The Kaimanawa Ranges (as seen from the train on the Wellington-Napier line), North Island, New Zealand.
Contents
The New Zealand Railways Magazine is on sale through the principal booksellers, or may be obtained post-free for 6/- per annum.
Employees of the Railway Department are invited to forward news items or articles bearing on railway affairs. The aim of contributors should be to supply interesting topical material tending generally towards the betterman of the service.
In all cases where the Administration makes announcements through the medium of this journal the fact will be clearly indicated.
The Department does not identify itself with any opinions which may be expressed in other portions of the publication, whether appearing over the author's name or under a nom de plume.
Short stories, poetry, pen-and-ink sketches, etc., are invited from the general public upon New Zealand subjects.
Payment for short paragraphs will be made at 2d. a line. Successful contributors will be expected to send in clippings from the Magazine for assessment of the payment due to them.
The Editor cannot undertake the return of MS.
All communications should be addressed to The Editor, New Zealand Railways Magazine, Wellington.
I hereby certify that the publisher's lists and other records disclose that the circulation of the “New Zealand Railways Magazine” has not been less than 20,000 copies each issue since July, 1930.
The Department's accounts show that the sales of the Magazine during the year ended 31st March, 1936, were more than treble those of the previous financial year.
Deputy-Controller and Auditor-General. 26/5/36.
A record has been established by Messrs. M. Pettifer and A. Rowell, of Napier, who made the longest railway bus trip ever undertaken in New Zealand in driving buses which carried 25 Maoris each from Ruatoria, East Coast, to Waitara, Taranaki, and back for the unveiling of the memorial to Sir Maui Pomare.
The trip took 13 days and covered nearly 1500 miles. “We slept in all sorts of queer places during the journey,” said one of the drivers. “One of them was the verandah of a Maori meeting-house out of Dannevirke. We slept on bales of straw there. There was only one family living there, and they had to cater suddenly for 250 visitors at one time. In spite of the early hour of the morning and the large number of guests, a wonderful breakfast was served.”
A Popular Stationmaster.
Before his departure for Blenheim last month, Mr. M. Coutts, stationmaster at Rlecarton for the past five years, was met by a gathering of local merchants and other clients of the Railways Department, and made the recipient of a presentation as a token of their esteem and goodwill. Appreciative reference was made by several speakers to the excellent service always given by Mr. Coutts, who had a fine reputation for courtesy, promptness and efficiency.
(Rly Publicity photo.)
Activity in the new station yard at Wellington. The top scene shows railwaymen engaged on the alteration of the tracks to enable trains to utilise the suburban platforms at the new station, and below is shown a view of the new engine sheds under construction.
Railways
Magazine
Magazine
Registered at the G.P.O., Wellington, N.Z., for transmission by Post as a Newspaper.
“”
For Better Service.Vol. XI. No. 5.
Wellington,
New Zealand.
August1, 1936
Zestful Riding.
For comfort and satisfaction on a long journey it is doubtful whether anything will ever excel the express train. There is a sense of security in its size and substance that nothing else can quite give. There is majesty in its movements, irresistible strength in its momentum, unconquerable assurance in its stride. It can do its 50 miles an hour with a thousand people aboard while road units, so far as loading is concerned, seldom touch double figures and never reach a century. Such is the “Express” as we know it today.
But the rail-car, the latest arrival on the railway stage, although it carries only fifty or sixty people, is destined to make every other kind of land travel (excepting always the fast express) seem monotonously tiresome and dangerously dull.
Rail-cars give a new zest to riding. They are so fast, so safe, so clean, so easy! There is a fairy-like lightness in their movement. They extend the outlook, turn tunnels into treasures, and give a new meaning to the companionship of the rail.
They woo the traveller to sleep, wake him refreshed, strengthen his appetite, widen his horizon, brighten his imagination and increase his tolerance. They are the bright birds of the rail—the fast shuttles that weave the bright colours in the lordly loom where the magic carpet of travel is made. If you can think of any other desirable virtue—rest assured, the railcar has it!
Such is the impression gained from actual experience of travel by the rail-car “Maahunui,” which, in its epic journey through the North Island during the past month, has helped to make history in New Zealand.
“Maahunui” is the first of the Rimutaka type of rail-cars to be completed in the Hutt Valley Workshops. Already “Mahuhu” has joined “Maahunui” in the ranks of this rail-car fleet, and others are rapidly reaching completion.
“Maahunui”! There is only about 12 tons of it, empty, or 16 tons, fully loaded; it is bigger than a motor car and smaller than a house, but it woke up the North Island, town and country alike, as it took the two dynamic forces in the railway affairs of this country, the Hon. D. G. Sullivan, Minister of Railways, and Mr. G. H. Mackley, General Manager of Railways, on their inspection tour over nearly 3,000 miles of territory in less than a fortnight.
The trip soon ceased to be a trial run—it became a pioneering classic. At the hoot of “Maahunui's” horn, mothers dropped their baking and made for the back fence, daughters forgot their hair gadgets and stared out from behind the parted curtains of windows; fathers neglected their plowing, boys lined the embankments and bridges. Station platforms filled up and overflowed with people of all classes anxious to see the rail-car and meet the men responsible for it.
Mill hands left their saws and peevies, and patients forgot their doctors. Jolly, excited, children crawled under it or crowded through it, drew pictures of it, and dreamed about it through nightmare nights. Hope came to outback country districts as the red rail-car, a gigantic dragon fly of fast flight and flashing brightness, hurtled through the night with a wild burst of broadcast music from its powerful loudspeakers.
Teachers brought their pupils to view the car and its occupants, Maoris made hakas to it, poets made
The rail-car heard enough speeches to fill every inch of every mile she travelled with an unfailing succession of words.
The Press took up the tale where the speechmaking left off. 10,000 inches of space were devoted to the rail-car and those associated with it. Busy men forsook the marts to try a ride in it. Statements were composed in it, correspondence was typed in it, interviews were conducted aboard it.
The rail-car was the embodiment of life and movement—wherever it went with its Minister and Manager, there did the crowds gather. The combination of administrators and car was a most fortunate one.
(Govt. Publicity photo.)
A sylvan scene near Lake Mahinapua, Westland, South Island, New Zealand.
The trip was a triumph of organisation, an inspiration of transport, and a bright spot in the lives of tens of thousands who were drawn to the places of call by the magnetism of both men and machine.
As a means of putting the controllers of the railways in touch with their owners and users nothing more effective could have been conceived. And as an instrument for popularising travel by rail, the rail-car has an assured future.
General manager's message.
During the past month I have had many good opportunities for personal discussion upon railway matters with users of the rail, particularly in the course of a fortnight's travel by rail-car in the North Island while accompanying the Hon. Minister of Railways on a tour of inspection.
Apart from the great variety of subjects dealt with, a feature of the trip which impressed me strongly was the very high regard in which members of the railway staff are held by the public amongst whom they live and work.
It was notable that in 2,500 miles of travel, with stops every few miles, not one complaint of a personal nature against any member of the Railway Department was received by me. On the other hand, at station after station, I found representatives of business interests and members of the travelling public laying special stress upon the good service given them by the railwaymen in their locality.
In the midst of the general problems of management confronting the Department at the present time, this universal testimony from outside sources that the staff is solidly backing up the efforts of the management on behalf of the public is very gratifying, for it shows that members of the staff are in sympathy and are keeping pace with the management through all the changes which the circumstances of the times require.
There was a time when railroading remained comparatively stabilised for years on end. Those days have gone by. The basis of the railway system remains the same—sound engineering practice in the design, construction, and maintenance of everything used on the railways, strict adherence to the rules to ensure safety in the conveyance of passengers and freight, and professional skill and judgment in planning the scheduling and operating the running of all trains. But new features, such as the co-ordination and operation of road services, the introduction of rail-cars, and spreading information regarding the many services the railways now perform on behalf of the public, have added greatly to the diversity of a railwayman's activities. It is a good proof of the high quality of railwaymen generally that they have been able to “make good” in all these new directions without losing any of their ability as railwaymen in the essentials of their profession.
Another impression I gained in the course of my inspection was the feeling of hope existing amongst the staff, indicating that, with the introduction of new methods of transport and the changed conditions in the industry, they now find more satisfaction in their outlook than has been the case for several years past. This is, I think, a very important feature of the railway situation at the present time, and has a bearing on the welfare of the country as a whole.
General Manager.
James Cowan
For the first time in our history a purely Labour Government is in power in New Zealand, and its head is a man who within a few months has won fame as a vigorous and courageous leader of a great forward political policy. Michael Joseph Savage, Prime Minister since the end of last year, was practically unknown outside the bounds of the Dominion. He is now a great Empire figure, who has done much in a few months to shake up the dry bones of Government in this country. In last month's number of this Magazine I sketched the character of Mr. Savage's lamented predecessor in the leadership of the Labour Party, Harry Holland, whose career was cut short by death. Mr. Savage took up the burden where Mr. Holland dropped it, and carried the party on to a sweeping victory. Now with a clear mandate from the citizens of the Dominion, he is carrying on the duty of giving the country the administrative and economic and social reforms for which it has waited since Richard Seddon died. As he has made manifest, he is taking many stages onward the humanitarian labour legislation which Seddon and his party began. He is a Prime Minister with high ideals, and in the effort to put those excellent ideals into practice he has the help of a band of brothers who are students and thinkers and men of action, and men with a courage and an enthusiasm and an energy as great as his own.
(
S. P. Andrew, photo.)
The Rt. Hon. M. J. Savage The first Labour Prime Minister of New Zealand.
Michael Joseph Savage has been a citizen of New Zealand for very nearly thirty years. His birthplace was Benalla, in Victoria; and, like more than one of his Australian-born colleagues in the present Cabinet, he toiled in mines in his youth. The Hon. P. C. Webb was a fellow-Benalla lad, and it was he who first turned young Savage's attention to New Zealand. Savage tackled many jobs; he held a certificate for driving a winding engine in a mine. In this country he saw something of work in a flax mill. Finally he entered the employment of Hancock and Co., the great brewery firm in Auckland, and he was there when he engaged vigorously in politics and before many years was elected to represent Auckland West in Parliament. Like all his eager Socialistic colleagues of those days, he read omnivorously; there is no greater and deeper reader than a Labour politician, who is usually an idealist with a diligently acquired knowledge of social science and economics and the theory of government. Michael Savage is best described as a practical idealist; a man who is a builder, not a destroyer, with the objective of a happy and contented nation ever before him. His religion has been summed up by a great and intimate friend of his in the words: “His religion consists in doing his duty towards his neighbour; his guiding principle is charity to all.” Now, I have not the honour and pleasure of personal acquaintance with Mr. Savage; my appraisal of his character and his gospel of life is based wholly on the testimony of those who know him well and on his public career, his accomplished work and his announced programme of work for the public betterment to come. Those who have known him in his day of small things, say that he was the most generous of men. When he became a member of Parliament he gave the greater part of his honorarium away in charity. On his initiative it was decided by the Parliamentary Labour Party that when the Party came into power, all the Ministerial salaries should be pooled and equally divided.
Mr. Savage's pleasant face is a happy index to his character. Yet that genial, easy smile can give place when occasion demands to a firm lipped air of determination. Resolute and downright and earnest, he can hold firmly to a course of direct action. He has gathered around him a band of tried and staunch comrades entrusted with the charge of the various Departments of Government, and it must be said that he has made an excellent choice in every one of them. I do not know one of them personally as yet; that is my loss; I can only offer my humble judgment upon them in terms of praise for their courage, their obviously able grip of the special business of their Departments, and their determination to use those Departments for the public betterment. I judge them by what they have done already in the short space of time they have had control of the machinery of State. The hammer strokes of Mr. Robert Semple, who can be described as in very truth the man who gets things done, have captured the fancy and the sympathy and hearty appreciation of the people. The work of Mr. Peter Fraser, Mr. P. C. Webb, and their fellow-members of Cabinet is already manifest in the stimulus given to departmental activities. The team spirit appears to be perfect, the soul of loyalty and co-operation. Mr. Nash has a task of enormous difficulty and responsibility as Minister of Finance; who would envy him his job? I am told that he toils at his desk day and night till the early hours of the morning. My only fear is that these great and conscientious men will wear
It has been well written of Mr. Savage that “he is an idealist whose whole political life has been a fight for the ultimate objective of a world where all men and women will live together in happier relationship; and he is practical in that he has never allowed that ideal to cloud his vision with fanaticism.” This good practical balance is reflected in his speech. He is not impetuous; he weighs his words, speaks leisurely, with often a whimsical kind of a drawl.
We have heard words poured forth, tumbling over each other, from the mouths of impetuous ones of the past. Anything that came into their heads; that haste often went with want of thought. Mr. Savage is an exemplar of the other kind of public speech.
Had Mr. Savage and his colleagues done nothing else since their accession to office but attend to the necessary and pressing reforms in the mandated territory of Samoa, I consider they would have justified their positions in the Cabinet room. The daily telegrams from Apia have told us how joyfully the people received the news of the lifting of the atrocious sentence of exile on their beloved Taisi, and the lifting also of the various oppressive and coercive laws and regulations imposed on them because they had dared to press for their ordinary human rights. Mr. Savage held strong views on the subject of those extraordinary dictatorial measures directed against a peaceful patient people, who were treated as rebels and sedition-makers in their own country, and deprived of the right to travel about the islands, or even from village to village, without a police permit. That the Samoans continued to behave with such patience and forbearance towards the New Zealand administration and the little official tyrants who treated them as so many mere “natives,” with an uncomplimentary adjective, was a perpetual marvel to those who, like myself, had seen them in armed action in the lively days of old Samoa. Continually they were exhorted by their wise chiefs to remain patient; some day a liberator would arise. One of the last things Sir Maui Pomare said to me, in the sad final days of his life here before he was carried on board the steamer for California was: “Poor Samoa! Will she ever be free? Yes, but I won't see it!….” Pomare was not of the Labour Party but its opponent; yet I believe had he been alive today he would have counted his place well lost so that Samoa regained its rightful liberty—which after all is only the ordinary human rights we New Zealanders ourselves enjoy. He would have blessed M. J. Savage for his practical sympathy shown in the revocation of the hated ordinances and regulations. The Hon. F. Langstone was hailed as a deliverer, dispensing the “dew of heaven”; the warm-hearted people, in their relief, likened the tactful Minister to Tangaroa the god come to their help.
All this must indeed be gratifying to Mr. Savage and Mr. Langstone, and to all their colleagues, who have restored to a splendid and loveable race their ancient rights. A race of poets and orators and warriors, a race of culture and beauty, they are a finer people than the Europeans who have dictated what they shall do and say, and even wear. The race has suffered so much from white man's arrogance and interference that it is a wonder how it has continued to preserve so much of its charm and simplicity of character and life. Now that arrogant dictatorship has been demolished by a new regime in New Zealand, we may hope that the way is opening for the ultimate self-government of the islands under the benevolent and non-interfering protection of New Zealand.
The happy solution of the political problem in Samoa is only one of a
(
Rly. Publicity photo.)
Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.
The responsible Minister, the Hon. Robert Semple, thus summed up the position after the new methods had been in operation a few weeks:
“When I took over the Public Works Department 13,000 men were employed, while we now have 17,000 and probably more.” The Minister said engineers of the department had submitted proposals for a three years’ plan of works involving an expenditure of £17,500,000 and designed to employ up to a maximum of 20,000 men. “We are submitting the proposals to close examination,” he said, “classifying them into the categories
The decision to complete the East Coast line has naturally greatly pleased the Gisborne district, which will now at last realise its long-deferred hopes of rail connection with the outer world. So, too, in the South Island the completion of the Main Trunk line and the Nelson—West Coast section will carry to a logical and satisfying end the scheme of through rail connections that were left hanging as if the builders had suddenly been seized by a panic.
Mr. Savage and his colleagues have examined the country's education system, and we may expect to hear of improvements that will be in accord with modern requirements. In this department, under Mr. Peter Fraser's wise direction, there is apparent already the hand of reform.
