The North Eastern Ensign at KellyGang 10/4/1874
ABOUT TOWN
(By A Contributor)
"Wash you, make you clean ' is a piece of advice susceptible of a very wide application. To the Benalla people it comes home with special emphasis and force. Here is a river inviting the erection of public baths, but no public spirit to carry such a sensible enterprise into effect. If an old Roman could rise from his two thousand years of sleep and 'visit Benalla, he would hardly appreciate the style of living which dispenses with the refreshing luxury of the bath. Of course any one is at liberty to commit himself to the tender mercies of the snags nod currents of our fatal Broken River, but surely our civilisation is not a '"patch" upon the old Roman :regime, unless, in such .a climate as this, we recognise the manifest advantages of a porous skin, and-all the other sanitary and medicinal, properties of clean water. Omitting to make suitable provision, for our own 'personal cleanliness, we fail to be horrified and indignant at the filthy state of our roads and footpaths; we punish our olfactory nerves unmercifully by quietly submitting to a most iniquitous system of street non drainage. We permit many of our house and shop fronts to deteriorate and rot for want of an occasional coat of paint; in the eyes of strangers and railway visitors we look indolent, dirty, shabby, and poverty stricken, and certainly invite most unfavourable comparison with such model towns as Wangaratta or Albury. Why not make an attempt at sanitary reform by calling a public meeting of the inhabitants for the purpose of erecting public baths? This would be the beginning of a general spirit of cleanliness.’
Are the people of Benalla a reading people ? If the: present condition of the Mechanics' Institute is capable of throwing any light upon this highly interesting question, I should decidedly say that they are not in danger of receiving much injury from overstudy. There is a fine room of ample dimensions, splendidly situated and scrupulously clean, but what a library! What judgment in the: selection of books! What an inducement for a man of reading habits to exchange 5s. per quarter for such an empty benefit as this!. Where are the Reviews, the Magazines? Above all things, where is the Argus?. Is the Sketcher defunct? Is the Australian Journal a choice specimen of instructive literature ?:It is by no means to be wondered at that the Mechanics' Institute is but poorly. patronised; that the funds are in a needy and languishing condition; that, pay a visit. when ire will, our footfall sounds hollow and deadlike. along the un peopled solitude and stillness. The gentlemen who sustain the onerous duties of committee men of this "deadly-lively'" arrangement must surely be a remarkably. contented, self-complacent race! What a sublime passion for literature must be theirs! .How they must congratulate themselves as .leaders of the " march of mind," and official purveyors to the public taste! What a source of enviable. satisfaction it must be to them to look into the Wangaratta Athenaeum; replete with all the current literature of the age, and ,then to return to the." beggarly elements" and apologies for a Reading Room, which are offered as intellectual pabulum to the people of Benalla.
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