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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 betterment 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.
Deputy-Controller and Auditor-General. 27/9/33
For some months past the Railways have been trying out a new form of matting in several of the Main Trunk Express cars. These mats are a New Zealand product of a link design, and any dirt is caught in the interstices of the mat, making it almost impossible for it to be tramped or blown through the carriages.
The matting is soft and silent to walk upon, and in those cars where it has been tried it has been favourably commented upon by people walking through the carriages.
The Victorian Railways have used these mats for a number of years, with complete satisfaction, and it will be interesting to hear the further comments of New Zealand railwaymen and railway passengers on the greater cleanliness of travelling which it is considered this matting now makes possible.*
A party of six children, pupils of a small isolated school in the King Country, obtained their first experience of railway travelling recently, when they journeyed to Auckland by train. With one exception, none of the children, whose ages range from ten to fifteen years, had previously ridden in a train, and none had ever seen the sea. They attend the Kohua Road School, about thirty miles from Te Kuiti. While in Auckland the children were billeted with friends of their teacher and were taken on a number of sight-seeing trips, including a visit to the R.M.S. Niagara.
Anyone travelling through N.Z. at present and seeing the large number of pine plantations now being milled cannot fail to appreciate the potential value of the large pine forests established by N.Z. Perpetual Forests Ltd.
Sawmillers are finding that it costs less, and is much more profitable to mill plantations instead of natural forests, which are now mostly inaccessible.
The importation of foreign boxing timber has dropped considerably, and the milling of Insignis Plantations has been responsible for this.
Very satisfactory returns are being received for trees planted without any thought of profit.*
There is probably more comprehensive comfort to be derived from a reading of Emerson's essay on “Compensation” than from any other single piece of secular writing, for it summarises the salient points in this beneficient law of Nature, and assures by proof of its inevitability.
The habit of looking all round a subject is well worth cultivating, and although difficult to do, particularly when self-interest is involved, repays handsomely in securing a well-poised outlook on life. Emerson's essay is a thought-starter with applications to the affairs of every day. It helps to reveal those “blessings in disguise” which so often break the back of disappointment ultimately.
Reference to the Treaty of Waitangi is timely in this connection, in view of the celebrations taking place at that historic spot this month. The compensation to the Maoris from the entry to their country of a strange race was the treatment of equality which that agreement secured.
Life consists of an endless series of bargainings, and each person chooses the side of the bargain he prefers, except when he is given no choice. In the latter case he must make the best of his bargain, and in doing so in the right spirit often scores more than had the scales not been weighted against him.
The keen competition in transport which recent years have witnessed was certainly not welcomed by those who had to stand up against it, but there is little doubt that every transport organisation which has come through that fire is giving better service than would have been tendered had no competition existed.
Most records are made against individuals rather than against the clock. So a standard of service is more easily attained if there is a competitive human element of emulation to reach it.
The most gloomy anticipations are seldom realised because the adaptable human is quickly acclimatised to new conditions, and what was feared in prospect is often enjoyed in retrospect. Translated from the French, the idea rhymes something like this:
It is not long since it was freely said that railways everywhere had seen their day and would have to give place to something else. Now railways in most places are making a remarkable recovery, notably in Great Britain and to a marked extent in New Zealand.
The slump has had its compensations in the resultant better understanding of mutual interest between various sections of the community, and the better days ahead will be sweetened by memory of past trials.
An occasional examination of the ideals of transportation service is necessary both as a check-up upon progress made and also because changing times call for changes in ideals.
At present the ideals of service which the railways of this country may be expected to aim for can, in my opinion, be classified in the following general terms—
Physical Considerations.—These include arrangements for the safety and comfort of passengers at stations, in refreshment-rooms and in carriages.
There is also the highly complicated freight business, where the most suitable types and numbers of vehicles in relation to the commodities to be carried have to be provided, with all the related questions of shed, yard, and siding accommodation, including facilities for port access and conveyance and handling between road, rail and sea.
Psychological Considerations.—To make the traveller happy and contented, to make the freighter pleased with the service given, and to make both feel satisfied that they have had something more than their money's worth—this is on the way towards that ideal condition when the public would constantly be satisfied that the railway was the answer to all their transport problems. Such service includes immediate assistance by all members of the service who deal with the public, with accurate, friendly and courteous information and advice.
Passengers need help regarding luggage; refreshments; train, road and steamer connections; and tourist resorts. They should be encouraged to make inquiries—and every inquiry properly handled should lead to further business for the Department.
Freighters need advice as to the best way to send their goods. This information, and the subsequent service to give satisfaction, covers such matters as packing for safe transport, conveyance by rail, loading for trains, care and despatch along the line—including special attention to “tranships” —and quick clearance at destination stations to consignees’ premises.
To each of the features of service enumerated above, and to all the associated contacts made in the course of the Department's relations with the public, there is a definite ideal which every member of the service should bear in mind, and I would like to feel that every employee endeavours to make his individual effort approximate as closely as possible to that ideal.
General Manager.
The retirement, on completion of forty years’ service with the Railways Department, of Mr. D. Rodie, Commercial Manager, was announced on 15th December last by Mr. H. H. Sterling, Chairman of the Government Railways Board.