The re-opening of the schools to the five-year-olds and the re-opening of the teachers’ training colleges are two good deeds to the credit of Mr. Fraser. The training colleges especially came as a blessing to many young men and women who had been deprived of their opportunity to enter the teaching profession.
A careful consideration of the new Administration's scheme of constructive legislation cannot but compel respect for the altruistic spirit in which that programme was framed. The plan as enunciated at various times by Mr. Savage, in Parliament and in speeches outside, is broadly to help increase the happiness, comfort and security of the nation, and to abolish as far as possible the misery and want which have afflicted a large section of the population for so many years. There is to be a fair opportunity for every man and every woman to earn a decent living wage; the exploitation of workers by the selfish and unscrupulous species of employer is to be stopped by the regulation of wages on a fair basis.
For the producer, and especially the country producer, there are to be guaranteed fair prices, a system which is calculated to strengthen the position of the farmer; speculation in land for the sake of profit is to be combated. “We will see to it,” the Premier says, “that people do not get rich at other's expense by selling land.” That certainly will be a reform to which no one but the speculator can object. Land booms are evil and disastrous and they will be prevented. Profiteers in land have been the curse of New Zealand's genuine farming population. Millions of money have been spent in buying land for returned soldiers at hugely inflated
(
H. C. Pearl, photo.)
Conical Hill and Lake Kanieri, Westland, New Zealand.
The machine inevitably has displaced labour, and the new Government, to counteract the effect of this increasing mechanisation of work, has adopted a policy of shortening hours and raising wages. Industry in New Zealand is to be protected against the products of cheap labour from overseas. Protective tariffs are not the only way, says the leader, therefore we must have agreements with the outside world, beginning with the British Commonwealth and gradually extending to other countries. The agreements must be based on sound economic principles for both parties to the agreement.
We cannot produce everything in New Zealand; we must take so much from abroad and pay for it with the surplus of that which we can produce in New Zealand. Higher wages but not too high, reasonable hours of work and reasonable leisure, fixed prices (so far as they can be fixed) and planned production; a fair share of the means of existence and of the comforts and some of the luxuries of life for all; no artificial booms for land and prices, and no preventable depression—that surely seems an ideal to which all political parties should subscribe.
For another thing, the easy and costly practice of delegating Ministerial authority to this Board and that has been reformed drastically. Already three unnecessary and expensive Boards have been abolished.
Mr. Savage and his colleagues stand for an improved order of society and industry which cannot by any stretch of imagination be called violently revolutionary. After all, economic security is the practical heaven for which everyone wishes, but to which far too few attain.
Thoughtful people in all sections of the community, who perhaps at first were disposed to distrust the ambitions of the Labour Government, have come to realise the unselfishness and altruism of Mr. Savage's scheme of life's effort. Courageous and sincere testimony from a perhaps unexpected source was recorded a few weeks ago. Archbishop Averill, in an address at the annual meeting of the Auckland City Mission, expressed thankfulness for what the new Government was doing for the “under dog.” He praised the policy of increasing the sustenance grants to a living wage. Those who were making efforts to alleviate the lot of their less fortunate fellows were doing a Christ-like work. He made an appeal to the people to withhold hasty criticism of those who were trying to solve problems of finance in their efforts to provide for the needy. “If people are trying to do their job, which appears to be that of helping their fellow creatures, it is up to us to assist those people as much as we can.”
A generous, noble, helpful speech, O Archbishop! It sounded the hopeful, cheering note. Give the new Government a fair show and your sympathy, and await results. I do not think Mr. Savage and his colleagues ask for more than that.
Ken Alexander
It has been asserted that marriages are made in Heaven. This may be true, but Woman registered the first earthly patent rights. Man believes that it was he who introduced the marriage law, and Woman lets him believe it. But the fatal truth is that Man, while not bigamous, was originally polygamous until cured by Woman's wiles, and the nuptial knot; for, early in the game she decided that it was hard enough to snare a man without having to share him. So, gradually, by convincing him that he was the only-only and the “answer to the maiden's prayer,” she prevailed upon him to give up collecting wives as a hobby, and get down to the serious business of supporting one as a duty. Finally he actually came to the conclusion that it was better to work for one wife than to have half a dozen to work for him. In fact, he grew so jealous of his reputation as an indispensible accessory to the fact that he invented the Marriage Law—or thought he did. Later on he woke up to find that he had overslept.
We do not suggest that marriage is not a good thing. It is one of the greatest institutions ever evolved by the ingenuity of Woman. There are cynics who say that, if love is blind, marriage is a greater “blind,” but these are generally people to whom marriage is a kind of “war of the ruses,” or “a thing of duty and a cloy forever.” When a woman agrees to share a man's lot, she naturally likes it to be a lot. Thus she is usually the power behind the drone. Many men succeed because of their wives, some succeed in spite of them, but only a few succeed without them. There is no doubt that there is something in her claim that she “boosts” while he boasts. Her slogan is “lead to strength through weakness” as in bridge and other games of chance.
Woman's strength is her weakness, while Man's weakness is his “strength.” With his manly strength he leads; with her womanly weakness, she only directs. They are both happy because he believes that he is protecting her and she knows that she is protecting both of them. For the most mousely spouse has, concealed in the velvet glove of fidelity, the metal mitt of duplicity. This is nothing to her discredit for, while she may boast that she loves him “for what he is,” she knows that she loves him “for what she has made him.” She may be unscrupulous, but she is not uninteresting; life without her might be less anxious, but it would be more monotonous. There
“She loves him for what she has made him.”
So long as Woman preserves the age-old illusion of her “helplessness” man will continue to lead while she pushes from behind; and everybody will be comparatively happy; but let her beware of the snare.
Some say that Woman lacks a sense of humour; yet she perpetrated one of the greatest jokes in history when she claimed “women's rights.” The joke was almost on her, and the only thing that saved her was that, when she claimed that she was the equal of Man, he refused to believe her, and so preserved her “rights” for her. For Woman possessed the patent rights of power before ever she fired a letter box or pelted a Prime Minister with tomatoes to get them. She fought for “Equality” when “Inequality” was her strongest weapon and “helplessness” her strongest lure.
Why does a young man, otherwise comparatively sane, seek to sacrifice his liberty, half his cigarettes, and his Sunday mornings in bed? Why does he deliberately knot the silken legrope of matrimony and abandon the flesh-pots for the cook-pots? Why does he forsake the glad and glamorous glades of bachelorhood for the rugged road of Matrimony. Why? Because the “little girl” looked so frail, so helpless, so unfitted to face life without his broad back to shield her. Every time she looked at him he felt like Canera and Joe Louis and Mr. Schmelling and the League of Nations rolled up in muscle. And while he vows to himself “I'll protect the little woman,” she murmurs to herself: “I'll make a man of him yet.” And so they live happily ever after.
Later on, she may even allow him to believe that he has become a father, knowing, of course, that he is only baby's meal-ticket. And he goes about for a few days looking like “the first of the fathers.” While he recognises that she has had some small part in the achievement, he makes no secret of his cleverness. She lets him take all the credit while she takes everything else.
There is nothing to beat the divine duplicity of a good woman. The better she is the worse she is. The more she thinks of her husband the more she deceives him. The greater her simplicity the greater her subtlety. She knows that “women's rights” were gained when Eve cried over the spot where Adam's spare rib used to be.
The age of chivalry is not totally dead, but it can only survive while women allow men to believe that they are not quite capable of looking after themselves. It is difficult for a young male to believe that the “only girl” requires
The Height Of His Ambition.“She looked so frail that he felt like Carnera and Joe Louis and Mr. Schmelling and the League of Nations rolled up in muscle.”
lean on him.
O. N. Gillespie
Hers the pride of place
In shop and mart, no languid beauty she
Spreading her soft limbs among dreaming flowers,
But rough and strenuous, red with rudest health,
Tossing her blown hair from her eager eyes
That look afar, filled with the gleam of power,
She stands the strong queen city of the south.
Photo W. Hall Raine
The hub of Wellington, New Zealand. Upper Featherston Street, showing the General Post Office on left.
I Wonder what “Old Nosey,” as the privates of the Line used to call the Iron Duke, would say if he could “look in” at the city that was named after him. He would find a total absence of civic pride. By comparison with Auckland, Christchurch, or Dunedin, and Waipukurau and Naseby, he would find that the residents of the capital city had very little audible affection for their town. Their motto seems mostly to be, “I'm but a stranger here, heaven is my home.” This is mainly because the population is so largely exotic. It is a town of exiles, largely recruited from other places. As it is the Head Office for all Government Departments and practically all large business organisations, there is a substantial proportion of executives; but, as is natural, they have been promoted very often from all parts of the Dominion, and remain faithful, as a rule, to the “Old Home Town.” When there is an inter-provincial Rugby match being played, on the Auckland day, the city streets seem to have gone all Wedgewood; they are a mass of blue and white; when Canterbury comes up, the transformation is to black and red; and when Otago plays, Wellington becomes a city of bagpipes and navy blue. The indigenous Wellingtonian seems to go into hiding, and the only times he exhibits sporadic flashes of local patriotism are when he himself is exiled and finds his Cinderella city too profusely assailed in some other place. If tackled at home he mostly says in a detached sort of way, “Oh, not a bad sort of place… I think Haile Selassie is in a bad corner don't you?”
I am not a Wellington native, and I have recently visited several times, every provincial capital, hamlet and large city in the Dominion. I say, as a fact, that Wellington is a city of everlasting beauty, of romantic loveliness, and a quaint old world picturesqueness that cannot be matched even by the galaxy of decorative places with which this Dominion is blessed.
Our four metropolitan centres are largely misdescribed, mostly by their own civic broadcasters. Auckland has become the owner of a name for easygoing ways, summer sport, semitropical gardens and endless bathing beaches on which multitudes of sunbronzed bathers lazily disport themselves. Christchurch has become invested with an atmosphere of English orderliness, profound culture, a semiecclesiastical tone of Gothic architecture, and the leafy quiet of Grantchester. As a matter of fact both of these are busy, bustling, industrial towns of large factories and forceful enterprises. Dunedin started every commercial undertaking of any importance in the Dominion, and has an exciting history of taking business risks of more than ordinary danger. Its reputation for caution, frugality and solidity, is the exact opposite of its record as one of the greatest centres of mining speculation the world ever saw.
Wellington seems to have been mostly occupied in contemplation of all this feverish activity, indifferent to its own interests, and seeing the life of the Dominion as a whole.
This cosmopolitanism is admirable, in some ways, but it has defects. The true blue Wellington citizen is totally uninformed about his own place of residence. How many know of the quaintly beautiful first commercial building in the city? I doubt if many of them know the whereabouts of Lombard and Cornhill Streets. Yet a few seconds from Willis Street or Manners Street, there stands this wooden building with the superscription “Bethune & Hunter, Established 1840.” The roof is of grey tiles, the iron chimney pops out of its original concrete base, a friendly black cat is the commissionaire of the foyer, and fires in open fireplaces blaze pleasantly in the old world inner rooms, as they did nearly a century ago. Dray horses in passing give it a friendly glance, but the motor lorries in this narrow lane seem to sniff.
The city heart of Wellington is almost universally attractive. The new ranks of brightly coloured buildings give a new magic of tone and sweetness to the teeming canyons of the town itself. But its real charm is that a turn to the right or left, a short walk, or a quick pilgrimage up a picturesque flight of steps, brings one to another world. The Terrace is a flower area. Two minutes from the
(Rly Publicity Photo.)
Wellington presents a beautiful and impressive spectacle by night. This view was taken from the hills overlooking Oriental Bay.
But it is the beach resorts of Wellington that should make it famous. In its heart, and on every side, the sea is close, encompassing, and all pervading. One never hears from its locally born that it is the only city in New Zealand where a busy sunbather can have a large choice of lunch-hour swims; yet Oriental Bay, Evans Bay with its dozen or more little ones, Lyall Bay, and Island Bay, are crowded day after day. A moonlight warm summer night is a sea festival in the heart of Wellington, not on a distant sand. Oriental Bay is full of gracious beauty in the daytime, but at night it goes into exquisite evening dress. The cluster of white lamps on the parade, the throngs of car lights, the effervescing crowd of young and old folk in bathing gowns of all colours, make up a scene that is like the Riviera. Wellington has more hours of sunshine than Naples; how the average growler of the capital would hate to admit that! It is all a matter of familiarity with him, and the seas of the Picton Sounds, West Coast, Gisborne or Tauranga, somehow seem different and superior. I am just afraid that this complex, that the grass across the fence seems greener, is growing in our country. Our instalment of physical comfort has been too stupendous. Our climate is too paradisal. Nature's gifts are in such profusion, so copious and magnificently lavish, that we are getting to the crumpled roseleaf stage. Our devotion to open air recreation is good, but we should display a mite of thankfulness that we live in a country, which upon all the earth's surface, affords the most opportunities of living under the blue skies of day and the silver stars of night, without any discomfort worth mentioning.
(Rly Publicity photo.)
Wellington an seen from the Kelburn Hills.
However, to return to the particular, peculiar and special qualities of Wellington. I propose to describe it as the “World's Prettiest Capital City.” Its industries are many, but their premises are often leavened by sweet surroundings. We show the recreation courts of one great enterprise situate in the very heart of the industrial area. The creeper covered office building with its air of immemorial age is only a step from the city's Chinatown. This latter with its two main thoroughfares, Haining Street and Frederick Street, is known wherever seafaring yarns are spun. Horrors and romance have been written about them to freeze the blood of boys in London suburbs and American hick towns. They are slowly being
(Rly Publicity photo.)
The junction of Lambton Quay and Bowen Street, Wellington, showing the Cenotaph (centre), and a comer of the Goverment Builings (left).
The contrast is all of a piece with the piquancy which is a characteristic of any Wellington street scene. You wheel out of Lambton Quay, past a small everyday corner shop and reach the Turnbull Library. How many citizens exult in the possession of this world-famed storehouse of wonders! One day, the Turnbull Library will be the objective of special pilgrimages of full ships from older lands. It is one of the great book collections of modern times, studded with treasures, priceless, rare, and, in many cases, unique in the world. The value of its contents can hardly be expressed in money. Its overseas visitors are astounded and regard with stupefaction, the serene indifference of the Wellingtonian to this heritage.
As may be imagined from its topography, the city is one of innumerable outlooks. It is arranged like a vast amphitheatre and its dwellings are, for the most part, in the dress circle seats. Its outline can best be seen from a steamer entering the harbour; at night time, it is a twinkling fairyland. In all modesty it can be claimed that the view from Roseneath or the Mount Victoria top road on a calm evening (and there is one now and again) is of surpassing and intoxicating loveliness.
But strangely exciting as the city herself, it is the hinterland of Wellington that, makes it the red-haired girl of all cities from the point of view of scenic beauty. Muritai (“the very sound is muted music on the lips”) and her sister, Day's Bay, are reached by a marine drive which, in the words of an English visitor “make Monaco and Nice look in the steerage class.” The bush clad hills run down near to the water's edge and within a few minutes of pleasant walk,
Oriental Bay, Wellington, on a summer's afternoon.
But it is the “Round Trip” that makes the final revelation. For instance, there is the Khandallah native bush reserve from which a short climb to the top of Mount Kaukau gives a view of the distant shining snows of the Kaikouras, on the one hand, and the crenulated white tops of the Tararuas on the other. All along the hills that border the Hutt Main Road there are dozens of these points of vantage. Then there is the harbour drive. This is a marine parade of a score of miles with a panorama of kaleidoscopic changes and a roll call of twenty named bays, each of them with its own distinctive and essentially different charm. Most of the way on this ride, the South Island is visible across the rolling waters of Cook's Strait. Happy Valley road, which twists and turns back to the city, might be through a Scottish
I have carefully refrained from mentioning public buildings except that I ask readers to wait until the noble wooden pile of the Government offices is surrounded by green lawns again; by bright parterres and gay borders. Then the most beautiful of all soldiers’ monuments in New Zealand will have its proper setting, and the noble pile of the new Railway Station will lend dignity and massive splendour to the portico of the capital.
