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- CARMARTHEN U Dltt THE SEAKCJB…

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CARMARTHEN U Dltt THE SEAKCJB LIGHT Donne, oome, and you down; you ebaH not budge, You aball not go, till 1 act you up a glass Where you may see the inmost part of yoa SU.UU¡;&rZA The question of raising the assessments has given place to the problem of lowering the temperature. «** There has been a good deal of soreness all over the county on account of the recent action of the police in endeavouring to collect licenses for a good many traps which were never licensed before. And the recent dis- cussion at the County Council has rather intensified the feeling. The argument which is put forward by the Man in the Street is that the Excise Officers used never to enforce the law in the present drastic fashion. Th.s, however, does not prove very much. The Excise Officers had such immense districts that a good deal must have escaped them. The mesh of the County Council net is a good deal finer, and the result is that a good many fish are landed who might have escaped for years under the old system. If the police go on as they have begun, nobody will be able even to keep a mouse trap without a license. The whole controversy turns on the ques- tion "What is a market cart?" The law ex- pressly lays it down that to claim exemption a vehicle must be "constructed adapted and used" as a market cart. This is very com- plicated when you come to consider it. It must not merely be "used" as a market cart, otherwise a gentleman of a parsimonious turn of mind who sent his brougham to town with a sack of potatoes under the seat might be able to claim exemption. And it must not merely be "constructed and adapted" other- wise a man might use a market cart during the week to drive to the races or to an agri- cultural show. It is very eacy finding out the meaning of any one of these words by itself; but taken together they form as com- plicated a text for controversy as any civil or ecclesiastical enactment which the wit of man ever devised. It is not the least good arguing about the kind of market carts in which the farmers used to come to town twenty or thirty years years ago. We know all about the good old gambo or long-body whose ordinary pace was two miles an hour, but which when at express speed travelled as much as three. A journey of five or six miles in one of these was like a trip across the channel on a stormy night- only not quite so pleasant. In those good old days, farmers' wives wore home-made dresses and hob-nailed boots, and farmers' daugh- ters never had more than a "quarter's schooling." Now we have changed all that. The modern Welsh -farmer's wife reads the fashion papers, and his daughter goes to a high school'. It is altogether out of the ques- tion to expect that with the increased com- fort and refinement evident in other direc- tions, people should continue to travel in the prehistoric chariots which used to satisfy their forefathers—or their foremothers. WM The great bone of contention has been the "back rest." One df the Committees of the Carmarthenshire County Council had a long discussion on the subject, and they seemed to have been of the opinion that trie line must be drawn at "back rests." They were quite willing to close their eyes to a certain amount of cushioning. After all there is not much difference between a moveable cushion, and a bag of straw or corn or wool. If a farmer chosc to take a sack of straw,to market there is nothing in the Act to say that he shall not sit on it. If he should not happen to sell the straw or corn or wool as the case may be, there is no earthly reason why he should not sit on it on the way home. As it is impossible to object to a moveable cushion, it is as well to say nothing about cushions at all. The law does not expressly lay it down that a farmer's market cart shall be a kind of torture chair or penitential stool on which he shall come to take a sufficiently gloomy view of the world in general and of local administrative bodies in particular. As for the back-rest it is quite a different affair. There is no explaining it away. It is express-Jiy put there to make people com- fortable, and you have to pay a license for comfort. We must not get mixed up in regard to the controversy. It is not forbidden to anybody to have back-rests the only ques- tion is whether a license should he paid for them or not. It is true that the standard of comfort has advanced. But should farmers and farmers' families have to pay taxes for the additional comfort They have to pay a good deal more for their smarter clothing; but they have not to pay the County Council a lioense for it. After all, whatever the County Council Aiay decide, the ultimate decision lies with the magistrates. As u result, we shal have one standard of taxation in Carmarthen, another in Llanfihangel-ar- arth, and a third in Penrliiwpal. Perhaps somebody will take a case up to the House of Lords, and that august assembly will have to decide how much discomfort Carmarthen- shire people are expected to endure in driving their butter to market. No doubt, the deci- sion would afford an additional reason for mending or ending the House of Lurds. *#» The appointment of pensioners under the C. W. Jones trust marks a distinct era in the history of Carmarthen. The conditions for these pensions are so strict that a person who gets one of them may well feel that he has obtained a certificate of respectability. If I had only been a year older—pensioners must be at least GO years of age—I might have had a, try for one myself. Unfortunately ages have to be properly authenticated. There is a saying that a man is as old as he feels— which is very handy at times. Thus when •you go to get your life insured you may feel that you are only 39, and when you are applying for a pension next day. you may feel that you are itj. This wretched system of registration of births is about the most