Mr. Rodie joined the railway service as a Cadet in the Traffic Branch and was trained in every phase of the work of that Branch. He was District Traffic Manager in Invercargill in 1924, when he was selected to take charge of the Commercial Branch in Wellington, as Commercial Manager, when that phase of the Department's administration was organised as a separate Branch of the Department. The value of Mr. Rodie's services in developing commercial ideas in the Railway Department is well known to those whose business brings them into contact with railway activities. At the meeting of the Government Railways Board following the announcement of Mr. Rodie's retirement, the Chairman and the members of the Board made highly eulogistic reference to Mr. Rodie's career in the Department. They expressed very warm appreciation of the work which he had accomplished as Commercial Manager, and they voiced their keen regret at losing his services.
Mr. Sterling also announced the appointment of Mr. A. W. Wellsted, the present Chief Clerk in the Commercial Branch, to succeed Mr. Rodie. Mr. Wellsted joined the railway service in 1900 as Cadet in the Traffic Branch in Dunedin, and like his predecessor (Mr. Rodie) has had training in every phase of the working of that Branch. Mr. Wellsted was appointed to the position of Business Agent in the Commercial Branch in 1925, and occupied that position in the Auckland district until 1932, when he was appointed Chief Clerk to the Commercial Manager, and transferred to Wellington.
While in Auckland, Mr. Wellsted was largely responsible for consolidating the business of the Department in that area, and on his transfer to Wellington many prominent customers of the Department expressed their appreciation of the work that Mr. Wellsted had done while in that district.
Mr. Wellsted brings to his new position ripe experience, and the Board is confident that the principles of service and sound commercial method that have been so successfully applied by his predecessor will be applied in their fullest measure by Mr. Wellsted in his new position.
In the words of O'Sap's fuddled fable, “a fellow fooling makes the whole world spin”; also a ladle of laughter is better than a barrel of giggle-gravy. Humour is the yeast in the bread of life.
A humorist is not necessarily a disseminator of desiccated delirium; he is a purveyor of philharmonic philosophy rather than a universal derider. To extract the “sigh” from the cider squeezed from old Adam's apple, it is necessary for him not only to see others better than they see themselves, but to see himself as he knows he is and wishes he weren't. A humorist is a ready-reckoner who subtracts the “what is” from the “what is supposed to be,” and extracts distraction from the subtraction. He socks Solemnity, puts a premium on Pretence, and alters the gears from tears to cheers.
Mark Twain wrote: “Be good and you'll be lonesome,” and he might have added, “laugh or you'll cry,” for the only thing that keeps the humorist from crying is laughing. To appreciate day one must know night, to recognise a warm heart one must experience cold feet, and to know the wisdom of mirth one must admit the futility of sorrow. Which explains why humour is often tinctured by the tar-brush of Tragedy. In truth, Tragedy and Humour are such close cobbers that it can be said with safety that often a giggle is only a sun-dried sob. Charlie Chaplin, the monarch of the movies (who has proved that silence is golden) demonstrates the use of the “smigh” which, as you know, is a smile with a sigh up its sleeve. He takes the raw pug of pathos, and moulds it into mirth—but mirth soaked in sympathy, laughter laced with love, delight denuded of derision, and jest at its best. Because Charlie lets us see him as he knows he is, and because we know that beneath our bluff we are as he shows he is, we smile the smile of sympathy. For man knows that he is a muddling and middling molecule on the cosmic cuticle, and the strain of buncoing his bank-balance and keeping the shell on his ego tells on his timbre. So, when I admit I'm a mug—which I am—you smile in sympathy, because you know you are a mug too, but have to keep it quiet for the sake of the family. Hence humour is merely Truth out for an airing and, if every man were as honest with himself as his wife thinks he is with her, there would be no humour, and humorists would have to work for their “dough” instead of “cracking” for a crust. Little Tommy Tucker sang for his supper and evidently got breakfast and lunch from the dumb waiter; but the humorist has to banter for breakfast, laugh for lunch, droll for dinner, and swing for supper—if he develops a hiatus in his humoresque; but humorists can even see humour in hunger, and the test of a humorist is the ability to produce a full flush from an empty jackpot.
You ask, dear reader, “are humorists happy?” and the answer is “certainly not;” for, if a humorist were happy he would be too happy to be a humorist. Happy people are people who are so happy being happy that they fear to think; but a humorist has to think up ways and means of making people
Let us, for instance, run the gimbals over gardening. Gardening is an attempt to “get the works” on the earth-works, or a getting down to earth and waiting for something to turn up. As in two-up and other forms of tail-spinning, the uncertainty of gardening is the essence of the equation. Ma Nature, even when she is top-dressed and marceleryed, has to contend with slugs in the beds, grubs in the granny-bonnets, bugs in the spuds, beetles in the beet, and croakers in the crocuses. Even when gardening and garnering are unattached, the gardener has the consolation of knowing that his efforts constitute a kind of kindness to animals by providing grub for grubs and lunches for lepidoptera. To quote the lines of Tom Ato, the Bard of the Beanery:
When the bean turns out a has-been, when the lettuce won't, when the horse-radish proves a non-starter, when the scarlet runner refuses to run, when the spring onion gets “sprung,” when the French bean goes Dutch, when the marrow's motto is “to-marrow”; when the potatoes go cock-eyed, the turnips fail to turn up, the leeks drip, the currants
But even Finance has its merry moments when its L. S. Deceit is hamstrung by Humour. Finance might be described as a mythematical means of putting two and two together and making them six. There are two varieties of finance—high finance and low finance. High finance is a method of removing everything from the masses except their confidence. The process is so complex that the victims are never quite sure whether they are getting the count or only taking it. Their account is called a Suspense Account because suspense is what they get most of. High Finance abounds mostly in America, also known gee-o-graphically as U-say, Sez-U and You're-tellin'-me. There the science is so scienterrific that it is possible to reach the highest notes without going to Sing Sing. Frenzied Finance is High Finance doing a tale-spin or duping the “goop.”