Suprema a Situ needs a new translation. Wellington should base its claim on scenic beauty, not on any other qualification. Let its people forget that it is the seat of Government and that it has head offices and big businesses. Wellington is excelled in utilitarian aspects by other centres in New Zealand, and its main claim to fame must rest on the fact that it has been the chosen town for poets who have written more of it than of any other New Zealand place; it is a paradise for painters; a dream place for nature lovers; the Dominion's treasure house of the loveliness which is vagrant, inconsequential and wholly desirable.
What is the highest speed at which a single rail-car can run with safety on a well-laid track? (asks the “Railway Gazette”). This question must have been asked whenever it was realised that practically all the diesel or petrol-engined units that have run at over 90 m.p.h. have been of the articulated type with two, three or six vehicles. Yet the highest speed recorded, 143 m.p.h., was made by the Krackenberg car, a six-wheeler without even the supposed advantage of the double-bogie layout. From there we pass down to the 119.5 m.p.h. of the Etat Bugatti, the only other single unit vehicle which has appreciably exceeded the hundred mark. It has been reported that this vehicle has since attained 125 m.p.h. on the same stretch, viz., between Paris and Le Mans. The Burlington Zephyr. U.P.R.R., City of Portland, and the Flying Hamburger, with respective maxima of 112, 112, and 110 m.p.h., are all articulated trains, and we must go down to the 100.2 m.p.h. of the Breda-A.E.C. car on the Italian State Railways before we come to another single-unit running alone. Of the range of articulated trains, the Nord triple-car units have run at 98 m.p.h., the Dutch triple-car sets at 90 m.p.h., the Belgian twin-unit at 88 m.p.h.; both the Flying Yankee on the Boston and Maine railroad and the Comet on the New York, New Haven and Hartford railroad have exceeded the hundred mark. Apparently the Danish “Lyntog” Diesel trains are limited by permanent-way conditions, for so far as we are aware they have not exceeded 85 m.p.h. The top speed attained with safety is not as a rule a matter of careful streamlining and the provision of adequate power; it is more particularly dependent upon the suspension, and definite knowledge on this subject for super-speed railway vehicles is not yet in an advanced state. Moreover, the top speed which may be attained without derailment is by no means the maximum which can be attained in conjunction with comfort.
Recreational facilities provided for the employees of one of Wellington's big industrial enterprises.
Fat Men
Here's a tip for you
For generations, wealthy overweight people have, been visiting those European Spas, whose waters are recognised for their reducing effect. Today, a multitude of corpulent men and women are getting the really essential part of that Spa treatment in their daily dose of Kruschen Salts. The formula of Kruschen represents the ingredient salts of the mineral waters of those far-famed Spas. These salts combat, the cause of fat by assisting the internal organs to perform their functions properly—to throw off each day those waste products and poisons which, if allowed to accumulate, will be converted by the body's chemistry into fatty tissue.
“I have sold Kruschen Salts for years,” writes Mr. F. M., a shopkeeper, “but never tried it until six months ago. I have lost 2 stone of solid fat. Six months ago I was 15 stone 7 lbs.; I am now 13 stone 6 lbs., and I feel better in every way, age 45 years. Before I began to take Kruschen Salts I had difficulty in breathing or walking uphill—now I have no trouble.” F.M.
Kruschen Salts is obtainable at all Chemists and Stores at 2/6 per bottle.
Leading New Zealand Newspapers.
Tangiwai
We were discussing old maritime life on the New Zealand coast, and talk turned on ships that went missing after departure, from one or other of our ports. There was the story of rats leaving a doomed ship, a sea-tale so often derided yet firmly believed in by many seafarers. Undoubtedly there have been many authentic cases of this kind, a strange manifestation of animal instinct—or was it simply that the rats had been starved out?
I mentioned a story told me by an old frieend, a shipmaster in the Shaw-Savill sailing clippers. He was an officer in a wool-ship lying at Lyttelton, and his younger brother was an apprentice in another ship there. The brother's ship sailed first, for London. The night before he left the wharf, the lad saw the rats walking ashore along the hawsers; they were deserting her for good. He told his elder brother, who strongly advised him to leave the ship. “Give her the slip,” he begged. “She's doomed,” he said, “I've never known that sign to fail.” But the boy, though strongly impressed, thought it would be unfair and cowardly to desert his ship like a rat. “No, I'll stick to her, Tom,” he said. He sailed next day; and neither the ship nor he was ever heard of again. Struck an iceberg, caught fire, foundered in a hurricane? No one ever knew.
One of our group narrated the mystery story of the Kentish Lass. This vessel, a barque engaged in the timber and coal trade between New Zealand and Australia, was owned in Wellington. After discharging a cargo of coal she went up to Hokianga and loaded kauri for Sydney. A night or two before she sailed all the rats came on shore. That fact was observed by people on the wharf as well as on the ship. She sailed out into the Tasman and vanished from human ken. Hers was the Port of Missing Ships.
Why this often-verified habit of “ratting” from a ship on the eve of a last voyage? Had the rats some uncanny sense of foreboding, or was it simply because they were tired of sailing in a hungry ship? Who knows?
The Royal Navy is proverbially equal to anything. It is as useful on the shore as it is afloat; therein lies the difference between sailor and soldier. It always was so in the Navy, and one is sure it always will be. The association of the Navy with New Zealand was particularly close in the days of the Maori wars, and there were long inland expeditions in which a Naval brigade added strength and skill to the operations of the military. I have just turned up a capital little description of an incident in Hone Heke's war of 90 years ago in North Auckland, which illustrates my point about the handiness of the men-of-warsmen in those days of sail.
The crews of three British warships, the frigates Castor and North Star, and the Indian Government's ship Elphinstone, took part in the march from the Bay of Islands to the bush stronghold of Kawiti and his warriors, Ruapekapeka Pa. Commander Johnson, of H.M.S. North Star, received orders from Governor Grey to send up a 32-pounder to the front, for use in the bombardment of the fort. Johnson was at the time in command of the British camp at Tamati Pukututu's pa on the banks of the Kawakawa River. He manned the gig which had been left in a creek near Tamati's pa, and rowed down to the ship. There he had the 32-pounder hoisted out into the launch, and rowed up with it to the foot of the pa, helped by the flood tide. Two hundred sailors from the frigate also pulled up the river to assist.
He had a large Maori canoe cut in two, lashed the gun in the bow end of the craft, made fast a five-inch hawser round the bow, with a clovehitch round the muzzle of the gun, had a relay of handspikes to place under the canoe, and then the sailors dragged it through the manuka on the riverside and up to the naval camp. The summit reached, the lively sailors, at the double, hauled the gun to the front of the pa, cheered themselves for their success, mounted the gun on its carriage, and fired three rounds blank out of it, by way of impressing the friendly natives, their allies. The gun was then placed on a bullock-dray and carted over the rough track sixteen miles to Despard's advanced camp in front of Kawiti's great stockade, at which it was soon battering away.
In a natural history note (1860) Von Haast recorded the self-defence methods of the white heron. A beautiful Kotuku, of large size, was standing in the water, in a stream on the Matakitaki Plains, Buller Valley, when it was attacked by three sparrow hawks at once. “They made frequent but well concerted charges upon him from different quarters. It was admirable to behold the Kotuku, with his head laid back, darting his pointed beak at his foes with the swiftness of an arrow, whilst they, with the utmost agility, avoided the spear of their strong adversary, whom at last they were fain to leave to fish unmolested.”
Robin Hyde
There is a difference between Tauranga proper, and Tauranga festive. Tauranga festive calls itself The Mount, and is to be spotted very easily the moment you disembark at Tauranga proper: about eight hundred feet high, it soars up against a bright blueness of ocean and horizon, and the instant you set eye on it, you know that it's a place where things are being done. So strong is the Mount tradition in New Zealand's cities that as soon as I asked Auckland's bright young things if they had been to Tauranga, they at once cried: “You mean the Mount,” and started to babble about the surf-bathing, which I knew already. I did not, however, mean just the Mount, charming though the Mount is; I meant Tauranga comprehensive, the surf-bathing and the melon parties and the aspen tree and the Chinese gooseberries and the funny old brown and barefoot ways of the Maori world. Going to Tauranga for the festive side alone is like demanding a dinner, all lemon souffle. Don't be so limited. Adjourn with me instead, to the aspen tree.
They say it's the only one in New Zealand; its great feature is that it shivers unceasingly. Disapproval animates every one of its several hundred thousand delicate grey-green leaves. It is a large and an old aspen tree, and its little dance of disapproval was thus hailed by one of the above-mentioned bright young things “Jitters, what?”
But then, those children are impossible, especially as regards their language. I don't know, though. They have a sort of talent for enjoying themselves.
Enter a melon party. When I said I didn't know what this meant, everyone looked blanker than ever, which was in itself no mean achievement. The apparent course of Nature is that you wear a bathing suit (a backless one preferred), or at most, shorts, and the new sort of shirt with the zip fastener, and then proceed to get through any amount of pinkfleshed crisp melon. You're expected to be able to absorb vast quantities before complaining of that full feeling. Everybody was doing it. They seemed to find it aided both conversation and their sun tan, about which last they were a little anxious. This, of course, was at the Mount—I will, though it is against the unwritten local law, give that sugarloaf its full name, and address it as Mount Maunganui. Sun-tanning was the thing that you simply couldn't hang back from doing; some boated, some swam, some disported themselves in the loveliest creamy surf, which appeared in large fat billows and dashed prancing and snorting up the beach. Seagulls, dogs and an occasional infant—not very many, the Mount isn't what I'd call a family-gathering resort—chorussed deep-throated approval. But even those of us who didn't intend to get a little toe wet, submitted ourselves to the enthusiastic embraces of the gorgeous Tauranga sunshine, which is quite definitely A grade. I saw a well-known professor, who had gone a pale honey-brown practically all over. He was a strange sight, pleasing, although bald.
Tauranga as a town is small, but energetic. It means to go places and do things, but at the same time the past reaches out a hand and touches it on the shoulder, saying: “Hush!… lie back and listen.” If you agree to harmonise your mood with this passive dreaming, Tauranga will tell you the stories of its carved pas, which were strong and fierce and formidable. It will reminisce about Gate Pa, where General Cameron and his hearties were ignominiously licked by the Maoris who happened to be lurking with their flintlocks at a spot most inconvenient for all concerned, except themselves. And, of course, a few days later the bugles said “Tantira!” again, and the redcoats strode forth and avenged the defeat of their comrades. But the Maori part of Tauranga doesn't mean to die and to be forgotten. That is why the whole district is woven and interwoven with exquisite Maori names. Far down at Matamata is the Carver's Cliff, where hundreds of years ago the old Maori, looking at Nature's strange handiwork of windswept whorls and crests on a gleaming precipice, was inspired with one of the finest designs used in carving.
Tauranga has still to become as widely-known as it deserves among tourists, though I think that a good many of the Dominion's own weary,
“The Past reaches out a hand and touches it on the shoulder.
There are lemon groves at Tauranga; those and sweet oranges and tree-tomatoes, the bright-hued subtropical fruits. Down in the native gardens of Maketu (which you reach by rail from Paengaroa station) things become yet more tropical; the Maoris cultivate taro root, which I always thought only happened in “The Coral Island” and “Robinson Crusoe.”
Omokora is a heavenly place, all dappled light and large ferns, where you go a-picnicking. If you are friendly with a resident, or even with one of the seasonal lights who go back year after year to spend their summers in the resting-place, maybe you'll be danced ovethe waters in one of the tight little craft sported by the Tauranga Yacht and Power Boat Club, which is a body corresponding to Divinity down yonder. Omokora, among the ferns is one of the places where you can still hear the bellbird's song dripping down, clear honey; and the sands are a happy hunting-ground for queer, quaint shells; which reminds me that the only New Zealand concologist I ever met was a woman, and had in the pursuit of her profession once had a stand-up fight with an octupus in a large rock pool. The octupus came off second-best, which makes me think better than ever of my sex. In Tauranga Harbour I do not think any such perils exist, but once you stand out from shore in the direction of Mayor Island (only a brief run from the Mount), fish stories tend to become more and more apocryphal; that is, the fish are so large that when you see them you don't believe them. You start on kingfish and work your way up gradually through immense gaping hapuka to the real gentleman adventurers of Mayor Island… the mako sharks. Enormous fish are sometimes caught by line only round about Tauranga, but this way of courting the mako shark's society is not recommended. And, by the way, mako shark teeth are still highly prized among the Maori citizenry, and up to a couple of pounds a pair may be obtained for a really impressive set of eye teeth (or whatever the equivalent in the mako denture may be). The mako teeth next appear in high Maori society, one in each ear of the lucky and grinning purchaser, another step back in the direction of the good old days, when a Maori proverb declared that manhood was achieved after a youth had single-handed fought and conquered a mako shark.
You can decide, in the course of a lazy day, between peach groves and mutton birds. If you choose the latter, be warned in time; like Rudy Vallee and Al Jolson, they croon. Really! they have the queerest little crooning ditty of their own. A place, by name, Karewa, is their principal habitat… also very popular with that oldest and wisest member in the Club of Creation, New Zealand's very own tuatara lizard. He has a sphinxlike smile, lives in a burrow, and can travel like a flash of greased lightning when the spirit… or the sound of an invader's foot… moves him The Maoris passionately adore the mutton birds, and the pakeha… meaning us… try to follow suit, because by this time we are becoming rather enthusiastic about the absorption of local colour. Our skins are beautifully brown, we have survived the melon parties, we can handle a fourteen-footer, and we don't see why we should let a mere mutton bird give us best. That's because we don't know the muttonbird. I suspect that most things and people addicted to crooning are spiritually formidable. Our muttonbird, turning a repulsive chrome yellow upon any attempt to cook him, instantly disgorged streams of oil; at which the cook went pale, muttering: “Who'd have thought the old man had so much blood in him?” A thoroughly hardened settler hove in sight, however, and put us up to a trick, which I pass on for what it is worth. The way to defeat the malice of your muttonbird is to cook it neither normally in a pan or bakingdish nor in the Maori oven way, but raised up in the oven upon a little slanting cairn of sticks. Down these the oil is popularly supposed to course, leaving the bird baffled but edible…
Was it? Well, in my view, barely so. And I should hate a stiff breeze to spring up if I were crossing the harbour directly after such an effort. On the other hand, I know white gourmets who follow this means of cooking the fowl, and who take back to their cities whole sacks of mutton birds. This may, of course, be mere bravado.
Maketu is a green and narrow valley, where rises still the funny old steeple-hat belfry of the native
Equal To The Occasion.
An unusual situation was promptly and efficiently met by the Railway Department and St. John Ambulance at the Auckland railway station recently. An invalid was travelling south by the Limited, and it was found impossible for the bed to be taken into the sleeper in the ordinary way. Quickly the railway officials removed a car window to make it possible for the passenger to be taken on the train. With great care the St. John Ambulance representatives lifted the invalid through the open space right on to the bed. The care and ease with which the officials carried out their job excited the admiration of the spectators on the station platform.
“Don't you ever smoke cigarettes?” asked the tobacconist. “Precious seldom,” replied the customer. “Cigarettes have their points, but as the farmer said about the claret. ‘I don't seem to get no forrader’ with them. No, me for the pipe-and toasted Cut Plug No. 10 every time! If you know of anything better, tip us the wink!” “'Twixt you and me and the bedpost,” said the tobacconist, “I dont think there is anything better. Most of my ‘regulars’ smoke toasted, anyhow.” “About how many brands are there?” asked the customer. “Only five—Cut No. 10 (Bullshead), Cavendish, and Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog) are for the pipe. Then there's Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold. They make really top-hole cigarettes.” “By the way,” said the customer, “I hear these toasted brands are being imitated.” “That's right,” said the tobacconist. “What some folks will do for money! Not that I think there's much money in sham toasted! Nobody's going to buy it twice. Once is plenty!” “It's a wicked world!” laughed the customer, “so long!”*
(Rly Publicity photo.)
