Pride of Place.

To hear Ana Nias expatiate on the Bay of Naples, one would imagine that he had built it himself or at least held a mortgage over it. However, my Mussolinian mentor is not unique in this respect. “My country ‘tis of thee,” is a slogan universally adopted from the pineapple mines of Singapore to the hen-runs of Cochin China.

I once knew a man from McKenzie Country who met a man from Taranaki. In the course of mutual recrimination the question of mountains arose, as mountains have a habit of doing. The man from the south swore by Franz Josef that Mt. Cook was superior in contour, scenic grandiloquence, and tonnage of snow than Mt. Egmont. On the other hand, the man from Taranaki declared by the sacred cow, that Egmont, for symmetrical awesomeness, geological omnipotence, and antedeluvian lineage could beat Mount Cook by a landslide and a couple of avalanches, and then have something to spare. The discussion was finally terminated by the champion of the southern exhibit striking the supporter of the northern eminence on the nose. It transpired subsequently that neither of these boosters ever had been within yodelling distance of their respective idols.

Clearly “pro patria” is no idle superfluity of sentiment. Contrary to general public opinion the term is NOT synonomous with “an Irish prize-fighter.” A pugilistic son of Erin is a lamb compared with the heat the above-mentioned sentiment is capable of engendering.

The citizen of Pokeko Swamp will fight as fiercely in defence of his native morass, as will Benjamin B. Booster of Niagara, to uphold the superiority of the continuity of moisture which precipitates itself over a cliff in his native vicinity. Naturally, neither had any part in the creation of these phenomena, yet both are convinced that the prestige of the respective accumulations of geology upon which they exist on an extremely insecure tenure, depends on their personal efforts.

No doubt, Diogenes considered his barrel a superlative sort of keg, possessing barrelesque advantages unheard of by the Ancient Order of Coopers, and boasting a bung fit for a bungalow.

What is this panegyrical hyperbole which prompts us to perch on the apex of our personal dust-heaps and crow?

Patient reader, it is an atavastic anachronism known in modern language as “pride of place.”

Adam possessed it until his lease was abruptly terminated for a breach of the Orchard Act.

It is a metaphysical microbe which lodges in the sensibility of such diverse creatures as mutton birds and miners, bivalves and bipeds, rabbis and rabbits, barnacles and barmaids, porcupines and pork-butchers, seals and sea-captains—in fact, this sentiment of loyalty to certain slabs of Nature's insentient impedimenta is a worthy ingredient of human nature.