens the time-honoured
phrase is just now flowing, and what a wealth
oc good wishes is embodied therein. From the
highest to the lowest, from the humble cottager
to the dweller in the palace, the wish is carried
trom one to another, and is a pleasure to all.
i, -- It is a part of that great community of spirit
‘i allir which makes Christmas the season of peace and
reconciliation. Many a family fetid has hem
; r 011 r aled, many an estrangement has been brought
' an end by the amenities of Christmas. There
are some among us so hardened by nature or by
continuous contact with the roughness of the
world that even the most generally cherished
associations of the season have with them
iA no weight. But they are an insignificant
minority compared with the number whom
Christmas softens or makes more happy.
0 And even those who might not otherwise be
tempted to make sacrifices at this period
i.P of the year cannot but be led to do
so by the keen delight which Christmas
.V brings to children. To these a Merry Christmas
is a time to be long looked forward to and longer
remembered; it is one of the most cherished
memories which binds them to the love of home;
and wherever they wander, however far their
steps may stray from the fireside by which sat
their parents in younger days, the recollection of
the happy Christmases spent in the family circle
when the world was yet unknown and its
troubles unanticipated, stands before them as a
light to their footsteps in the dark places of
life.

I

As one passes the stationers' shops at this
time of the year, we can hardly fail to be struck
with the number of diaries offered for sale.
Scribbling diaries, office diaries, ladies' diaries
—all kinds of diaries are exposed to viow, and
the question naturally arises as to what propor-
tion of these are used when what may be called
the novelty of the New Year has worn off. The
office diaries, of course, will continue to be em-
ployed all through the twelvemonth, for they
are as necessary portions of the office furniture
as the desk, the ruler, or the stool; but of
those which are purchased by the average
human being, one is much more doubtful.
There are some indefatigable people, we
know, who 'do keep a diary, and keep it
the whole year through. They never lie down
upon their pillow at night without posting up
every detail of the doings of the day: whether it
has been wet or fine; whether they have had tea
with a neighbour or at home; whether their busi-
ness dealings have been profitable or the reverse;
each single item of interest is given to the diary
for easy reference on future occasions. But the
number of such methodical individuals must be
very small compared with the crowd who buy
diary with the full determination of keeping up
the entries. These begin well with the early
days of January; by the time February has begun.
the record becomes briefer and more fitful;
March finds it shorter still, and after April
the pages are a blank. That is the
history of many a diary, and is likely to
be the history of many a diary more. The
intention of keeping it is one of the many good
ones formed with the new year which evaporate
with the days; and although no statistics on
the subject are available, one may safely guess
that three-quarters of the diaries undertaken on
the first of January are unopened for some time
before the next thirty-first of December.
In no department of human industry affecting
our health and happiness has greater progress
been made within the past few years than in the
process of nursing. The days when Dickens
could pourtray to an amused and yet astonished
world the immortal characters of Mrs. Gamp
and Mrs. Prig as representatives of trained nurs-
ing have been left so far behind that one can
scarcely now believe they ever existed. In these
times girls of gentle birth, good education, and
delicate nurture give themselves to a work which,
in some respects highly repellent, is at once
ennobling to those who sacrifice their inclinations
to their sense of duty and elevating to the
patients who come under their care. It is the
one department of woman's work in which as
true heroism can be shown as by man upon the
battle-field. As a fact there is a truer heroism
often displayed in the woman's case than in the
man's. It in a brave deed truly to march amid
the blare and roar of the battle up the enemy's
glans and risk limb and life for one's country or
one's cause; but it is even braver for a woman to
calmly, and in the simple assurance of doing good
to her kind, to face the ordeal of the hospital in
some of the extremer cases that must come
before her. And as we have provided pensions
and reivard6 for the on Class of bravery, we ought
to do so for the other. A movement is on foot
for making such a provision, and it deserves every
support. For those good women who are putting
in peril their health and their happiness, who
have left comfortable homes and kind friends in
the wish of benefiting their fellows, deserve Et
respect amounting in some cases even to rever-
ence, and a help in their time of need, which no
one who knows them, who appreciates their feel-
ings, honours their motives, and approves their
aims, will seek to deny.
Those who, profiting by the experience gainei
in previous outbreaks had prophesied that the
epidemic of scarlet fever in London would reach
its height about the end of October or the
middle of November, and then gradually die
away, have been justified by the official figures
recently published. The outbreak is by no
moms at its end even yet, and it is not until the
latter part of February that, judging from ex-
perience, it is likely to be; but the number of
patients admitted to the various fever hospitals
of the metropolis is lessening every week, and
that is a hopeful sign which all are likely to
appreciate. In the midst of the rejoicing, how-
ever, it is unpleasant to remember that high
authorities on the subject tell us that the outbreak
is likely to recur and to attain even higher propor-
tions next summer. There are certain diseases which
appear to come in cycles, and, do what we will,
they arrive in regular sequence and proceed
with a reglarity which no increase of medical
skill serves to check. And the worst of it is that
we unhappy Londoners are promised next year
an outbreak of smallpox as well as a renewed
epidemic of scarlet fever. The prospect for us
is, therefore, far from a pleasing one; but fore-
warned ought to a large extent to be forearmed,
and the best thing all of us can do is to set our
own houses in order, so as, as far as possible, to
avoid the chance of ourselves being touched.
For some time after the Parcel Post system was
introduced, now nearly three years and a-half ago,
there was a fear that it would not succeed as per-
fectly as it deserved. The number of parcels
despatched was about as great as had been
anticipated, but the average weight was less, and
consequently the receipts were not as large as
had been calculated. But aa time has gone on,
the success of the experiment has become assured,
and the original premises at St. Martin's-le-
Grand have been proved to be too small for the
work cast upon them. A move has, therefore,
been made within the past few days to the now
disused prison at Coldbath-fields, which hence-
forward will be the central depot for the Parcel
Post. The establishment of that institution had
good effects both directly and indirectly. The
direct effect was to enable everyone who had a
small parcel to send to despatch it at a cheap
and uniform rate, and with the assurance of its
being promptly and safely delivered; while the
'indirect, and scarcely less important, effect was
to cause the great railway companies to lower
their rates for parcels the whole country through.
At Christmas tune naturally the number of
parcels both through the postal and the railway
som.panies service is far larger than at any other
period, and it is, therefore, just now that all who
li!sve one to send appreciate the more both the
direct and the indirect good effects of the insti-
tution with which the name of the late Mr.
Fawcett, as Postmaster-General, will always be
linked.
Despite the great and the growing success
which has attended the Post Office Savines'
Banks ever since their establishment, the Trustee
Savings' Banks, institutions of . a far older
growth, have far from languished in the degree
that might have been expected. The majority of
these latter weref minded after theclose of the great
French War, which ended with Waterloo in
1815, end at a time when the national distress
enforced upon the consideration of all the neces-
sity for thrift. They did an excellent work in
encouraging the growth of this principle, but
they did not quite meet all the requirements of
the people, and the Post Office Savings, Banks
thus filled a gap. As a natural consequence of
the establishment of the latter, many of the
Trustee Banks, having had their day, closed
their doors; but the annual return concerning
the remainder, issued as a Blue-book only a
few days since, show that these exist and
flourish. The amount deposited in them
stands strangely still, but that amount is a
large one, and it is good to know that the
principle of thrift has so far permeated the
English people that these Trustee Banks should
not only continue to exist and to flourish, but
that the Post Office Savings' Banks should go
on and prosper. The great advantage which the
latter nossess is a Government guarantee, and