The Strand, Tauranga, North Island,
An outstanding event in the world of travel was the inauguration of the new “Queen Mary” steamship services across the Atlantic. All of us are rightly immensely proud of this stately Cunard-White Star liner which bears so honoured a name; and railwaymen, in particular, have played a big part in the building and despatch of our latest ocean greyhound.
Practically all the steelwork and other material required for construction passed by rail to the Clyde shipbuilding yard. It was in the Southern Railway dry-dock at Southampton that the final overhaul of the “Queen Mary's” hull was undertaken, while it is also the Southern Railway's Ocean Dock at Southampton which has been selected as the Home terminal of the new service.
With the general construction and equipment of the “Queen Mary” most readers will be already familiar. One interesting feature which has not been given special prominence, however, is the operation on board of a fullyequipped railway and travel information bureau, representing the four Home railway groups, the Irish railways, and the Travel Association of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The staff of this bureau, provided by the Home railways, issue tickets and make reservations in respect of steamship travel between Great Britain and Ireland, and between Home ports and the Continent, as well as reserving accommodation for tourists at any of the long chain of railway hotels scattered throughout the British Isles. One powerful publicity agent at their command takes the form of a complete film library of travel subjects, these films being regularly shown on board for the entertainment of passengers.
Cheap ticket arrangements by the score operate on the Home railways for the benefit of the holiday-maker. An especially useful plan is that known as the “seven day holiday zone season.” Under this arrangement, the whole country has been divided into special zones, with about 250 miles of railway in each area. There are about 118 selected zones within which holiday season tickets may be obtained covering seven days’ travel, these including both large cities and seaside and country resorts. For fifteen shillings first-class, or ten shillings thirdclass, unlimited travel for one week within any of these zones is placed at public disposal. For five shillings extra one may take a bicycle along, too; or for half-a-crown, your favourite dog. The whole of the stations in the beautiful Isle of Wight can be covered for seven-and-sixpence, thirdclass. Any one of the River Clyde steamers operating from Glasgow is at the passengers’ service for twentyfive shillings a week. These cheap tickets are immensely popular with knowing holiday-makers, and provide a valuable source of railway revenue.
Streamlined electric rail-car, Swiss Federal Railways.
Stephenson relics are constantly being discovered on the Home railways. Recently, a 15-ft. length of rail designed by George Stephenson more than a century ago, for the Leicester and Swannington Railway, now part of the London, Midland and Scottish group, was presented to the South Kensington Science Museum, London, by Sir Josiah Stamp, Chairman and President of the Executive of the L. M. & S. The rail, which once formed a part of the original Leicester and Swannington track, is of wrought-iron and of a “fish-bellied” type. It had an original weight of 35 lbs. per yard.
It was on the Leicester and Swannington Railway, opened in 1832, that the locomotive whistle is popularly believed to have been invented. Following a collision between one of the
A famous English holiday haunt. Ann Hathaway's historic cottage, Stratford-on-Aron, G.W. Railway.
Those two thriving north-country cities—Manchester and Leeds—famed respectively for cottons and woollens, are celebrating this year the one hundredth anniversary of the passing through Parliament of the Bill authorising the construction of that historic transportation link, the Manchester and Leeds Railway. The movement for the building of the Manchester and Leeds line began in 1825, but it was not until some five years later that a working company was formed, and George Stephenson and James Walker employed to conduct a survey. Short-sightedly, it would seem, the proposals of the promoters were thrown out by Parliament. In 1836, better luck attended the promoters, for all objections were then swept aside, and the Parliamentary Bill received Royal Assent on July 4 of that year.
Building of the Manchester and Leeds Railway commenced in 1837, with Stephenson in charge of the engineering works. The section of track between St. George's Fields, Manchester, and Littleborough was the first to be opened out—on July 4, 1839. The section between Hebden Bridge and Normanton followed, connection being given at the latter point with the old North Midland Railway. Through working between Manchester and Leeds began on December 31, 1840, the entire cost of the programme having run to something like #250,000. In 1847, the Manchester and Leeds Railway was swallowed up by the Lancashire and Yorkshire system, the latter railway itself disappearing as a separate concern in 1923 on the formation of the London, Midland and Scottish group.
On routes of relatively light traffic density, the European railways are finding the rail-car of real utility.
Canard-White Star R.M.S. “Queen Mary” entering the Southern Railway Dry Dock at Southampton.
In France, rail-car operation continues steadily to increase. Rail-cars now operate over approximately 1,500 miles of track on the Paris-Orleans-Midi system, and have resulted in the regaining of much passenger business temporarily lost to road. Rail-cars for freight movement constitute the latest development on some of the French routes.
C. A. L. Treadwell
While Dr. Eric Brannigan knelt down again to examine once more the lifeless body of his old friend, he saw the multiple wounds on his head and shoulders, the clear marks of throttling, the terrible fear which even death had failed to remove from his features, to say nothing of the knife wound to the heart and the appearance of drowning. Mechanically he placed his thumb and forefinger on the wrist to satisfy himself that death was not being feigned, for he knew what a practical joker Pat Lauder always had been.
“Dead, Gentlemen,” he pronounced with that certitude which is possible only in a great scientist. “Quite,” remarked the great detective.
That fact having at last been established to the satisfaction of the small group present, the representative of the law, the local police constable, took charge. From his cavernous hip pocket he extracted a pocket book. This he elevated before him, and then gravely, as befitted the occasion, after carefully placing upon the end of a spatulate thumb a supply of saliva, he laboriously lifted page after page until he reached the first one that was blank. Diving his hand into his right trouser pocket he extracted a short stump of pencil which he first placed upon his tongue and then pointed to the great private investigator, Impskill Lloyd.
“Here, you what were you doin’ 'ere at this time of the morning?” At once the doctor gazed at Impskill. “Was this the murderer, this man who belonged not to Matamata?” “I Sir, am Lloyd; Impskill Lloyd.” This was said with savage ferocity, for the great investigator was upset to think that even in Matamata there was someone who did not know him, that is, without his disguise.
All the pomposity of the overfed constable disappeared. “Not the great 'tec?” he asked in awe. Impskill nodded. “Help me turn this body over,” he said. The constable slumped down on his knees at once. He turned the body over. “As I thought,” muttered Impskill, “dry as a bone.” The others gazed wonderingly at the great detective, yet he had only stated the simple truth. The front of the victim was dry while his back and shoulders were drenched. As the local constable, a grossly overfed and corpulent person, moved his knee, there was a slight sound of crushing glass and there arose at once a sweet odour which the sensitive nostril of Impskill at once noticed. With a heavy blow the constable was hurled on his back. A second later Impskill was extracting from a pocket on the dead man fragments of a broken bottle. Hastily he sniffed at those pieces which he was able to pick out; most had been pulverised under the great weight of the constable. “Cy-pot!” he said to himself. He did not have time to say, cyanide of potassium, though if he had cared to do so, he really had time to say prussic acid.
Whipping out his powerful torch—for that weapon was more important to him than his automatic, which, as it happened, he had left at home for his children to play with, he switched it on and carefully examined the halfopen mouth of the dead man. Lowering his face to the dead man's he sniffed, then rose with a look of triumph in his steely eyes. A moment later he was down on his knees again and was gazing intently at the feet. He raised one foot up, gazed carefully at the toeplates, for toeplates are worn in Matamata, and again with a gleam of triumph in his eyes, rose to his feet, dropped the foot with a bang alongside its mate, and strode rapidly to the windows across the cabin.
It was nearing dawn and the roadway across the railway track could just be discerned. The trio in the cabin watched spellbound as the mighty Impskill stepped back and stood over the recumbent form on the floor. The constable was watching, with his mouth almost as wide open as the book which he held in his hand. The doctor was rubbing his chin in bewilderment, while Gillespie, the blase, used as he was to his great master's voice and work, had stopped rolling a cigarette.
Once more Impskill dived his hand, this time into a waistcoat pocket of the dead man. He extracted a torn
“Constable, will you take me by the route usually taken to the main road?”
“Gill and the maid were in very close consultation.”
“Hurry constable,” said Impskill, in such an imperative tone that the great human walrus jerked himself, forward to obey the command. Impskill stopped to watch the result. Unheeding a swinging piece of fencing wire the constable caught his nose in a ring at the end of the wire. In a moment the huge leather pipe vomited 100 gallons of icy water upon the head and shoulders of the constable who fell prostrate upon the duckwalk. Again Impskill rubbed his chin.
“I thought so.” Then he added, “You can get up constable,” and stepped forward to assist him. As he helped him to his feet he flashed his torch on the drenched man. “As I thought,” he muttered again. “Almost dry in front.” He turned him round and then, in a tone as if he had made a great discovery, he added, “You are very wet, my man,” “So I am,” answered P.C. Fanning. “I can't stay now, I'll 'op 'orf 'ome and change or I might get pneumonia.” He pronounced it “pumonia,” for he could never remember if the “p” was silent, as it is in some words and places, or whether it was the “n.” He knew it was one of them, but he usually picked the wrong one. “I shall have to go on with the inquiry myself then,” said the great Impskill with a trace of irony in his deep voice. “Does that matter?” stuttered the shivering constable. “A little local affliction apparently,” remarked the ever ready Gillespie. The constable floundered across the patch of grass, through a wire fence and was soon shambling along the road to the police station.
“It must have happened near here,” said Impskill to Gillespie, for he was killed on the road and carried up to the cabin. Gillespie nodded his head, not because he followed the reasoning of his master, but because he could not think of any better idea. “As I thought,” said Impskill as they walked down the street for about ten yards. “Do you see that score on the road Gill?” and he pointed to a definite scratch on the tar-sealed road. It was there all right, and both before and after the scratch there was the mark of a motor-car tyre. Some car had been stopped suddenly there and not so long ago. “That car was travelling at 55 miles an hour or in modern and more precise terms, about 80 feet per second.”
As he made this further comment the great investigator swept the bitumen with his ninety candle power torch. There were stains which he measured and a strange smudge running diagonally across the road and heading towards the gap in the fence through which the party had passed.
“We will feed,” suddenly remarked Impskill. A door had just opened over which a notice proclaimed that breakfast was ready at any time of the day. The two men entered after assuring the doctor that they would see him later. It was a cold morning, and Impskill, after calling the girl and ordering the conventional bacon and eggs, went up to the fireplace. He switched his torch into it. The fireplace had not yet been cleaned. There was some unburnt paper, and the hawk eye of the detective noticed that the writing was the same as that of the piece he had removed from the pocket of the dead man. At that moment the girl returned to set the table. Impskill stood up and tried to appear as if he had seen nothing, in spite of the tremendously important discovery he had made. Then to his alarm, for he had not yet taken possession of the paper, the girl approached to clean the gratt.
“Did you know Pat Lauder, Miss?” the detective asked the girl. She started nervously. Had her secret been discovered? “What's that to you, Mr. Imperence?” she asked, trying to get off her alarm with a bold front. “Oh, don't be alarmed, for I was only wondering,” answered Impskill. “Have you not heard that he has been found dead?” “What, Pat dead? Well, I did not do it. Sir,” she cried. “When did you see him last?” and he fixed her with his hypnotising gaze. “Last night Sir, but I did not do it,” and the girl started to snivel. “Where did you see him?” pursued the relentless inquirer. “Here Sir,” and the girl pointed to the very seat the detective was himself occupying. “He was reading a letter or something that he had just received. He said that it was all rot and threw it in the fire.” “He tore it up first, girl” said the detective sternly. “How did you know that Sir?” The girl was obviously scared. “When did he leave you?” was the next question. “Oh, about eleven o'clock Sir. He had been to a party with the Mayor. We were giving him a send off as he was going away.” “What was the present you all gave him?” “Ten pounds,” was the reply.
“The huge leather pipe vomited one hundred gallons of icy water.”
“Was Pat glad to be going,” asked Impskill. “No, Sir, he was very depressed.
(Thelma R. Kent, photo.)
Mountain pastures in Central Otago, South Island, New Zealand.
He had had a lot of beer and he was very melancholy. He told me he would miss me.” Here the girl sat down and burst into tears. “Where else did Pat go that night, Miss?” “Only to the chemist and the Mayor's,” she replied. “Why the chemist; do you know?”
The girl then told how Pat had an old dog, too old and rheumaticy for practical use, and he had told her he was going to destroy it before he left. He was going to get some prussic acid. Hastily eating his eggs and bacon, the detective left Gill, who was a slow eater, in the restaurant, and made for the local chemist. “Let me see your poison book,” he said as he walked up to the counter. “Poison book; what for, who are you?” and the chemist looked suspiciously at the stranger. “What did you sell to Pat Lauder yesterday?” asked Impskill. He was becoming impatient, for he was now hot on the scent. “I sold him some throat paint,” said the chemist defiantly, for he had forgotten to enter the prussic acid in the book. “Why is that bottle of cyanide out of its place, amongst the tonics?” asked the detective.
“Come, out with it man, I'm in a hurry.” Impskill thrust his visiting card in the chemist's face. He at any rate had heard of the great detective. “It's no use trying to kid you. I know that, Sir. I did give him prussic acid.” “Had you quarrelled?” “Oh no, Sir, he wanted it for his old dog. I gave him an ounce in a bottle. I marked it poison, so that he would not confuse it with the paint which was in the same kind of bottle.”
“The case is clear now, but where are the two men who concealed the corpse?” Leaving the chemist in a nice state of mind, for he did not know if Impskill would have him arrested or not, the detective returned to the restaurant where Gill, and the maid were in very close consultation. However, as he entered the room, Gill, pushed her violently away and adjusted his tie. “Come with me,” said his master, and Gill, followed wondering how much the detective had seen.
The two men were soon slipping along the road out of the village; round the next corner they stopped at a garage. “Drive right inside,” said Impskill, and Gillespie did so. An attendant came to the side window of the Hispano Suiza. “Did you have any cars call early this morning?” asked the detective. “Yes Sir, a Calipso, 1933 model.” “Were there two men in it?” asked the detective. “Yes Sir, they were a funny pair. One of them said that they had borrowed the car from their father and they wanted a wash down. They insisted on hosing down the car themselves. Seemed anxious that I should not see the car too close.” “Did you notice any marks on the radiator?” asked the detective. “Yes Sir, there was a broken or dented left mudguard and there were marks on the radiator.” “I was suspicious of the car, so I took a description, and here it is.” As soon as he learnt that it was Impskill himself, the attendant handed the detective the details.
They returned at once to the village and at their request the local doctor started at once with a post mortem examination. The detective wanted to know only one thing. Was there prussic acid in the stomach? There was, and plenty of it.
“That was a most interesting case, Gill. It might have been caused by a number of things, yet it is now all clear.” “Was interesting,” said Gillespie. “You don't mean to say that you know who did the dirty deed?” asked Gill. At that moment the policeman came out from the station to them. “Well, how is things now; got any more information for me?” he asked. “Oh, yes, it is all over.” “Who did it then?” asked the policeman, looking
“Killed himself,” said Gill, as one wise man to a fool.
“No, you are both wrong,” and Impskill looked pityingly at them both.
Constable Fanning scratched his head, first carefully removing his best shako for the purpose. “Oh, by the way, Constable, will you kindly go to the gap in the fence where we got through and I shall be surprised if you do not find a stiletto there, probably on this side of the fence?”
They all hastened to the spot where, just as Impskill said, there lay a stilletto. It was a beautiful narrow blade with a cross-like handle which must have been caught in the wire, for it lay immediately beneath the wires in the long grass.
“The pub is open,” said Gill, hopefully, for his master was wont to relax whenever he had solved a problem. They all adjourned to the local hotel, and then on a bench in front of a large log fire which had been alight throughout the night the great detective unfolded the story. “You know, Gillespie, there is only one small matter that has to be cleared beyond doubt, but I am fairly certain of even that.
“There was no murder, there was no suicide, it was accidental death. The original message suggested murder or a perverted sense of humour. It has turned out to be the latter. You will remember the tar on the toes?” and he turned to the policeman. “Yes Sir,” answered the policeman untruthfully, for he had noticed nothing. “Did you also notice that the toes were pointed downward and the body was lying just as if it had been dragged into the cabin and left there?” He said he had. “It had not been drowned. It was wet only on one side. You will understand that?”
