The editor hands to me a long letter (two and a-half pages, foolscap) on " The Taiarsa aud the Sabbath Question," the writer of which letter regrets that "your (for the most part) admirable and interesting contributor ' Civis ' does not take a view of this subject more worthy of his genius" (ahem!), "and more in accordance with the laws of nature and scien tific truth." From the fact that he hands it to me I infer that the editor does not think that the public would read a letter of two and a-half pages, foolscap, on " The Taiaroa and the Sab bath Question." The public is right. The public sees, what Sabbatarian letter-writers ap parently do not see, that nobody keeps the Jewish Sabbath law, or even pretends to keep it—that in every household fires are lit on Sunday, food is cooked, beds are made, and that every Presbyterian kirk in the country districts is enclosed on Sundays by a veritable zereba of horses and traps that have been driven to ser vice—all of which acts are plain infringements of the Jewish Sabbath law. Seeing this, the public grows impatient of the lifting up of long testimonies to the effect that we must be drowned in this world and damned in the next for the sin of leaving port on Sunday. For my own part, observe, I always go to church on Sunday. The fact might not be suspected, but so it is. Preceded by the youthful scions of our house, two and two, in order, Mrs C. and myself may be seen—the Bible in ane haud, " Church Praise" in t'ither—wending kirkwards on Sun day mornings with the most painstaking and self-sacrificing punctuality. What is more —any holey threepences and sixpences we have been able to amass during the week we carry with us and deposit in the plate at the door; for, as Mrs C. sagely remarks, though the grocer may refuse 'em, the Church can't. I mention these facts not in a spirit of vainglory, but to show that one is not necessarily a heathen because an anti-Sabbatarian.
