"I am invited by Spike to say something by way of a 'farewell.' . . . I wish to state, to begin with, that during the past 37 years, I have been uniformly accorded by the Victoria University College Council, by my colleagues on the Professorial Board, and by the students to whom I have been privileged to lecture in the English Classes, every courtesy, consideration and indulgence that I could desire. My ways have fallen in pleasant places. . . . Over seventy years ago I was sent to school—and I have been in school ever since—and I now feel that it is time that I should be relegated to the limbo of what I shall take the liberty of labelling the 'Praeterites' (the Bygones); yet, old as I am, I am very much of a modernist and futurist in spirit. Were I privileged to live for seventy more years, I would still continue the quest for further enlightenment on numerous problems—theological, philosophical, social and other, to which I have been unable to find satisfying solutions."

Hugh Mackenzie.