Constable Fanning scowled at the thought of the risk that he had incurred of “pumonia,” even if it had been in the course of his duty. Moreover, he felt that the detective had rather run him into it. “When I saw that Lauder had probably received his wetting from some artificial origin, I looked for the cause close at hand and saw how it could have happened. The constable demonstrated that theory in a very practical manner,” and he smiled at the policeman. “The heart thrust then required to be solved. That was not so difficult. The motor car which we traced to the garage cleared that up all right. What happened was a pure accident. You will remember that Lauder had a party and I ascertained that a good deal of the local beer was consumed. That beer has an intoxicating content of a high order and Lauder was not much of a drinker—as you will have noticed from his clear skin. On this occasion he quite excusably drank rather more than his wont. He became, if not inebriated, careless and indifferent. As he was walking home with the local chemist, because he would be leaving early next morning, the chemist had opened his shop and given him the two bottles, one of throat mixture and the other the deadly poison, prussic acid. He gave him more than was necessary to kill the old dog, yet he was fond of Lauder and no doubt did not wish to appear mean in his eyes. Lauder left the chemist after having taken a few brandies there in addition to the powerful Matamata beer already referred to. He was walking up the street in the middle of the road, no doubt happily crooning the latest song, for as you all know Lauder was the village crooner. A motor car approached whose lights were of poor quality. The car was travelling at 55 miles per hour, or, as I previously remarked, in more modern parlance, about 80 feet per second. The two men in the car were strangers to the locality, they had borrowed the car without going through the formality of first apprising the owner of their intention to do so.
“They were, as you have gathered, in a hurry. Just before they entered the village the semi-inebriated Lauder apparently felt a tickling of the larynx and thought he would try out the cough mixture.
(From a Sketch by Miss K. Johnson.)
The “Devil's Staircase” near Kingston, South Island, New Zealand. In the foreground is the cargo boat “Mystery,” a once familiar object on Lake Wakatipu. The Nevis Goldfields lie beyond the snow-capped mountains.
“This little incident upset the men. They were not dangerous crooks, mere thieves, and they did not want to be charged with murder or manslaughter. They got out of the car and saw the crumpled body of Lauder
“I am, of course, not interestd in the trivial matter of stealing motor cars. There was no murder; there was no felo de se; it was a pure accident for which the motor car thieves were not responsible at all. I think they would like to know that, for they must be worrying. The throttle marks were not marks of violence at all. Sophie of the restaurant had the same stain on her thumbs, and she had been clasping the unfortunate Lauder in her hands round the neck in a tender embrace. You, Gillespie, will understand what I mean.”
The great detective finished and began to move away. Then the constable had a flash of intelligence. “That is all right so far as it goes Mr. Lloyd, but what about the telephone ring and the gurgle.” “That, Sir,” said the great Impskill with humility, “is the only thing that deceived me, but I have solved that also. That message was sent by one of the two motor thieves. They knew that the police might find them and charge them with the serious crime of murder or manslaughter, and as they already have a long list of convictions, at least that is probable, their sentence would be death or a life sentence. Then they revealed that they possessed intelligence of the highest order. They knew that I, and I alone, could solve this mystery of mysteries and they hit upon their ingenious method of drawing me into the investigation. Good day, Gentlemen.”
He rose and made for the outer door. Not a murmur escaped the enthralled audience. Even the nonchalant Gill, dropped his half-made cigarette in amazement.
The change-over from Broad to Narrow Gauge.
Somebody has been writing to a London weekly to ask which is the least harmful form of smoking. The Editor refused to commit himself. Perhaps he isn't a smoker, and really didn't know, although editors are supposed to know everything. Had he been a New Zealand editor, he'd have had no difficulty in answering that question. He'd simply have said—at any rate in effect— “Smoke ‘toasted,’ because in that case it doesn't matter a button whether you puff pipe or cigarettes or both, this tobacco's O.K.” And he'd have been dead right, because whether you smoke “the pipe of peace” or “roll your own” toasted is so pure and comparatively free from nicotine (the toasting eliminates the stuff) that you can indulge in any number of pipes or cigarettes without fear of their letting you down. Yes, toasting does make a difference! In fact, it makes all the difference, whether you smoke Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead), Cavendish, Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Riverhead Gold or Desert Gold. They're all unapproached for flavour and bouquet, and are the only genuine toasted brands.*
Tohunga
This is the beginning of the old Maori's New Year. He knew that by the signs of the stars for one thing, and by the various indications that Nature is stirring for the approaching spring, Puanga has reappeared with his glittering panoply. Look out to the cast about three o'clock in the morning and you will see the rise of Orion preceded by the bright morning star. Many astronomers consider Orion the grandest of all the constellations. Certainly it is the one most easily picked out in the heavens, not even excepting the Southern Cross. Those three stars in a line forming the Belt, and the great stars vertically above and below are as famous among the Maoris as they are in the pakeha science of the sky. The appearance of Tautoru (“The Three Friends”) and Puanga in midwinter, when the constellation is at a sufficient distance from the sun to be visible at rising is a tohu or sign, annually looked for by the old generation of Maori.
One of my old Maori friends, a man skilled in the wisdom of the cultivators and bushmen and fishermen of his race, said that a name for the three of Tautoru and Orion, was “Nga Tira a Puanga,” which means “Puanga's Company,” or “The Travelling Party of Puanga.” Some called the bright star above the Belt (Rigel of the astronomers), Puanga, but most of the wellinformed elders said the name was really that of the red star below which when seen rising out of the ocean, is very large and bright. It throws out unmistakeable red flashes. “If these flashes appear to be towards the north,” said my authority, “it will be a year of plenty on land and in the sea, but if towards the south it will be a lean season for food. In the past our people looked eagerly for the first appearance of Puanga each winter, a sign, they said, that never failed. You could put this to the test, supposing that you had a good clear view of the eastern ocean, by watching for Puanga and his Tira.”
This season-forecasting star is, therefore, not Rigel, as some writers have said, but Betelgeux, which in Oldworld classic lore is the right arm of Orion the Huntsman. In this southern world he appears to be diving downward— “the Boetian huntsman upside down,” to quote Alfred Domett's “Ranold and Amohia.” Astronomers describe Betelgeux as a curious red star, which varies in brightness, a scientific fact well evident to the keeneyed Maori.
There is a variety of Maori-Polynesian folk-belief concerning Puanga and his Band, as of that other wonderful star group the Pleiades (Matariki). By some the Three Friends and the neighbouring bright stars are called the “Pewa,” or “Bird Snare.” This fancy likens the constellation to the carved perch used for snaring the kaka parrot which we used to see in use in the Urewera Country and other bush districts. The rise of Puanga (in the South Island dialect Puaka) is regarded as a celestial sign to the cultivators to begin the preparation of the ground in readiness for the early spring planting.
That great friend of the Maori, Sir Donald Maclean—who came to New Zealand soon after 1840 and died in Napier in 1877—was the first pakeha, I think, to remark on the many close resemblances between his own Scottish Highland folk and the Maori tribesmen. In his MS. diary he mentioned such traits in common as the wearing of the kilt, the coronach and the Maori tangi, the chanted elegies, the war customs. He felt quite at home among the Maoris very soon after his arrival on the shores of the Hauraki.
Another man of note, Sir George Bowen, when Governor of New Zealand, was greatly interested by the resemblance between Scot and Maori, particularly in their feuds, raids and war-practices generally. In June, 1868. he wrote in one of his despatches to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, describing the conditions of the Maori tribes: —
“In March last a herd of cattle belonging to Messrs. Buckland and Firth, of Auckland, was driven off by a party of Maori marauders but was afterwards restored on the application of those gentlemen to Tamati Ngapora, the uncle and chief councillor of King Tawhiao. The details of this case, even in the most minute circumstances would, if told at length read exactly like a chapter of ‘Waverley,’ which relates how the cattle of the Baron of Bradwardine, when carried off by the Highland cateran Donald Bean Lean, were restored through the influence of Fergus Mclvor, the chief of the clan.”
Governor Bowen went on to compare Highland clansmen's grim deeds with those of the Hauhaus. “Lord Macaulay and Sir Walter Scott,” he wrote “have recorded on the authority of official documents how a band of MacGregors, having cut off the head of an enemy, carried the ghastly trophy in triumph to the chief. The whole clan met under the roof of an ancient church. Every one in turn laid his hand on the dead man's scalp and vowed to defend the slayers.”
The Governor likened this to some of the acts of the Hauhaus in the Maori Wars, especially the decapitation of Captain Lloyd and others, of the 57th Regiment, after a surprise attack at Te Ahauhu, in Taranaki; and the carrying round of the heads as emblems to incite the other tribes to war. There was also the tragic affair of the Rev. Volkner, so violently deprived of his head by Kereopa, and the savage ceremony in Volkner's own church afterwards. Scots and Maoris, they were brothers under their skins.
The Queen'S Earrings.
The Queen's Earrings lie beneath the hearthstone of a farmhouse a little north of where the main trunk railway crosses the 40th degree of latitude.
Their story goes back to that day in 1568 on which Mary Stuart fleeing from the battle of Langside, came to the home of the Lenzies at Glenmayne Priory. Malcolm Lenzie, who was then Laird of Glenmayne, saved the Queen from falling into the hands of the Regent Murray, and set her upon the road to England, in gratitude for which she presented him with her earrings—two fire opals set in whorls of beaten gold—and promised that when she returned to Scotland, great power and wealth would be his.
She never returned, but for nearly three centuries afterwards the Lenzies remained lairds of Glenmayne, until in 1857 they were dispossessed by a moneylender named McWhin. Ardoch Lenzie, who inherited the estate only to find that his title had been signed away by his father, was persuaded by his wife Catherine to make a new start in New Zealand, and they now await the arrival of the ship “Druimuachdar,” commanded by Catherine's brother, Charles Barcle.
ChapterV.
The “Outward Bound” (the Clydebank Brewery Co.'s Entire) stands today where it did seventy-nine years ago, in that part of Glasgow that lies between Broomilaw and the Queen's Dock. The fact is hard to reconcile with modern local topography, for the records show that in those days it was a waterfront tavern. The street that leads to it turns aside bravely enough from a roaring thoroughfare of trams and motor buses and brightly-lit shops, but after struggling for a few hundred yards between sooty and dilapidated dwellings, loses heart and dies in a courtyard, the other end of which is guarded by three iron posts. Should you venture further beyond the posts, a narrow passage will take you along the flank of a warehouse—a vast echoing structure redolent of green hides—to another thoroughfare filled with the rumble of drays and lorries and many strange smells. The funnels and masts of ships tower above slate roofs and there are glimpses of the river glinting dully beneath a leaden sky.
In the year 1857 the water ebbed and flowed freely across the mud flats on which this last thoroughfare has since been built, and the courtyard which was then known as Denny's Tidal Basin, a secluded and by comparison, almost pleasant spot, was overlooked by the coffee room of the “Outward Bound.” It was in this coffee room on a fine afternoon in October, that Captain Charles Barcle, of the full rigged ship “Druimuachdar” sat and sipped at a glass of sherry while he gloomily surveyed the man who sat opposite him; a jolly, robustlooking man of that old-fashioned merchant type who, perhaps because they lived in close contact with the captains of their ships, seemed to carry about with them a decided salty flavour.
“Well, there it is, captain,” this man was saying. “There's the ship, and there's the cargo.” He waved an arm towards the window which was on a level with the mainyard of the “Druimuachdar” as she rode at high water against the breastwork of the tidal basin, “and the money's as good as in the bank.”
“Maybe so,” the captain replied bluntly, “but I'd feel a sight happier if it really were in the bank instead of in the pockets of this fellow McWhin.”
“Oh, McWhin's all right,” the merchant laughed easily.
“Aye—at a price.”
“What do you mean?”
Captain Barcle did not immediately reply, but rose and stood gazing out of the window. A tackle had been rigged above the “Druimuachdar's” main hatch. Crates of merchandise, machinery, and ironware for the most part, were being hoisted aboard by a hand winch, the musical clinking of which was the only sound that for some minutes disturbed the silence of the coffee room.
“D'ye see those boxes down there by the mizzen chain-plates?” the captain demanded at length.
The other rose and came to his side.
“The ones with a name painted on them? What about them?”
“Lenzie is the name painted on them,” Captain Barcle replied. “Lenzie, Wellington, New Zealand.’
“Doesn't convey anything to me.”
“No—it wouldn't—you're a Liverpool man. Well, Lenzie is my brother-inlaw, and he comes of an old family that has lived for over three hundred years at a place called Glenmayne Priory down there in Renfrew. He and his wife are leaving this country for good, because his father borrowed money, just like you're proposing to do from this same McWhin.”
“D'ye mean that McWhin sold him up?”
The captain nodded. “Took everything he had; house, lands, livelihood, everything except the few old books and pictures and a bit of plate and so on that's packed up in those boxes.” He paused a moment, then, “they say McWhin will make a pot of money out of it too; he is going to cut the estate up into factory and building sites.”
The merchant frowned. “Couldn't Lenzie have done that and bought him off?”
“Seems not—McWhin had secured all the titles and foreclosed; but even if Lenzie had been able to clear the debt in some other way he would never have cut up the estate, he's a stiff-necked devil. Why,” he added, “he could set himself up now right enough if he would only agree to part with some old jewels—a cool seven thousand he was offered for 'em by a dealer—but they're family heirlooms, given to the first laird of Glenmayne by Mary Stuart; the Queen's Jewels they call 'em, and he won't trade.”
“D'ye mean to say he's taking #7,000 worth of jewels with him in your ship?” ejaculated the merchant—“he must be crazy!”
“They'll be safe enough once they're on board,” the captain retorted stiffly,
“Do you see that tall building with the clock tower?” he asked.
“Now,” demanded the captain, shooting out a hand to grasp the slack of his waistcoast, “perhaps you'll be good enough to tell us what you're doing here?”
The potman sighed—“Naethin’ at a’ —I'm juist aboot ma duty,” and he made a movement towards the empty glasses on the table.
Captain Barcle released him with a grunt of disgust. “Pon my soul,” he growled, “I don't know what the country's coming to when a man can't discuss a simple matter of interest without having a gallows-bird like that poking its nose into it. That's the way it is nowadays though,” he continued sadly, after the waiter had taken himself off, “the old order's changing—no solidity, no respect, Jack's as good as his master; d'ye know what I put it down to?”
“I can guess,” the merchant replied, laughing, “steamships?”
“Humph!—well, you've heard my opinions on the subject before—but it's true all the same. I tell you there wont be any sailors left soon, they'll all be blacksmiths and tinkers, and very handsome they'll look bucking a full gale o’ wind on a lee shore and trying to solder up their rotten boilers!”
“Still, you must admit that steam has its uses.”
“On land perhaps, but not at sea; haven't I spent the last two days trying to find a man to replace Alec Thomson?”
“Your first mate—what's happened to him, you didn't tell me?” The merchant was serious again.
“No? Well I was coming to it, only your proposal to make a deal with McWhin took me all aback. Alec was away to Maryhill to see his mother, and while he was standing on the platform waiting for the train to bring him back, a train comes from the other direction, and what must some numbskull do but open the door of his carriage before it stops. That door took Alec abaft the beam as you might say, and stretched him out on the platform with three ribs stove and a broken arm—so there's no chance of him sailing on Wednesday.”
“Tch—that's bad,” the merchant replied. “I'm sorry captain, I really am —have you got another man?”
“Aye, there's a fellow called Holloway—a Londoner—not the type of man I'd choose if I had time. He's been in American ships, and I expect I'll have to tone him down a bit. However, as I said, sailors are getting scarce, and if a man is pressed for time, well—he has just got to take what he can get.”
Chapter Vi.
No doubt Captain Barcle's misgivings about the worthiness of the “Druimuachdar's” new mate would have been increased could he have seen him at the moment he was discussing him.