that means a deal. Even those who have only
a shilling to put away now know that that
shilling can be deposited in perfect safety, and
though the interest is not high it is not far
from being as great as that which, at the present
price, can be obtained in consols. And it is,
indeed, something that those who can save only
a pound can for that pound receive in its pro-
portion nearly the same interest with exactly
as good security as those who in consols can put
their thousands..

It is an axiom of the English courts that no
defendant is to be excused on the ground that
he does not know the law ; but until the
present year no effective means had been taken
of making the people aware of how the law has
been changed. But now for a very trifling sum
all the Acts passed in the last session of Parlia-
ment can be obtained, and no one will have a
right to plead that, by reason of dearness, they
are inaccessible. The trouble of it, however, is
that no one but a lawyer can understand legal
phraseology; and the further trouble is that even
the lawyers widely differ as to the meaning of
every single statute which happens to be
quoted in court. And the reason for this is not
as the cynicalmay assume, that lawyers disagree
according to the side on which they are retained,
for the judges, who are beyond the reach of any
such consideration, differ quite as widely concern-
ina the construction of certain enactments as
their humbler fellows in the law. As a matter
of fact, the English system of jurisprudence is a
labyrinth in which none but the very skilled
should seek to tread. Those who imagine it is a
simple matter to decide between right and
wrong should spend a day at the Royal Courts
of Justice, and that particular effort of the
imagination would be driven out of them forth-
with. A. F. R.