Low Finance is a home industry or a domestic science consisting of making both ends meet without end. Low Finance makes the best of everything, while High Finance takes everything of the best. But one thing which both High and Low Finance can share is Summer; for Summer is a “free for all” rather than a fee for “gall.”
Summer is Nature with the sun in her eyes and the skin off her nose. There is a simmer in Summer and a careless air in the air, so that no one cares whether the gas meter brings out a brood of football bladders or the vacuum cleaner broadcasts the racing results. The glow of Sol's bright optic is reflected on the sundials of the seasiders, and the peels of the beach-belles ring when touched. The city calls to the country and the country answers in the affarmative. The business man sheds his mercantile maroon and goes down to the sea in slips. The typiste, true to type, abandons Pitmans for petmans. The great out-of-doors has turned the key on Care and the cry of the cashregister is lost in the sigh of the surf. For summer symbolises sentiment and Eros is on the air. Summer is summarily summed up in the Song of the Sand-piper:
Contemplating the New Zealand scene from this sentry branch, “Ruru” desires to express a sense of disappointment at the non-inclusion of his esteemed musical and handsome colleague, the tui, in the designs chosen for the new issue of Dominion postage stamps. The fantail is there, and a decorative little fellow he is, but the “manu rangatira,” the “chieftainlike bird,” as the Maoris describe the tui, had surely a better claim to a place as a national emblem on the New Zealand stamps. Perhaps this oversight can be remedied later on. That monstrous tuatara, resembling an unholy alliance of crocodile and hippopotamus, could very well be scrapped in favour of the tui. The tuatara, in any event, is no advertisement for New Zealand. For all the outside world can gather to the contrary from the stamp, the creature is of huge dimensions, and it is likely to give the impression that this fair Dominion is the home of dragons.
Concerning the sweet-tongued tui, a writer on our bird tribe gave publicity recently to the assertion that the bellbird, otherwise the korimako or makomako, did not imitate other birds notes, and that it was the tui which mimicked the bellbird. The exact contrary is the case. The little korimako is a great mimic, and it is often difficult to tell its notes from those of the tui. Not until the songster in the bushes is seen is it certain which bird uttered the dingdong notes. From one's observation it is the bellbird that is the true mocking-bird of New Zealand.
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The tattooed Maori warrior, whose face decoration represented the pinnacle of native artistry, does not find a place in the new issue of New Zealand postage stamps. Perhaps this is just as well, seeing that the wonderful moko so elaborated on the features of Maori manhood has vanished from the land and that the tourist will find it only in books and art galleries. At any rate all but vanished; the number of old men with moko'd faces has steadily dwindled until when I made enquiries last there were only two of them surviving. One is in the Hokianga country the other lives in an Urewera bush village. It may be that by this time even these last two relics of a primitive age have departed for the Spiritland.
It is rather a curious fact that the two principal island countries in the Pacific, New Zealand and Japan, closely resembling each other in size, configuration and physical features, should have each developed to an elaborate degree the art of tattoo, the one on the face and the other on the body. The Maori was pre-eminently the face-carver of mankind, the Japanese the tattooer of the torso and limbs. But there was a great difference in the methods used. The Maori literally trenched the skin before pigmenting it; it was a heroic operation. The Japanese process is far less painful; it did not involve weeks of recovery from chisel cuts.
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“Poverty Bay” —what a name to perpetuate on our New Zealand map! It is apparent, however, that some residents of that part of the country are beginning to realise what a handicap such a name is to a district. Gisborne and its surrounding country cannot expect to obtain the credit to which their wealth, fertility of soil, and great volume of products entitle them until Poverty Bay is discarded for good, and some name of more cheerful omen and truthful implication chosen in its place.
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“Enjoy the Revels of Hell's Myrmidons. Solid Earth and Molten Rock Vibrate and oscillate to their gambols. Pools contiguous compete for Highest in Levels with varied degrees of activities and colourations of mud and water.” That is a Rotorua invitation to “Hell's Gate,” otherwise the Tikitere thermal valley, the weirdest notion in come-hither calls one has seen for a long time. There seems to be a fearful lot of Infernos in our hot-spring land. There are Devil's Cauldron, Satan's Glory, Hell's Corner, in various parts from Rotorua to Taupo. The diabolical vocabulary is somewhat overworked. If the great Waimangu Geyser were to come into action again and hurl its boiling muddy brew a thousand feet high, what suitably hellish description could be coined for it? All the satanic superlatives have been expended on minor mud-holes and scalding pools.
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By the time Wellington City rounds off its first century of life, the hills that frame it will be restored, in some measure, to the wooded appearance they presented before the pioneers
The planting of the many indigenous trees, besides adorning the landscape and forming a new shelter forest for the future, will graduallly bring back some of the native birds to the neighbourhood of the city. These trees, and also the Australian eucalyptus, especially the red gum, provide the food that the tui and the bellbird like, and it may yet be that their lovely notes will be heard close to the city, as they are in some of the smaller towns of the Dominion where they find honey-blossom and berries in abundance.