Downstairs, at the back of the main taproom of the “Outward Bound” was a smaller bar known as the “glory hole,” and frequented by those customers of both sexes who, by reason of their comparative affluence, were considered to be worthy of greater comfort and privacy than the turbulent atmosphere that the main tap afforded. The privacy was secured by a slide which shut the “glory hole” off from the tap and through which the potman could serve his drinks. Comfort was provided by two leather settees, a wooden floor without any sand on it, and a small fire.
Mr. Holloway, although duty demanded that he should be superintending the stowage of the “Druimachdar's” cargo, entered the “glory hole” shortly after three o'clock and banged with his fist upon the slide. He was a hard-looking man with a flattened nose and he wore his peaked cap with an air that suggested he knew all about the world and the men who lived in it, and would stand no nonsense from either. For all that, his general appearance was somewhat shabby and down-at-heel, and he looked thoughtfully at the florin which he took from his pocket before pounding once more on the slide.
“Damnation!” he cried, when, after a third assault upon the slide it was reluctantly withdrawn, “are you all dead in there? Does a man have to— why,” he dropped his voice to a hoarse whisper as he caught sight of the potman's face, “why, strike me blind if it ain't me old pal Scotty 'Ollick, 'im as was not apprehended for the wilful and premeditated robbery wiv vi'lence of that most respected citizen of Boston, Massachussetts, Judge Esther, in the spring of last year.”
“Dorky,” said the potman without enthusiasm or surprise.
“Dorky it was, Holloway it is; Mr. Holloway to you, mate of the ‘Drummochter’ sailing day after to-morrer for the Antipodes. That's to say,” he leered slightly, “I was, but now I've found me old pal Scotty, p'raps I shan't—wot's me old pal got to say about it?”
The potman withdrew his head from the slide, and returning, placed a whisky bottle and two glasses on the sill. Mr. Holloway slipped the florin comfortably back into his pocket.
“Well, Scotty,” he said, “here's down the hatch. Now what about it—you and me I mean?”
“Naethin’,” replied the potman sadly,
“A fussy paddle tug had snaked her out of Denny's Tidal Basin.”
“He died,” Mr. Holloway interrupted grimly, “and I can prove one or two little facts that the Boston police would be glad to hear.”
“Bawston's a long way frae Glesca,” replied the potman, “an’ they dinna take the Yankee polis verra seriously over here. Besides,” the potman's one eye grew suddenly menacing, “I've one or two friends in Glesca who wouldna’ like tae think ye were for selling yer infor-r-mation!”
“Still up to your old tricks eh!” Mr. Holloway attempted a feeble bluster, “ferget it Scotty boy, d'ye think I'd split on a pal fer a few lousy dollars— I was only having me little joke.”
“Aye,” replied the potman dourly, “I thought ye were.” He drained his glass in silence, then, “yer skipper's upstairs,” he said.
“That's alright aint’ it, skipper in the parlour, mate in the 'glory 'ole.’ Shouldn't wonder if the ole bloomin’ ship's company ain't in the tap.”
“They're no’,” replied the potman, who appeared to be a man of literal interpretations, “but,” he leaned forward, and taking the mate by the lapel of his jacket, whispered earnestly in his ear. For a long time they conversed in this manner, pausing now and again to frown and trace ruminative patterns on the sill of the slide with their forefingers.
The tide had begun to ebb in the basin outside and had gone out completely from the whisky bottle ere the potman straightened himself up.
“Well, Dorky,” he said, “you get them and bring them here to me before she sails if you can—if not then ye'll juist have tae wait yer chance. I'll know how tae get rid o’ them, and we'll split fifty-fifty.” And Mr. Holloway, a little uncertain in his footsteps, his brows knotted in a speculative scowl, returned to his job of superintending the stowage of the “Druimuachdar's” cargo.
Chapter Vii.
On the first day of February in the New Year the “Druimuachdar” crossed the 160th parallel in latitude 44 south. One hundred and twenty-two days of almost continuous fair winds and easy sailing on the “great circle” had passed since a fussy paddle tug had snaked her out of Denny's Tidal Basin, and now another six or seven should raise the snowy peaks of the Southern Alps.
Six days! Catherine Lenzie, reclining at ease in a canvas chair set against the lee rail of the poop, was conscious of a feeling of supreme happiness as she glanced idly at the pay of sunshine and shadow across the deck. To her the ship with its lofty spars and violet shadowed canvas, the song of the breeze in the rigging and the gentle hiss of water alongside, appeared as a vivid segment of the great wheel of life epitomised in the heap of sewing in her lap. Tiny garments lovingly tucked and hemmed, all ready for the arrival of a new heir to the Lenzie fortunes three weeks hence in New Zealand.
Her thoughts went back as she fingered the soft linen, to those last few days at Glenmayne, the days of heartache and the weary weeks of waiting that followed in the cottage overlooking the Firth near Gourock. The “Druimuachdar,” a comfortable but slow old sailing ship, was leisurely and irregular in her comings and goings, so much so that instead of the predicted six weeks it was two months before she came beating up the Firth.
That had been a morning of the wildest excitement; a waterman's dory leaping over the short steep estuary seas. Jewelled drops of spray stinging the face, and the perilous climb up a swinging rope ladder to meet Charley Barcle, red faced, booming commands, with a bear-like hug for his sister. But the excitement had died away when it was learned that, after discharging her cargo the ship was to go over to Port Glasgow to refit, another two months probably before she would be loaded and ready for sea again.
Charley Barcle was home, however, and came whenever he could to the cottage at Gourock, and in the evenings they would sit at the window watching the traffic of the river. The tall deep-sea tramps outward bound; the collier brigs and the flapping, panting tugs, and they would make him tell over and over again all he knew of the wonderful new lands in which, in spirit, they were already settled.
Architect's drawing of the railway garage and social hall to be erected in Waterloo Quay, Wellington, adjacent to the new station building.
Then at last the journey up to Glasgow, the train whistling shrilly as it clattered through a wilderness of slate roofs and chimney pots. The grumbling grimy station; the ferocious cabmen. They had lunched in the coffee room of the “Outward Bound,” and Catherine had eaten little, unable to take her eyes off the vessel that, fretted by the rising tide, tugged at her moorings in the basin below. The vessel that was to take them to the other side of the world.
That afternoon with a light autumn mist softening the drab outlines of the waterfront, they cast off. Warehouses, masts, cranes, and tall chimneys went slipping by and presently Captain Barcle called Ardoch and Catherine to his side as he leaned over the port rail.
“Do you see that tall building with the clock tower?” he said, “beyond it lies Pollockshaws and Cathcart and the road to Kirkconnel. If you were to draw a line, south by east from where we stand over the top of that tower you would strike Glenmayne Priory.”
Ardoch and Catherine, their hands lightly clasped, remained staring while the clock tower went slipping astern through the gathering mist.
The “Druimuachdar” lay at anchor that night off Dumbarton Castle. After supper in the cosy main cabin, Mrs. McBride, the old woman who had been Catherine's nurse and who, ever since her marriage, had acted as housekeeper and general factotum at Glenmayne, retired to the Lenzie's cabin to unpack and make ready for the night. More than once in the past four months, though she had stoutly refused to be left behind, she had protested against this voyaging half across the world to live among heathen cannibals. It was flying in the face of a stern Calvinistic Providence, and there was no doubt at all in her mind that such rashness would be visited with the direst consequences. She was not altogether surprised, therefore, when, having lit the lamp, there came from out the dark, unfamiliar world of creaking cordage and tramping feet that was the main deck, a sinister face which suddenly leered at her through the closed scuttle. She was not surprised, but she shrieked loud enough to bring Ardoch and Captain Barcle running to her aid.
“We'll have to get Catherine to sew some curtains,” laughed Captain Barcle. “In the meantime I'll close the shutters outside. Stepping from the main cabin he collided with Mr. Holloway, who appeared suddenly from the shadows beneath the starboard poop ladder.
If there could have been said to be any shadow to mar the pleasant, voyage of the “Druimuachdar,” it was, at any rate from Catherine's point of view, Mr. Holloway. Captain Barcle found him an efficient officer, and a good seaman, but his manner, whether on deck or at the cabin table, was always one of furtive taciturnity, which in the close confines of their little floating world, became irksome in the extreme, and at times filled Catherine with a vague unreasoning fear. He seemed to her an incalcuable force which, like the sea, itself, was only held in leash by the domination of Captain Barcle's superior intelligence. When the wind freshened and grey bearded combers went roaring past the cabin scuttles and the “Druimuachdar,” groaning and creaking in all her bones, went plunging down watery hillsides and laboured up the crests beyond, was the time unthinkable thoughts came. What if Charley were hurt up there in the shouting wind and rattling spray? What if one of those great seas came bursting over the poop instead of sliding harmlessly away beneath it? Catherine's storm-tossed fancy saw Mr. Holloway take command, not over the ship alone, but over their very lives and fortunes as well; free to give rein to the dark thoughts that seemed forever to be brooding under his heavy brows.
But the next day would dawn light and clear. Charley would come stamping down to breakfast, red faced and cheerful; and Mr. Holloway, the spirit of calamity, would be, with the tearing black clouds and great grey seas, defeated once more!
Captain Barcle's head and shoulders appeared out of the hood of the companion-way. He lifted a hand in greeting to Catherine, and took a turn over to the weather rail. He spoke a word with the second mate standing there, cast an eye aloft, and then, passing close to the binnacle, which he studied for a minute, came down to where Catherine was seated.
“My word,” he said, watching her fingers ply the swift needle, “he is going to be a little swell, isn't he?”
Catherine looked up smiling, with a faint blush in her cheeks. “How long will you be in Wellington, Charley?” she asked.
“A month maybe, perhaps more, can't tell, y'see, until I've, been to the agents. We may have to go south for a cargo.”
“Tell me all about what it's like,” said Catherine.
“God bless me soul ma'am! I've told you a hundred times already.” Then he patted her shoulder reassuringly. “Don't you worry—there'll be sunshine all the time, and green hills and blue water, and we'll dress the ship with all the bunting we've got— and Ardoch—well,” he broke off, “here he comes now—he'll tell you the rest.”
As Ardoch, who had been forward “to look round the farm” as he laughingly called the main deck (for the “Druimuachdar” was carrying two or three sheep, an Ayrshire bull, and several coops of fowls) came up the poop ladder, the foot of the mainsail came against the mast with a sharp clap. Captain Barcle glanced up and then, excusing himself, crossed once more to the port rail. For some days past now the weather had been uncertain, the wind chopping and changing first from one quarter and then another, and there was an uneasy “jobble” in the sea. From daylight this morning, though the glass was lower, there had been a fairly steady breeze from the north-west, which, however, now showed signs of dying away.
Mid-day dinner was served, and Catherine, finding her cabin somewhat airless felt disinclined to take her usual afternoon rest, and returned on deck.
The ship lay becalmed, but rolling heavily on a glassy swell that set the whole fabric of her creaking and slatting and banging with a hundred voices of unrest.
Mr. Holloway, pacing the poop from rail to rail gave her a surly greeting, and as Catherine looked about for her chair, announced that he had told the steward to take it below. He was about to make some further observation when he paused, and cocking his head on one side, scanned the narrowed horizon intently. Then he sprang forward to the break of the poop bellowing orders.
A shadow like the swift drawing of a curtain fled across the sun, and a queer droning rose above the rattle and boom of empty sails. Captain Barcle appeared. “Better get below Catherine,” he said shortly, “and tell Ardoch to stay down too.”
The first blast of the cyclonic storm laid the “Druimuachdar” on her beamends and threw Catherine from the bottom step of the companion-way. The ship quickly recovered, but Ardoch, springing forward, missed his footing on the careening cabin floor, and Catherine sustained a heavy fall.
The ship was brought up into the wind while all hands strove desperately to stow such canvas as had not already been blown to ribbons and for several hours thereafter, with only a rag of staysail set, she rode the mountainous seas easily enough.
But almost as suddenly as it had started the wind dropped, and the sea, released from its steadying pressure, rose to fantastic heights. Hills of turbulent black water leaped seemingly of their own volition to fall aboard from all points. The waist of the ship, unable to free itself through the spouting wash ports, was a boiling maelstrom in which the hen coops, with their drowned occupants, struggling animals, and the splintered wreckage of the long boat washed dismally back and forth. Suddenly there came a warning shout as a mountain of water rose up astern. Higher and higher it rose until it was almost on a level with the crossjack yard, and then hung poised a moment illumined by a lightning flash before it crashed down upon the quarter deck and obliterated all sight and sound in a welter of foam.
As the ship slowly recovered it was seen that the mizzen topmast had carried away and trailed with a raffle of gear over the smashed rail to port at the spot where, a minute before, Captian Barcle had been holding on by the mizzen shrouds.
New Zealand Erse
* * *
* * *
* * *
Shiela Russell
[All Rights Reserved.]
The Talking Scarecrow.
You remember when the people of the cottage first came to live on Pudding Hill, the animals were not very pleased about it, but Johnny Black, the Blackbird, said that he didn't mind because they would be sure to plant all kinds of seed in the garden, which he could eat. “Grass seed, carrot seed, or even celery seed,”
“Seven very fat Field Mice.”
First of all they dug up the vegetable garden and sewed carrots and parsnips, and Johnny Black, perched high up in the macrocarpa tree watched them with a bright and knowing eye. When the planting was done he flew down and ate some of that seed, but not very much, because it was planted too deep. Then they planted celery seed, and Johnny ate some of that too, more than he did of the carrot seed, because it wasn't planted so deep. After that he had some lettuce and parsley and spinach, and then spring went and summer came and there was no more planting, and Johnny went back into the tree tops and sang very beautifully for the people who had given him the nice seed.
And the people in the cottage, although they didn't forget that he had eaten an awful lot of seed, became very fond of him.
Early in the morning when the sky was still gray and the garden wet with dew he sang—
Later on when the dew had all gone and smoke was rising from the cottage chimney—by which Johnny Black knew that there would soon be toast crumbs and marmalade on the drying-green, he sang—
The boys in the song were, of course, the Sparrowdenes, who joined him at breakfast, and often enough he really did dance afterwards on the clothes line, until, perhaps spying Mr. Tom, he would pretend to be very frightened and fly away crying “Chich —Chich—Chich,” into the top of the macrocarpa tree.
But his best song of all was the one he made up about the lawn. He used to sing it in the evening when the shadows grew long under the gorse hedge, and Peter Possum could be heard muttering to himself as he moved about in the old gum tree. But he did not make it up until later in the year, and the way it came about was this.
One day after a shower of rain the people of the cottage began to dig the other half of the garden. Johnny was most interested. He came down and sat on a fence post and watched each spadeful being turned over. Then he flew on to a low branch to see better while the ground was being hoed. When, after this, it was raked out flat, he got so excited that he flew round and round the garden telling everybody it was grass that was being planted, and grass seed isn't buried at all, but lies on top where it can easily be picked up.
But the people of the cottage had not forgotten that Johnny Black ate quite a lot of their seed before, and so he was surprised when he woke up next morning to see what looked like a man standing on what was to be the new lawn. So surprised was he that he forgot to sing his sunrise song, but just went on looking and looking until the sun came up. And the man on the lawn looked back at him, standing very still and holding a stick in an outstretched hand. He was dressed in a ragged old coat and wore an old hat on the back of his head. At least Johnny thought he did, but he couldn't be quite sure if he had a head at all; not a proper kind of head—it looked rather like a pumpkin.
Johnny flew down to the fence, and was quite sure it wasn't anybody from the cottage, because he didn't say “Now then, J. B., these aren't for you,” or “Away back to your trees you black varmint!” like the people of the cottage always did when they were planting. In fact, Johnny had just about decided that it was only a silly old scarecrow after all, when it spoke.
It had a squeaky voice rather like the Field Mice, and sometimes, like the Field Mice when they were all talking together, it seemed to be able to talk and laugh at the same time.
“I've been told, Johnny Black,” it said, “to hit you very hard with this stick if you eat any grass seed!”
“Oh,” said Johnny Black, “is that grass seed down there where you're standing, well, fancy me not noticing that. I just came down to say good morning—you're a stranger to these parts, aren't you?”
The scarecrow did not answer at
“I have been told Johnny Black to hit you very hard.”