ob- noxious thing,which was ever invented to irritate people. This is a distinct case of a. fund being of some practical use. Ten persons receive a substantial benefit. When ten elderly men get 10s a week each, it makes a decided differ- ence in a small community. If a hundred men had received Is a week each, the money would have been wasted, because the shilling would not have been of much good to any- body. This new charity and Rudd's Charity are too very good funds. Morris's Charity, on the other hand. is so spread out in small doles that it is of little u.se to anybody. It was left to provide "coal: blankets, and other comforts for the poor at Christmas time." It is distributed to the pastors of the different churches in Carmarthen, who, in turn divide it amongst the poor. This is pretty rough on the poor who happen to be Agnostics; out that is another question. Then a large share of the money has gone to the Soup Kitchen, winch possesses all the advantages and is open to all the objections of all iorms of temporary relief. So long, however, as we have casual poverty, we shall have a demand lor casual relief. The governors of the Sanatorium have decided that their, year shall commence on the 1st July. There are so many different "years" that one more or less does not matter. We have grown so accustomed to the idea that the year commences on the 1st of January that we forget that that is after all a purely conventional arrangement, and that there is no more reason why the year should begin on the 1st January than on the first of any other month. Indeed, the names of several of our months, September (seventh month), October (eighth month), November (ninth month )and December (tenth month) show that the year must at one time have begun in March. *«• The year was reckoned for many centuries in Europe as beginning on the 25th March. With the adoption of the "New Style," which rectified the calendar, the recognition of 1st January as New Year's Day followed. This leads occasionally to a good deal of historical confusion. The execution of Charles 1. took place on the 20th January in the year 1648-9. It was 1649 according to the Continental style of reckoning, our modern style; but it was only the year 1648 acording to the style then in vogue in England. The English Revolution is described by English writers as taking place in "88" but it was on the 22nd January, 1689, that William and Mary were elected sovereigns and Jamess IT. deposed. It was 1688 according to the style of reckoning then in vogue in England; but it v.-as 1689 in France and Holland! Be- tween the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in Italy in 1582 and its adoption in England in the begining of the eighteenth century, you never know where you are in dealing with any event which took place in January, February, or March. Even now we have public bodies ending their financial year on the 31st March. The ecclesiastical year begins on the 1st Sunday in Advent—which is the Sunday nearest to the 30th November. The municipal year begins on the 1st November; farmers take their holdings in Carmarthenshire from the 29tli September to the 29th September, but on the other hand they hire their servants from the 14th November to the 14th Novem- ber. The French Revolutionists when they determined to start everything on a new plan, decided that the year should start at the autumnal equinox (the 22nd Septembe ). In fact, if you go into the thing thoroughly, you will find that there is a year ended nearly every fortnight, and that a young man is really entitled to an old age pension beforo he has raised a moustache. e*e We have not heard so much of the Early Rising Bill this year. The passion for early rlsin,, has very quickly evaporated after a slight experience by its advocates. In theory the thing is all right, but in practice it is found that very early risers are quite ex- haused before the day's work is begun, and that they are so sleepy in the afternoon that they are good for very little. A humourist once said that the principal pleasure in knowing Latin and Greek was that they enabled you to despise people who did not know Latin and Greek. It must be con- fessed by early risers in their candid moments that one of the chief pleasures of early rising is that it enables them to despise people v/ho do not rise early. Besides, this matter affords an excellent proof of the saying that "too far east is west." Nobody is up so early as the person who has not gone to bed at all. The head of one of the collages at Oxford half-a-century ago was a great believer in the benefits of early rising and required all undergraduates to attend chapel at 5 o'clock. He was very much struck by the regularity of one group of students who never missed chapel. But the attendance of the others was very irre- gular. and the time to be altered to 6 o'clock. Strange to say, although the attendance as a whole improved, the group which used to come regularly now seldom appeared. When asked for an explanation, one of them said, "Well you see it's this way; after winding up the night we used to go to chapel at 5 o'clock; but hang it all we can't stay up till six o'clock. That's a bit too much." • #* The opening up of the Gwendraeth Valley Railway to passenger traffic is so arranged that it is no benefit to Carmarthen. Ponty- berem is nine miles by road from Carmarthen and nine miles from Llanelly. By railway it is now 27 miles from Pontyberem to Carmar- then and 14 miles from Pontyberem to Llan- elly. Seeing that the railway fare from Pontyberem to Carmarthen is 2s 3d, it ought to pay somebody to run a motor service over the nine miles of good road at a much cheaper rate. »»« At a meeting of the guarantors of the Eisteddfod the other n-ght, it was stated that a special effort would be made to co-opt men who "were famous in music, art and literature." And at least a dozen of us tried not to ook conscious. ALJBTHEUL

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