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The Papatoetoe Literary and Debating Society, per medium of its representative orators, lately won a debate with another society by affirming that the world is a worse place to live in to-day than it was a hundred years ago. The judges thought it had put up a better case than the other side. The question is a perennially arguable one. No doubt we would escape many problems and many liabilities if we could transport ourselves on some magic carpet back to the days of our great-grandfathers. But how many of us would do it if we had the chance? With all thy faults, 1934 A.D., we love thee best, would probably be the decision of nineteen-twentieths of the populace.
However could we do without our daily radio and our nightly talkie film, to say nothing of our daily cables about The Conference—any Conference you like—the unrest in Europe, the daily aeroplane crash, and the wobbly condition of the butter-fat market?
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“If ever there was a country destined to breed an Oceanic race, it is New Zealand,” says the veteran Dr. Macmillan Brown in his epilogue to the lately published History of New Zealand, in the Cambridge University History of the Empire. He looks to a time when “New Zealand's outlook may be as great in the Pacific as that of the still smaller Elizabethan England was in the Atlantic.” In theory this is true enough; it was an old ideal of Sir George Grey, couched in different words. New Zealand should develop into the power of the South Pacific, just as Japan has in the North. But while Japan is building fleets and making feverish efforts to develop trade, New Zealand's small population finds no such urge impelling it seaward. The cow and the sheep are more urgent cares and more certain earners of money.
Really we are too well off at present—though most of us don't realise it—to be driven to make our living on the ocean. And it is a fact worth the looking into by some of our economic and commercial authorities that forty years ago we were doing more trade with South Sea Island groups than we are doing to-day.
The old man considered me at length. There was more than a suspicion of distrust in his penetrating gaze.
“You will believe the story, pakeha, strange though it may seem?”
“Of course, Tamati; why not?” I replied.
“It is well; I am sensible to insult. The last white man to whom I told the tale was a surveyor who camped in this whare. After hearing it, he presented me with a bag of very old biscuits, saying that I took ‘the whole issue’ as he termed it, as my lawful right. And I did not see the low joke till long afterwards, and even my dog there refused the biscuits. You are sure you have no biscuits with you?”
“Not even a crumb, Tamati.”
“Very well, then. Now, the dog is a good dog, a real dog, as many a wild pig has found to his undoing. I have reared him from puppyhood, and he is not for sale.”
“But I don't want a dog,” I said.
“No? Yet every man of red blood should have a dog. My father owned the great grandfather of his father—was it his great grandfather that was such a splendid animal? My memory is not good.”
While the old man paused to make a further calculation as to the real relationship, the tawny mongrel at our feet demonstrated his claim to a certain ancestral pride by a successful snap at a persistent fly that buzzed about him.
“Well, let me speak of the first dog, which was the constant companion of my family when, many years ago, we lived in the Poverty Bay district. You have heard and read of Te Kooti, the rebel chieftain, and of his massacre of the innocent pakeha settlers that forms such a dark blot upon our Maori history. That famous raid had not then commenced, but big trouble had threatened for some time, and we friendly Maoris had done much to warn the white people of the danger. In consequence, we had incurred the bitter enmity of Te Kooti, and in his philosophy our lives were forfeit. Prominent among the supporters of the white queen was my father, for whom Te Kooti had promised a nameless death should he ever fall into the rebel hands. But my father was a brave man, and took no heed of the many warnings he received. And it was thus that the well-planned raid from the rebels’ stronghold in the fastnesses of the Urewera country caught us wholly unprepared.
“At the time, my parent had been spearing eels for some days, and was living alone in an outlying whare frequently used by the tribe for this purpose. With him was the dog I speak of. In the grey daylight he was awakened by the dog's furious barking. Running outside, his attention was immediately drawn to a hill in front of the habitation. It was crowded with fighting men, who were palpably hostile. Another party was approaching from the rear, while a still further band of raiders was moving along the rough track that lead to the coast, and was the only avenue of escape in that direction. My father's appearance was greeted with fierce yells and, seeing that he was unarmed, the rebels commenced to converge rapidly upon the whare.
“Luckily for my father, Te Kooti had not thought of the river which, in flood, cut through the flats a hundred yards away. It was a desperate chance, and he took it. Calling to his dog, he rushed across the flats towards the swirling waters. Thinking to make an easy capture, his enemies at first followed slowly, shouting loudly their fierce war cries.
“At ordinary times, there was a ford of sorts at each end of the big bend. My father made for the top crossing, to find that the yelling pursuers had forestalled him. He turned, and ran to the lower ford, only to find his escape cut off there also. And, while he hestitated, Te Kooti's men made a sudden encircling movement to draw in closer, and the bullets commenced to fly about.
“It was with fear of death strong within him that he searched feverishly for a convenient log that might help in the dangerous crossing he now contemplated. Suddenly his gaze lighted upon a discarded camp oven lying on the sand near by. He seized this, placed it upon his head, and entered the water, swimming what you would term breast stroke. The strong current tossed him about, but he was a powerful swimmer. The oven protected his head. Bullets hit it everywhere, but screamed off into space without doing the least harm.