“I don't eat grass seed,” said Johnny Black scornfully, “or if I do nibble a little bit now and again—just to see if its good seed you know—I always sing afterwards.”
“Yes, we know you do,” squeaked the scarecrow, “and we don't like it.
“Why do you say we” asked Johnny in surprise. “There's only one of you.”
“I suppose I can say 'we’ if I like,” the scarecrow answered angrily. And Johnny Black, not liking either the look of the scarecrow or the way it spoke, flew away to the drying green and waited for his breakfast of toast and marmalade.
The Sparrowdenes were there, and he told them what the scarecrow had said, and they decided that perhaps for the present it would be better to keep away from the lawn.
“I expect,” said Mrs. Sparrowdene, “it will be gone by to-morrow anyway.”
But it had not gone by to-morrow, nor the day after either, but stayed just where it was for more than a week, until the grass seed had sprouted and the new lawn was misty-green all over.
Johnny Black came down every morning and tried to make friends with the scarecrow. But the scarecrow was always rude and threatened “to beat him with a stick”—until the last morning, when a most remarkable thing happened.
While Johnny Black was talking to it the scarecrows’ head suddenly fell off its neck, and out of the head, which really was only a pumpkin, came tumbling seven very fat Field Mice, for they had been in there all the week, and had eaten the inside of it quite away.
Johnny Black was annoyed at first when he realised that it was only the Field Mice who had been speaking inside the scarecrow's head, but he pretended that he had known who it was all the time.
“Well,” squeaked the Field Mice, “why didn't you eat the grass seed if you knew it was only us?”
“Oh,” said Johnny, “I really did want the people of the cottage to have a nice lawn,” and then and there made up the song which he usually sang in the evenings, and which he thought was his best song.
“Beetles and crickets and field mice too,
This year, 1936, being the fiftieth anniversary of Thomas Edison's initial experiments with moving pictures, it is interesting to recall that the first actual story picture—produced in 1903—was a railway drama entitled “The Great Train Robbery.” It was a onereeler, and the principal players were Marie Murray and George Barnes. The story was the idea of Edwin Porter, one of Edison's early camera-men.
“O. W. Waireki.”
Hotels
A Reliable Travellers Guide
Shibli Bagarag
I Have just finished reading Will Lawson's second novel, “When Cobb & Co. Was King,” and have enjoyed every line. There is no doubt about the popular New Zealand writer having mastered the art of holding his readers—his experiences as a newspaper man have taught him this. I could glimpse his pen gamely trying to keep up with the rush of his thoughts. For this reason another novelist, less temperamental, would have padded this novel to twice its length. In places the writer often dispenses with necessary paragraphs. All this gives the book that breathless pace in accord with readers’ tastes these breathless days. Will Lawson reveals, too, a great imagination.
But, I have not told you what the novel is about. Is there need? The magic name of Cobb & Co.! The romance of the coaching days; the lure of the bush, the lure of gold; bushrangers, wine, women and song. All the highlights of those brave, bad, bold Australian days, when the cavalcade of coaches run by Cobb & Co. rattled their romantic routes through the country.
Will Lawson has given us the first faithful picture of the part played by a great enterprise in an epic period.
Angus & Robertson (Sydney) are the publishers.
* * *
The annual poem competition held by “Art in New Zealand” has been won by “Robin Hyde.” Commenting on her poem “Aria With Insects,” the editor of the magazine (Mr. C. A. Marris) states that it is further proof of the poet's steady progress in the field of poesy. The article relating to this competition is only one feature of many in the latest issue of the quarterly. On the art side there are two beautiful colour plates by T. A. Mc-Cormack, and of the several reproductions in black and white four are by the same artist. Roland Hipkins and J. C. Beaglehole discuss his work in special articles. Other contributors to the issue include E. D. Gore and Alan C. Browne. There is also an interesting article on the monotypes of K. M. Ballantyne.
George Russell (the famous “A. E.”), who died recently, once paid a great compliment to Pamela Travers. “She is producing,” he states, “some of the most beautiful poetry in Ireland today.” He was also a great admirer of Fritz Hart who set many of his poems to music.
* * *
Steele Rudd, the well known Australian writer who died a few months ago, had a host of fanatic admirers. I heard of one Aussie shearer who had a fight in nearly every shed he worked because some dared to contradict his assertion that Rudd was a better writer than Shakespeare. He was killed in the war but admitted in hospital that he had never read either author, but that “Steele Rudd was a dinkum Aussie and the Shakespeare cow wasn't.”
It is amusing sometimes to observe how “gingerly” English novelists refer to New Zealand when the scope of their plot includes this part of the world. Obviously the vague references are made usually to conceal ignorance. In a book I read recently two of the characters were “crooks” from New Zealand, they lived on a “sheep run” but the author has made them arrive in England per the Aorangi!
* * *
There are only five poems in “End of Day,” a booklet written by R. A. K. Mason, of Auckland, but in them is thought that one would not find in five hundred poems by a poet of smaller mental stature. In his opening Prelude, Mason flourishes his new sword,—
Oh no, the rebel soul of R. A. K. has not turned to Rome, but in this book we can glimpse his spirit seeking. There is new, strange complex music in his lines. The booklet left me wondering.
* * *
Reviews.
“Barren Metal,” by Naomi Jacob (Hutchinson, London; Whitcombe & Tombs, New Zealand agents) is one of the best novels I have read this year. I think it is Naomi Jacob's finest book to date. Two great characterisations, Rachel and Meyer Pardo, occupy the stage most of the time. Commencing life humbly as a tailor, Meyer Pardo builds up a huge fortune. Money obliterates his love for Rachel, his wife, who is one of the most lovable figures of recent fiction. Rachel, with her rich beauty of soul and body (and her fascinating lisp), captures the heart of Sholto Falk, but a tragic turn in her husband's fortunes keep her true to Meyer. It is a great character study of the Jews, and fringing the main story are graphic touches of their persecution.
* * *
“Death In The Bathroom,” by Sir Basil Thomson (Eldon Press, London; Whitcombe & Tombs, New Zealand
* * *
“Bubble Reputation,” by P. C. Wren (John Murray, London; Whitcombe & Tombs Ltd., New Zealand agents), sees the author of “Beau Geste” in new vein. It is a tale of Devonshire, of hidden treasure, convicts, mystery and humour. Even the most dramatic touches are retailed in a light inconsequential, yet effective style. The clue to the treasure is in the lines “seeking the bubble of reputation even in the cannon's mouth,” except that bubble must be interpreted as bauble. How Sir Giles discovered his treasure in (or on) another mouth provides a happy ending to an interesting and well told story.
The now famous Century Library of Short Stories (Hutchinson, London; Whitcombe & Tombs Ltd., New Zealand agents) would not be complete without a collection of Western yarns, hence the latest volume “A Century of Western Stories.” The editor of the volume, George Goodchild, explains in his introduction that a decade or so age the “Western Story” meant cowboys and Red Indians, with concomitant embroidery of scalp-hunting and wholesale lynchings. “Western” has ceased to be geographical in relation to adventurous fiction and designates a type of story rather than its location. Hence the volume is richer in material, and includes such writers as Jack London, Zane Grey, Bret Harte, Sir Gilbert Parker and Stewart Edward White. The book has over 1,000 pages and incorporates 38 stories by 33 authors.
* * *
Shibli” Listens In.
Although published only a few months ago, “Annals of a N. Z. Family,” by Mrs. Laura Jackson (A. H. Reed) is already a collector's item.
* * *
Eric Ramsden's historical work on Samuel Marsden will be shortly published by A. H. and A. W. Reed.
* * *
Due for publication shortly is a collection of sketches written for the Saturday supplements of two or three New Zealand papers by M. E. S., who, if I mistake not, is Mrs. Mary Scott, another of whose pen names is Martyn Stuart.
New fiction announced for early publication by Angus and Robertson includes the following: “Bridle Track,” by J. J. Hardie; “Everlasting Hurricane,” by R. W. Coulter; “Dirk Spaanders,” by Ernest Wells; “Boomtime Gold,” by G. W. Wicking; “The Third String,” by T. Stuart Gurr; “The Shearer's Colt,” by A. B. Paterson.
* * *
Two more Australian books have been considered worthy of separate English editions, “Lasseter's Last Ride” and “The Cattle King,” both by Ion Idriess.
Helen
Feeling Spring.
Despite the strengthening cold as the days lengthen, we are aware of the march of the days towards summer. Surely, even in August, one can hope for a few days real precursors of spring, when the pale yellow sunshine seems to make clear to our winter-blinded eyes the new green of budding trees, the gleam of opening petals in garden beds, the flurry, poise, swoop of bird wings elated with the winy sap of the season of growth.
* * *
The time to keep a Nature calendar is in spring. Things happen gradually then, and happily for the most part—save when some sudden late blast of winter pinches tender foliage or ill treats an early lamb. From the frost-bound earth emerges life—tiny creeping things, small growing things, pushing out of their winter prison—pupa case, bud scales, bulb, according to their kind—thrusting into the air, gathering warmth and strength from the weak rays of the sun.
* * *
It is first things we note—the brave first leaves, the opening blue of a hyacinth, a little insect creature, poised on a piece of bark, slowly raising and lowering its still damp wings. The early summer rush of growth is not nearly so stirring, so interest-compelling, as these beginnings.
An autumn calendar can be a sad thing, despite the brave riot of colour. So much is loss—leaf fall, the gathering and departure of birds, the gradual disappearance of small creatures going into hiding for the cold months. Even the return to the cities of sparrows after their orgy in harvest fields, and their gratitude for our largess of crumbs, is pathetic. How much more mournful, in countries where one waits for snow, must be the oncoming of winter!
* * *
This nature calendar of ours needs no special recording—merely to observe is enough. To be natural, conforming to the course of nature, to be one with nature, gives that feeling of harmony which is a concomitant of all true and lasting pleasures. Take then, the joy of the season. Even in city parks and gardens you may attend, as upon royalty, the levee of spring.
* * *
After The Sales. Fashion News.
Emerging from winter, we wish to emerge too, from fur coats and cloth coats, heavily befurred. For chilly days a tweed coat, double-breasted perhaps, with a double file of buttons and a high neck closing; for cool days a suit, maybe of worsted, plain or pin-checked.
* * *
Remember, with a light suit wear a dark blouse. With a light grey I have seen effective blouses in dark blue and in brown. Navy will be smart for spring. With it wear a blouse or jumper blouse in lemon, cream, pink or beige.
Coat-frocks are utility frocks. They are seen with pockets either tabbed or buttoned. A light touch is given by a gilet which may be of crisp piquè, pleated or tucked in something softer, even of lace, velvet or silk. A posy, preferably a single flower, may be worn on the lapel.
Colours are interesting. Grey is staging a revival, and is seen in combination with blue, ruby or even cinnamon brown.
* * *
“Dusty” shades are dying—pastels are clear and young-looking. Rusty reds will be rushed by brunettes and brown-heads.
Some new frocks and coats show the shoulder line, either seamed or tucked, running down the sleeve. This mode is right only for the narrow-shouldered. Another difficult style is the bateau or boat-shaped neck. If your neck is at all bony or your shoulders too wide, avoid the bateau.
Raglan sleeves remain popular and are seen sometimes in a contrasting weave or colour to the frock.
Full sleeves may be pleated into the shoulder.
* * *
Neck finishes worth noting are the gay kerchief, the demure draped collar buttoning in front, the frilly jabot, neck-line clips and scarf collars.
The gathered neck-line is new. Note also radiating tucks, pleated pockets, and the belts of self material which may be either knotted or bowed in front. Keep your eye on checks for skirts, jackets, linings, or blouses.
* * *
As the season advances, wear a light coat over a dark frock.
Rules to remember are: —
-
Necks high.
-
Shoulders important.
-
Sleeves widened.
-
Silhouette slim—fullness provided by pleats; note side pleats in suits.
-
Skirts a fraction shorter.
* * *
Lightness And Brightness.
The kitchen needs it after the winter. New curtains are the solution—and the kitchen is one room where very little in the way of curtaining is required.
Some of the gayest new kitchen curtainings show horizontal stripes in several colours. These will accent any colour scheme you have.
For a bright kitchen.
Do you have cushions on your kitchen chairs? If you use the kitchen for minor meals, cushions will greatly add to comfort. Have them made fairly flat, and with ties to fasten from the corners to the back and legs of the chair. Material, if possible, should be the same as for curtains, but if that is not durable enough, choose a hard-wearing fabric in colours to blend. Fasten your cushioncovers along one side with press clasps. This will save time in the frequent removals for washing. Remember that the secret of success for kitchen curtains and cushions is durability and freshness.
* * *
An artistic woman of my acquaintance is planning her kitchen in daffodil yellow and green for spring. All the paint-work will be green. The curtains, of deep cream linen-finish fabric, are being embroidered in a daffodil design in bias binding. If the idea proves successful, she will attempt a bias binding flower design for curtains, buffet runner and wagon cloths for the breakfast room.
Materials required are bias-binding in green, yellow and deep yellow, and stranded cotton in the deep yellow shade.
* * *
The design is sketched on paper and the size decided upon. Simplicity, of course, is an essential of success. The
Try this: 1 heaped teaspoon starch, 1 cup water, 1 teaspoon glycerine, 1 teaspoon olive oil. Mix starch with little water, add remainder of water (boiling), and then the oil and glycerine.
Health Notes. Food.
On glancing over the dinner menu at any hotel or restaurant one cannot but be struck by the multiplicity of articles in our diet, and on pausing to think, must wonder how our digestive apparatus can deal with such a heterogeneous collection of foodstuffs. All these articles, when chemically analysed, are found to consist of three main substances, namely, Carbohydrates, Proteins and Fats, accompanied by water, salts, minerals, and the elusive vitamins. There is also a portion which we might call roughage, which consists of the stringy, fibrous parts of meat, fruit and vegetables, and which cannot be absorbed into the vessels lining the alimentary tract, but must pass on to be evacuated by the bowel.
It is to the first three classes of food, however, that we must look for our nourishment and energy. Taking the first group,
These are the sugary and starchy foods. They are of vegetable origin, and constitute the chief part of a normal diet. They occur chiefly in bread, potatoes, and cereals, and to a lesser extent in fruit and vegetables. Sugar occurs as cane sugar, jams, honey, treacle, and in jellies, cakes and biscuits. They, in conjunction with the fats, are the chief providers of heat and energy for the body, but they do not enter into the building of the body tissues. They are quickly digested and absorbed, and during activity are as quickly burned up to provide the required heat and energy. This explains why one so quickly feels hungry after partaking of a meal consisting of carbohydrates only. In the process of digestion, they are converted into a sugary substance, and as such, are stored in the liver and muscles until required.
These provide the most concentrated forms of energy, one ounce supplying two and a quarter times as much as a similar weight of carbohydrates. They differ from the latter in so far as their digestion is a somewhat more complicated process, and further, they contribute to the bulk of the body and to the structure of nerves. If one consumes more fat than is required, it is stored as such in the tissues, thus adding to weight and measurement. This surplus fat aids in maintaining the warmth of the body, as fat being a nonconductor of heat, prevents its escape from the body. Fats occur in our diet in the form of meat fats, suet, dripping, butter, olive oil, and to a lesser extent in fish, cheese and egg yolk.
These are the body-builders, differing from the carbohydrates in that they contain nitrogen, and go to build and repair the living cells of the body. They are absolutely essential for life. They are very complex substances, and differ greatly in composition. Some, the animal proteins, contain all the protein elements required by the
These elements are concerned in the building of the bony skeleton, the formation of the teeth and blood, and the regulation of various functions of the body such as oxidation, reproduction, and secretion. They are numerous, and include calcium, phosphorus, iron, copper, iodine, sodium, sulphur and others, but are required in such small quantities, and are contained in so many of the foods already mentioned that sufficient is obtained by taking an ordinary mixed diet. Only faddists need worry about them.
Most fruit and vegetables are 75 per cent. or more water. Drink at least, three pints of water daily.