“Suddenly, however, he faintly heard a splashing and blowing behind him. It could only mean, he thought, that one of the yelling crowd at the back was following him across the river. Harder and more desperately he swum, but the noise persistently continued. Every moment he expected to feel the death-dealing tomahawk between his shoulders. Almost exhausted, he reached the shallow water, struggled up to the bank, and quickly discarded his head covering. Then he turned to find—what do you think? It was his dog, the progenitor of the fine animal you see before you, with the lid of the camp oven in his mouth!
“Yes, pakeha, as I have said, he is indeed a good dog, and he is not for sale. Yet, you are my very good friend, and you may have him for five shillings ….”
Progress along the path to prosperity continues to be made by the Home railways. Each of the four group systems serving Britain looks forward with confidence to the future, for on all sides there is evidence that the worst of the depression is over.
That this optimism is well-founded is illustrated by an examination of recent traffic returns. These show satisfactory increases, on both the passenger and freight sides, over the corresponding period of last year. At the moment of writing, the London, Midland and Scottish Line claims the largest increase in passenger traffic, while to the London and North Eastern goes a striking increase in freight business. Railways rightly may be regarded as trade barometers: the latest railway returns certainly seem to indicate that we are definitely at the commencement of a welcome industrial revival.
A poster issued by the German Railways shows a man whose hair and beard have grown over the whole floor of the compartment in which he is sitting. An accident insurance policy lies beside him, and an inscription reads: “He wanted to be killed in a railway accident. He will have to travel at 62.5 m.p.h. for 22,800 years to accomplish his purpose.” That is how the Berlin authorities impress upon the travelling public the safety of rail movement. Throughout Europe the greatest attention is paid to ensuring travel safety, and in most European lands the risk of mishap while travelling by rail is slight in the extreme.
An analysis of the official report on railway accidents in Britain during 1932 discloses remarkable results, while in 1933—for which official figures are not available at time of writing—the position in respect of freedom from serious accidents is equally satisfactory. Four passengers lost their lives in train accidents in 1932, and the death risk for passengers worked out at one in 389,000,000. How different is this record from that of casualties on the roads! Taking all in all, there is probably no country in the world where such vast thought and expense has been incurred to ensure the safety of the traveller. The most elaborate equipment and the most carefully devised operating methods, however, would be of little avail if the individual railwayman permitted carelessness and indifference to creep into his daily task. Britain's striking freedom from serious rail mishaps is in no small degree attributable to the wholehearted devotion of one and all to that wisest of gospels: “Safety First.”
Greater travel comfort—and, incidentally, greater travel safety—is assured for night passengers on the London, Midland and Scottish line, by the recent introduction of a new type of third-class sleeping car embodying several interesting features. Designed by Mr. W. A. Stanier, the company's Chief Mechanical Engineer, and built in the Derby works, the new car is of corridor pattern,
The principal dimensions are as follow:—Length over body, 65ft. lin.; width over body, 8ft. 11 ¼in.; bogie wheelbase, 9ft.; tare weight, 76,1601b. A feature is the provision of a cork floor, laid on dovetailed steel sheeting. This largely eliminates track and running noises and adds immeasureably to travel comfort. Each compartment contains cent. of the the accommodation on trains being placed at the smoker's disposal. Even in these days, however, there are numbers of people who object to smoking in railway compartments, and in order to make matters quite clear the Home lines are to label every compartment “Smoking” or “Non-smoking” as the case may be. This arrangement, it should be understood, applies to the mainline railways only. On the London suburban routes a somewhat different method is being adopted, whereby all “non-smoking” compartments are specially labelled, and smoking is permitted in all cars not so distinguished four berths—two lower and two upper. A sliding door gives access to the compartment, and the interior fittings include a mirror, luggage rack, coat and hat hooks, individual reading lamps and bell pushes, steam heaters, and air-conditioned ventilating apparatus. The attendant's compartment is fitted with a gas-heated hot-water boiler for supplying water for tea, etc., a sink, draining board, and cupboards for crockery, glasses and provisions.
Worshippers at the shrine of My Lady Nicotine are well provided for by the Home railways, something like seventy-five per Broadly speaking, it would be infinitely more convenient if railways had to provide one type of accommodation alone, instead of having to meet the wishes of smokers and non-smokers; and to provide for the passenger who seeks to obtain super-luxury accommodation, even if this entails a higher fare. First and third-class accommodation, as provided by the Home railways will be merged, ultimately, into one class, but the time is not yet ripe for this move, greatly though the railways might welcome it. For the time being, a certain proportion of passenger train accommodation must be given over to the first-class traveller, even though
Branch-line operation on many European railways only continues a profitable proposition by the employment of light railcars in place of heavy steam units. Germany is one of the greatest users of the railcar, and interesting new types of both oil-electric and steam railcars have been recently introduced by the Berlin authorities.
The new oil-electric railcar seats 110 passengers, and has an overall length of 69 ft. 2 ¼ in. Its weight in working order is 42 tons, and maximum speed is 62 m.p.h. In accordance with modern practice, the rail-car is of very light welded construction. The Diesel engine has a capacity of from 300 to 330 h.p. at 1,000 r.p.m., and transmission is of the electrical type. A driver's cab is placed at each end of the car, and the construction is such that the car may be employed by itself as a complete unit, or in conjunction with a trailer of equal dimensions.
The new German steam railcar is a smaller affair, seating 42 passengers, and developing a maximum speed of 40 m.p.h. It is a four-wheeled car, with an empty weight of only 14 ½ tons. Steam is furnished by an oil-fired boiler, and the engine, developing 100 h.p., is axle-suspended, power being transmitted to the wheels by a single set of spur gears. It is claimed that the car may be started from cold in about five minutes, and altogether this new light steam railcar is worthy of study by those on the look-out for a cheap and efficient train unit for branch-line operation.
It is a big jump from the small railcar to the giant steam locomotive employed on trains like the Auckland-Wellington Limited or the “Flying Scotsman.” The L. & N.E. Railway—itself a big user of light railcars—is now conducting experiments with a novel new heavy steam engine—the Kitson-Still Diesel-steam locomotive. Built by Kit-son & Co., Ltd., of Leeds (one of the oldest locomotive makers in the world), the Kitson-Still machine incorporates an eight-cylinder four-stroke oil engine having a bore of 13 ½ins. and a stroke of 15 ½ ins. The cylinders are arranged horizontally across the engine, four in front and four behind a common crankshaft, which is centrally geared through a pair of double-helical gears, to a jackshaft, from which coupling rods transmit power to the wheels.
Designed for mixed traffic, the locomotive is of the 2—6—2 type with 60 in. wheels.
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It is an early March morning; there is a chill in the air and the dew still glistens on the hedgerows as the print-pinafored workers make their way to their bins in a Nelson hop-field. They hang up their satchels, don their gloves, cut a string (for the official cutter has not yet arrived) and set out on what would appear to be the almost impossible task of filling the bin. Hop-picking is piece-work, so that the greatest reward comes to the deftest fingers, and these are almost invariably women's. In these days of unemployment many men take on the work, but they are no match for the women, who, for years have made and broken local records. These are the experienced pickers, but there are some who come each year to the hop-fields of Nelson for health and holiday and who go home with a reasonable cheque as well. This is an occupation where town and country meet.
In the hop-growing districts there is such a thing as “hop-picking” weather. Its characteristics are fresh mornings, hot sunny noondays and brilliant star-lit or moon-lit nights. Such conditions add zest to both work and play. One of the pleasant features of the work is that there is no standard of attainment, and it is soon evident whether pickers are there for profit or recreation by noting at what time they arrive at the “garden.” Some, too, are silent workers, while others can talk as busily as they can pick, and the subdued hum of conversation along the row of bins is broken only by the intermittent cry of “string!” as one vine, stripped of its fruit, is cast away and another put in its place. The string-pullers are doubtless not chosen for their power of conversation and repartee, but some of them seem adepts at keeping up a steady stream of good-natured banter as they yield their “cat,” a murderous-looking reap-hook on the end of a very long handle.
Measuring-up time comes at noon, and every bushel that goes into the “poke” means 2 ½d. or 3d. to the picker. Some make tallies of twenty or more bushels in the morning and as many more by five o'clock, while it is a notorious fact that the most successful pickers pick the fewest leaves.
The hops picked by day are dried by night while spread out evenly on big kilns, below which coal and coke fires burn continuously. The fragrant scent of drying hops lies heavily on the still night air over the whole countryside at hop-picking time. The social side of the harvest is losing many of its picturesque aspects, but none of its revelry. It is still one of the best of working holidays. The custom of meeting nightly in the kilns to tell ghost stories in the dark while baked onions or potatoes in jackets are raked from the glowing embers and eaten with salt and butter to taste, seems to have lost its appeal. Seldom now do the villagers and the visitors gather at the camps and stamp out the ringing chorus:
There was a farmer had a dog, and Bingo was his name O!
B—i—n—g—o,
B—i—n—g—o,
B—i—n—g—o,
And Bingo was his name O!”
The place of these homely but old-fashioned games has been usurped by the seductive notes of the guitar or jazz choruses from the portable gramophone. But much remains. Peals of laughter still ring out far into the night; there are still those old-time country dances with their boisterous entertainment, while the camp suppers are still plain but plenteous, for hops have not forgotten the knack of inducing ravenous hunger.
In the present state of the industry three weeks is sufficient to harvest most of the crops. By degrees a garden where once stood acres of vines, row on row, each with its green-gold burden, is reduced to a few strings. Over the last one it has long been a Nelson custom—in imitation possibly of Kent—to perform a brief ceremony of farewell. The pickers are called to order while the chief string-puller calls for “three cheers for the last string!” as he solemnly cuts the string from the overhanging wire. But time makes ancient customs uncouth, even in hopfields, and to-day it is a common thing to dispense with the last string without any other comment than a sigh. There remains only the “spree,” when the employer pays out the cheques and wishes his workers good-bye till next year.
Hop-growing is the oldest of the varied activities of the small holder in Nelson. The pioneers of the Forties brought the industry from Kent to the fertile alluvial plains of the Waimea and Riwaka. In this century it has been left far behind in point of importance by fruit and tobacco-growing. The older settlers, however, still till their fields in order to cater for a limited internal demand, while it was one of the achievements of Ottawa that it started an export trade for the surplus.