Until twenty-five years ago, these elusive elements in food had not been discovered, although scientists knew long before that, that if certain foods, such as fresh vegetables, butter, milk, and oils were not included in the diet, the body suffered from what are known as deficiency diseases, and became an easy prey to infection. These diseases, rickets, scurvy, beri-beri, pellagra, etc., are now fast disappearing. They were very prevalent in the olden days, especially amongst seafarers, who for long periods were out of reach of supplies of the above-mentioned fresh foods. We do not propose to go into details concerning these vitamins, as like the minerals and salts, they are required in such small quantities, and are contained in so many of the fresh foods, that an ample supply is obtained by taking an ordinary, sensible mixed diet of meat, milk, fresh vegetables and fruit, so do not worry about them. Leave that to the faddist.
In our next issue we might have something to say on the subject of cooking.
Recipes.
Economical Fruit Cakes.
Gloucester Cake.
2lb. flour, 1lb. butter, 1lb. sugar, 4 level teaspoons baking soda, 3 to 4lb. fruit (mixed), 4 eggs, essence to taste —vanilla, almond, or lemon. Sift flour and soda, rub in butter and add sugar and fruit. Leave over-night. Next day beat the eggs, boil 1 pint milk, and add to the eggs; add essence. Pour over mixture, and mix thoroughly. Bake 3 1/2 to 4 hours.
1/2 lb. butter, 1/4lb. sugar, 1/2lb. dates—chopped up, 1/4lb. walnuts (if liked), 1/2lb. flour, 1 teaspoon cocoa, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 cup milk, 1 teaspoon vinegar, 1 egg. Bake about 30 minutes and ice with butter icing or chocolate. Sprinkle with cocoanut.
1/2lb. butter, 1/2lb. flour, 1 breakfast cup sugar, 1lb. dates, 12 tablespoon milk, 1 tablespoon cocoa, 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, 2 eggs. Beat butter and sugar, add 1/2 of the milk and flour. Beat well, then add remainder of flour and milk, dates (stoned and chopped). Bake in shallow tin for half an hour.
1 teacup of sugar, 1/2lb. butter, 2 eggs, small teaspoon soda (dissolved in 2 tablespoons milk), 2 large bananas, 1 1/2 breakfast cups flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon vanilla essence. Beat butter and sugar and well-beaten eggs. Beat the bananas separately in another bowl and then add to cake mixture. Add milk and soda and flour with the baking powder; add essence. Bake in moderate oven for about. ¾ of an hour (do not open oven door to try it). Ice with chocolate icing.
6oz. flour, 4oz. sugar, 3oz. butter, 2 eggs, 2 tablespoons milk, grated rind half an orange, 1 teaspoon orange juice, 1 teaspoon cream of tartar, 1/2 teaspoon soda. Cream butter and sugar; add beaten eggs and flour alternately, then the milk and orange, cream of tartar and soda in flour. Bake for half an hour (2nd. shelf, no. 4 regulo).
Melt 2oz. butter, add 1 teacup sugar, 2 eggs, and 1 teacup boiling water. Soak bread required, then drain and pour mixture over it. Bake about half an hour. Add lemon juice and rind—or sultanas, dates or bananas.
Flour, 1 oz.; butter, 1 oz.; milk, 1/2 pint; salt and pepper to taste.
Method. —Melt the butter, stir in the flour, remove from stove and add liquid gràdually. Cook for ten minutes, stirring all the time.
W. F. Ingram
Are New Zealanders slaves to sporting traditions? This question arises as the result of the cable message from London which stated that the New Zealand Olympic team arrived in London during a heavy rainstorm—wearing their straw hats!
There was a certain amount of the humorous, perhaps, in the lads wearing their “straws” in such weather but, seriously, there is an even greater indictment on the sporting administrators of the Dominion.
Ever since the 1905 Rugby Union team had that successful football tour of England, Ireland and Wales, the mana of the “All Blacks” has been great. It has become the accepted thing for all New Zealand sports teams to be outfitted in black—except in such sports as cricket and tennis—and by carrying this fetish out the representatives of this Dominion are penalised.
When Randolph Rose toured England, Finland and France, in company with veteran hammer-thrower Jack McHolm, he wore the All Black athletic outfit supplied to him by the New Zealand Amateur Athletic Association. His costume did not evoke much comment in England, but when he ran in Finland and France the athletes of those countries were amazed at the uniform. They explained that black clothing attracts and holds the heat rays and that he was being stifled by his sombre track clothing while they —in their lighter hued suits—were not feeling the ill-effects of the heat.
There are few countries in the world to-day which outfit their sporting representatives in dark costumes—certainly not many with black as the colour—and the day may come when New Zealand will adopt a more attractive and more “humane” sports colour for her athletes.
In four years’ time New Zealand will be celebrating her “Centennial” or “Centenary” and naturally enough the question will arise as to the form in which the sporting authorities will celebrate the great period in the life of the Dominion. In 1940 the Olympic Games are to be held—more than likely they will be held in Japan—and this will make it extremely difficult for the staging of international sports contests in the Dominion that year. The Games commence in August and naturally enough few countries would care to allow their athletes to travel to New Zealand for summer sport and then expect them to show good form six months later.
It may be possible to secure a team of Japanese track athletes, swimmers and tennis players for a tour of the Dominion. This country, with the Games being held, in her own “back yard” would have every opportunity to sort out a strong team in the months preceding the Games and still allow a strong team picked from the previous year's champions to tour New Zealand.
The chances of a team of British Association Footballers coming to New Zealand for the celebrations should not be overlooked. While admitting that, the standard does not appear to be exceptionally high in New Zealand at the present time, it must be admitted that there are more and more young New Zealanders taking up the “round ball” code and a tour by an English team would do all that is needed to firmly establish this code in public popularity.
(Rly Publicity photo.)
A carnival day at Oriental Bay, Wellington, New Zealand.
Any doubts that may have existed about the fitness of New Zealand's great miler, Jack Lovelock, must have been dispelled early in June, when the cables told New Zealanders that he had covered three miles in 14min. 20 1/5secs. This time is not good enough to win at an Olympic gathering, but when compared with his performances last year—at about the same period of the season—it shows that the form he held immediately prior to racing Cunningham and Bonthron in the “Mile of the Century” has been regained. This view is further endorsed by his run in the four mile relay on 5th July, when he was credited with having run 4min. 18secs. for his mile stretch of the race.
Lovelock is the ideal athlete—in every respect. He runs for the fun of it. In fact this was the greatest feature of his wonderful race in America in July of last year. Americans were amazed that a man could travel across the Atlantic Ocean with the express purpose of competing against the best athletes America could offer and then run with evident enjoyment and with no desire to break records. Secondly, Lovelock has the ideal action and physique for the mile runner. He is not heavily built and has light, longmuscled legs. Thirdly, he is a master of judgment of pace; not only his own but also that of his opponent or opponents, and can sum up their capabilities. But greater than all these put together is his ability to place sport
New Zealand has produced many fine all-round athletes on track and field, but few could boast of a better record than E. G. (“Buz”) Sutherland. Born in the Manawatu district fortytwo years ago, he represented both New Zealand and South Africa in international athletics, won English, Scottish, South African, and New Zealand athletic titles, and filled fifth place in the most arduous of all athletic contests at the Olympic Games in 1924—the decathlon.
Sutherland won thirteen New Zealand titles embracing the broad jump, hop, step and jump, high jump, pole vault, shot putt, and javelin throw.
At a Rotary luncheon in South Canterbury the other day the talk drifted round to smoking, and an ancient mariner remarked, “I'd be lost without my pipe! When some months ago I consulted my doctor for throat trouble he hinted I might have to give up smoking altogether. I was flabbergasted! Seeing me upset he asked what brand of tobacco I usually smoked. ‘Cut it out!’ he roared when I told him, ‘like so many brands today it's foul with nicotine!’ Then he calmed down. ‘You'll have to go slow for a bit,’ he said, ‘but smoking in moderation—till you're better—won't hurt you, so long as it's toasted—the genuine toasted I mean, mind. I smoke it myself. There's next to no nicotine in it.’ Well, I did as I was told and was soon O.K. again. But I still stick to toasted. You can't beat it!” Smokers everywhere will say, “Hear! hear!” But, as the doctor said it must be genuine toasted—Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead), Cavendish, Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold.*
When this accomplished athlete was killed at Palmerston North early in July as the result of a fall from his bicycle—a handbag caught on the handle-bars and prevented the free progress of the machine—New Zealand lost one of its most accomplished athletic sons. His widow, formerly Miss Marjorie Collins, was wellknown as a prominent lady sprinter a few years ago.
* * *
Three months ago it was almost impossible for New Zealanders to attend a boxing contest; there was not a bout on the horizon. To-day the gloved sport is beginning to regain the position it occupied before the advent of the “modern” wrestlers. Much of the credit for this return to popularity may be given Cyril Pluto, of Australia, and Roy de Gans, American negro. These men came to New Zealand at a time when boxing contests were rare, but with a display of honest-to-goodness fighting rapidly re-established the sport. New Zealanders are ripe for another boom period of boxing, and with Joe Hall, Australia's best featherweight, in the country to meet New Zealand's best, the lighter men who were neglected over a period when heavyweights in Southland supplied the only boxing in the Dominion, are girding their loins and preparing to reap a financial harvest.
New Zealanders have been proud to act as hosts to the Fijian women's hockey team during the last few weeks. A visit from any overseas team is always a matter of import and the latest “invasion” has given the fair sex something to talk about.
Variety In Brief
The paragraph in the June issue of the “N.Z. Railways Magazine” on the companionship of a dog and a 'possum greatly interested me; but I can tell the tale of a stranger friendship: that of a collie and a lamb.
The lamb was brought home motherless and was reared by the daughter of a North Canterbury farmer. Almost at once the collie and the lamb “chummed up,” and it was no uncommon sight to see the lamb sleeping in the kennel and the dog outside! When the collie might be off the chain and not out working, the two companions would frequently be seen strolling along the road. This was not the height of their friendship, however. A neighbour, paying a friendly call, had his collie with him, and true to dog nature, the two collies began to display emotional tendencies of an unfriendly nature. The climax was reached before the visiting dog had expected it, for bah-lamb bounded out from nowhere, and sent Common Enemy No. 1 sprawling on the ground from an impact received in the, ribs, from a bah-lamb's head!
Edward T. Roberts.
* * *
An amusing incident took place during the visit of the famous comedian, Harry Thurston, to the city of Auckland. Mr. Thurston was at the Auckland Railway Station on business concerning his luggage. He went in search of a porter and, when he found one, said, “And what can you do for me to-day my man?” The porter gazed at him thoughtfully for a few minutes and then replied, “Sorry sir, I can't do anything. It's not pay day.” Mr. Thurston considered this such a witty reply that he gave it over the air during one of his sessions.—L.B.
In a barber's shop the other day I was listening to the conversation of two or three men who, like myself, were whiling time away until lather and razor were finished on the fortunate occupant of the swivel chair. The talk was on football and the AllBlacks, and changed to an argument on the words “Ake, ake, kia kaha!” which have formed the war-cry of previous All-Blacks. The concensus of opinion was that it meant “Fight on for ever and ever.” It is not the first time that I have heard and read this mistranslation, and perhaps your widely read magazine is the best place to start a campaign against it. The idea seems to be that the war-cry originated in the words uttered by the gallant Maori defenders of the famous Orakau Pa, when they were asked to surrender by General Cameron. That, of ocurse, is not so. The reply given by the warriors, and repeated afterwards by the women, was “Ka whawhai tonu, ake, ake, ake!” —“We will keep on fighting for ever and ever.” Nevertheless, the other is an ancient’ war-cry of the Ngati-Maniopoto, and it is fitting that it should find a place in our footballers’ haka. “Kia kaha!” means “Be strong!” and was used in the final sortie and retreat from the Orakau Pa to encourage the desperate warriors in their last bid for freedom. The story of its adoption as the war-cry of the All-Blacks is interesting. It seems that when the first Maori team was on the point of departure for England, consideration was given to finding a warcry for the team. “Kia toa!” (Be a warrior)—the cry of the Ngati Toa; “Kia maia!” (Be brave); “Haere tonu” (Charge forward always), and “Kia kaha!” were all considered. Then it was suggested that, as the Maoris were now invading England, it would be a good idea to link the “Ake, ake” of Orakau to the “Kia kaha.” And it was so. Since then the cry “Ake, ake kia kaha!” has heralded both pakeha and Maori from Aotearoa, not only on the football fields of Australia and England, but in the trenches and mud of Flanders and on the heights of Gallipoli.
“Rotia.”
Wit And Humour
Staunch Captain: “Now then, my hearties, fight like heroes till your powder's gone—then run! On account of this rheumatism in my leg I'll have to start now.”
* * *
Some African natives fish in a prone position, we are told. In this country most anglers lie standing up with the arms outstretched.
* * *
“I say, waiter, the flowers on the table are artificial, aren't they?”
“Yes, sir. That's the worst part of running a vegetarian restaurant—if we use real flowers the customers eat them.”
“This butter,” said boarder number one at the breakfast table, “is so strong it could walk over and cuss the coffee.”
“It wouldn't do any good,” said boarder number two. “The coffee is too weak to talk back.”
* * *
And there was the Scotchman who bought only one spur. He figured that if one side of the horse went the other was sure to follow.
* * *
Mike, badly injured in an accident, was rushed to a hospital where his wife soon followed. A surgeon went to the ward with her. At the door he saw a sheet was over the patient's body and said to her, “Madam, your husband is dead.”
A voice from under the sheet said, “Naw I'm not.”
The wife replied, “Hush, Mike, the doctor knows best.”
* * *
The small boy was making his first acquaintance with stewed figs, which he didn't like.
“Eat up your figs like a good boy,” said his mother.
“I don't like 'em,” he replied. “They're just skins full of full stops.”
“Away,” she exclaimed. “Never speak to me again.”
He passed out into the night, but paused as he reached the pavement and drew something from one of his inside pockets. As he did so, the girl uttered a shrill scream and ran towards him.
“Frank,” she cried. “What are you doing? Throw that revolver away and let us forget our quarrel.”
“It isn't a revolver,” he replied as he caught her in his arms. “It's a spanner I borrowed from you the day my bicycle broke down. I've been wearing it next to my heart ever since!”
(By courtesy of the Sydney “Bulletin.”)
“As an engine-driver gents, Bill'd like to stick to the time-table; but as a nartist 'e can't miss that sunset!”
Time: A cold and frosty morning.
Husband (panting from garage into house): “Where's my bag? —got to go by train! —can't get the blinking star to cart!” (Exit, still panting.)
* * *
Customs Officer (to Chinese immigrant): “What is your name?”
Chinese: “Sneeze.”
“Is that your real name?”
“No. Me translate it into velly good English.”
“Well, what is your native name?”
“Ah Choo.”
Mistress: I saw the milkman kiss you this morning, Sohpie. Hereafter I'll take the milk in myself.
Cook: It won't do you no good, mum. He's promised not to love nobody but me.
* * *
A combination corkscrew and compass would be useful.
* * *
Husband: “I say, if the worst comes to the worst, I suppose we can go and live with your parents?”
Wife: “Not a chance. They're already living with their parents.”
* * *
Policeman: “Madam, didn't you see me hold up my hand?”
Lady Driver: “I did not.”
Policeman: “Didn't you hear me blow my whistle?”
Lady Driver: “I didn't.”
Policeman: “Well, I might as well go home, I don't seem to be doing much good here.”
* * *
“How are you getting on keeping bees?”
“Very well. We have not had much honey, but the bees have stung my mother-in-law several times.”
* * *
“We never needed any of them newfangled scales in Ireland,” said O'Hara. “There's an aisy way to weigh a pig without scales. You get a plank and you put it across a stool. Then you get a big stone. Put the pig on one end of the plank and the stone on the other end and shift the plank until they balance. Then you guess the weight of the stone, and you have the weight of the pig.”
* * *
Oliver was careless about his personal effects. When mother saw clothing scattered about on chair and floor, she inquired: “Who didn't hang up his clothes when he went to bed?”
A muffled voice from under the blankets murmured, “Adam.”