Only in this somewhat secluded district is the industry carried on in New Zealand. Almost the only other hops grown in the country are to be seen climbing garden fences or verandah posts. Hop-growing is an exacting but profitable undertaking at the guaranteed price which obtains to-day. It is even more profitable to the pickers, not because any of them make a fortune, but, because, for health and appetite, there is nothing like a few weeks among the hops. Added to this there is a tinge of romance, with which not all primary industries are blessed. Hop-picking in Nelson brings visions of hop-picking in Kent, but it also suggests cider apples in Somerset, vineyards in Southern France, and vine-gathering on the sunny slopes of Italy.
It was down on Bank's Peninsula, and from the signal hut I could see a clear thirty-mile stretch along the path of the rising sun towards the Chathams. Why people rave of Honolulu sun risings and settings when they can see similar effects from the Port Hills of Canterbury is something which only a psychologist could explain adequately!
Down in the hollow I could hear and see a musterer getting in a few stragglers. These are cunning ewes who, with their lambs, have managed to evade the hurried round-ups. There are many little caves under over-hanging rocks in the high bluff cliffs, where a ewe might keep her lamb for a few weeks longer. And, alas, there were places where no man or dog could reach and where mother love prevailed until a merciful shot ended the sufferings of a slow starvation.
My watch-mate relieved me with a muttered salutation and slinging my “tucker-bag” over my shoulder I made my way down the hills towards a musterer who was exhorting a mysterious Ginger to “come away here,” and threatening to “bust” the same Ginger's ribs in whenever and wherever it was possible to do so.
When I reached the musterer I gently enquired what was the cause of his wrath.
“What's wrong?” he replied. “That cow of a dog is hanging about there and won't come up.
He's usually very good. You wait till I get him, the blasted bag of bones.”
I answered that I could not wait to witness the disagreement with the aforesaid Ginger and anyway, perhaps Ginger had found something; but this suggestion was scornfully rejected, and I went my way, leaving the musterer sitting erect in the saddle—like a warrior awaiting the charge —his eyes glittering with wrath while he howled dire long-range threats at the unfortunate Ginger.
I reached home and, curious to know what Ginger was doing, I trained a powerful telescope in the direction of the bluffs. I soon picked up Ginger, who was trying to work his way round a large boulder underneath which I could see a small cave and something white which, later, I recognised as an old ewe and her lamb.
A sense of justice (which has made me some enemies, but also some very good friends), induced me to swallow a hasty cup of tea and retrace my steps up the hill in an endeavour to save the ribs of Ginger from displacement. There was no need for my intervention. The dog had got the sheep out of the cave, and when I reached the musterer he was standing beside his horse, yelling endearing blasphemous epithets at Ginger.
“D'ye know, he said, a twinkle in his eyes, as he critically admired Ginger's handling of the sheep, “I wouldn't sell Ginger fer fifty quid!”
The New Zealand forces, organised for the Maori Wars after the regular British regiments had been withdrawn from the operations, contained perfect frontier soldiers who outfought the Maori in his native wilds and brought lasting peace to the borderlands. The senior surviving officer of that hard-fighting corps, the New Zealand Armed Constabulary Field Force, was the late Colonel J. M. Roberts, N.Z.C., the subject of this biographical sketch. He began his military career in the celebrated Forest Rangers, with Von Tempsky, hero of many a deed of daring in our country's adventurous age.
The stories of courage and endurance in New Zealand's dangerous days can never be told too often. They are a perpetual incentive to a spirit of duty, bravery and self-sacrifice. Maori and Pakeha rightly share in the admiration felt for such deeds of valour. They were the heroes of combat in the days when war was still a chivalrous affair, fought at close quarters, and when the human factor had not yet been submerged by the diabolical contrivances of scientific wholesale slaughter.
John Mackintosh Roberts, who began his soldiering life by carrying carbine and bowie-knife in No. 2 Company of Forest Rangers in the early part of the Waikato War, and who lived through innumerable bush-fighting perils to become Colonel commanding the Armed Constabulary, was probably the most admirable figure of all in the list of colonial soldiers who won the New Zealand Cross for deeds of exceptional valour. He was particularly distinguished for his cool courage and resourcefulness in emergency. More than once he extricated his men from seemingly hopeless positions by his excellent bush-craft and his confidence-inspiring leadership. His military career extended over about a quarter of a century, and he was for more than ten years a Magistrate, with his headquarters at Tauranga. Many of his comrades in the war years were men who had learned their trade in British regiments, and who adapted themselves to the conditions of bush-fighting here. Roberts learned his bushmanship and his military craft in his youth in the New Zealand forest. In the earlier Maori wars the British commanders dreaded the bush, and cut away the timber in order to get at the enemy. That was not the way of the colonial soldier who knew his business. “We learned very early,” said Roberts to the present writer, “to look on a tree as a friend. If it could shelter a Maori it could also shelter us.” So in the later campaigns pakeha fought Maori quite in the Maori manner, skirmishing from tree to tree, adopting ambush and surprise tactics, and taking to the Maori bush costume and wearing shawl or blanket kilt-fashion, like the native rapaki, instead of trousers.
Roberts came of Scottish Highland ancestry an Inverness family. He was born in India and came to Auckland as a boy of fifteen, in 1855.
The first eight years of his life in the colony were spent in bush and farming life, on the edge of the great Hunua forest, which extended south and east from Papakura for many a league. He and his widowed mother lived in the homestead of his uncle, Major Clare, and he did his share in all the work of a pioneer settler. In 1861 he and a mate from the Wairoa were attracted by the reports of the wonderful gold-finds in Otago, and they sailed off with a party of other young adventurers, in a small schooner from Auckland. She was a rough little craft, that schooner, Roberts narrated, with a rough crowd of passengers. Fights were frequent, and at last the skipper told the quarrelsome hard-cases that they would have to settle their arguments on shore. He put into an East Coast bay and anchored, and sent a boat on shore with the pugilists, to punch each other on the beach. This suited all hands; the various fist affairs were disposed of happily on firm land, and the voyage was resumed. Dunedin was reached at last, by good luck, and the two partners carried their swags into the Promised Land of gold. No luck there; they dug and panned out at Gabriel's Gully and other fields, but obtained very little reward for all their pains and travels. Back to Auckland they sailed presently, with very little in their pockets but an excellent stock of experience. “Well,” said the veteran, when he told the story nearly sixty years afterwards, “if we didn't make our pile on the diggings, we certainly learned self-reliance.”
That experience was all to the good a little later on, when the Waikato War began, and the settlers on the Papakura and Hunua forest-edge had to stand to the defence of their homesteads. One of the first skirmishes began near the Clare homestead, where some bush-workers were fired on, and it developed into a fight that extended into the Kirikiri bush, near the present Papakura-Wairoa road.
Very soon it became necessary to form a bush-roving corps which would scout the forests on the flanks of General Cameron's Army, and deal with the Maori war-parties which now and again laid ambuscades on the Great South Road and attacked convoys on the Drury-Pokeno section, where the road was cut through dense bush. Captain William Jackson, a young settler who was one of Roberts’ neighbours, raised a company of Forest Rangers for this adventurous duty, and presently a second company was formed, under Captain Gustavus F. Von Tempsky, that daring and skilful guerilla soldier who was to figure so brilliantly and at last tragically in our fighting story. Roberts was the second man to enlist in Von Tempsky's Company, and so began a comradeship which lasted till that fatal day in the Taranaki forest five years later, when Von Tempsky fell to a Hauhau bullet.
The Rangers became for all the purposes of bush-scouting and skirmishing a perfect little corps. They were armed with the best weapons procurable in those times, a Terry breechloading carbine and a revolver, to which Von Tempsky's Company added a bowie-knife, after the pattern of the famous American knife; Von Tempsky had learned its usefulness in California and Mexico.
“Von Tempsky taught us a regular drill with the bowie-knife (he had them made by a blacksmith in Auckland from his pattern),” said Roberts. “As it happened, we did not make much use of it in actual fighting in the Waikato, but it was very handy in bush work, and at Orakau we scooped out shallow shelter trenches with it, when we lay under fire before the pa.”
Countless bush adventures and much hard marching fell to the Rangers. Roberts soon became Sergeant-Major of No. 2 Company, and then Lieutenant; his fellow-subaltern under Von Tempsky was Westrupp, afterwards Major in an East Coast Corps. The tide of war passed on southward, Cameron's invading army pressed the Maori back and back, and presently Roberts and his comrades were scouting in advance of the Imperial forces round about Te Awamutu, the army field base in 1864.
On the march to Orakau, which resulted in the famous siege and the noble defiance by the Maoris of overwhelming odds, Lieutenant Roberts led the advance with a half-company of his Rangers. He led, too his Rangers in one of the unsuccessful attempts to storm the Maori earthworks on the first day. “All we saw,” he said, describing to me his share of the operations, “was the peach groves and the newlymade parapets. We couldn't see a Maori at first. They had made long horizontal loopholes or embrasures in the parapet, with pieces of timber on the top and at the sides to keep them open, and through these openings they delivered a heavy fire on us. The first thing we knew was a regular line of smoke and flash running the whole length of the earthworks on the west flank as they gave us a volley. After that and a second volley, the black heads popped up now and again, and we drew off, and with Jackson and Von Tempsky's Rangers, making a hundred carbine-and-revolver men altogether, we formed the eastern side of the cordon surrounding the pa.”
The Forest Rangers led the pursuit of the retreating Maoris when the pa was evacuated by the despairing garrison. The fast runners in Jackson's and Von Tempsky's companies outdistanced even the mounted men, who were delayed by the rough ground. Lieutenant Roberts was mentioned by Von Tempsky in the MS. diary in which he recorded the events of the
Colonel Roberts, describing more than fifty years afterwards that chase of the defeated survivors of Orakau, said that he and some of his comrades crossed the Puniu River and went on for a considerable distance south of it until coming darkness stopped the pursuit. One incident always remained a poignant memory. “There was one Maori, after we crossed the river, who kept us off for a long time by turning and kneeling down every now and again and presenting his gun at us. We fired, but did not hit him at first. He did not return our fire. He was gaining time to enable some of his older people to get away. At last I and another man shot him, and I shall never forget how sorry we were when we went up and found that his gun was empty. He had been presenting an unloaded gun at us all the time. We were terribly grieved to think we had killed so brave a man. Of course we would have spared him had we known he hadn't a shot left.”
Four years later, after a return for a time to farming work at the Hunua, we find Roberts holding a commission as Sub-Inspector in the newly-organised Armed Constabulary Field Force, of which Mr. Commissioner St. John Brannigan was the head (though he did not take the field himself). Sub-Inspector was equivalent to Captain, and it was by the military title rather than the official police term that the blueuniformed soldiers preferred to be called. Roberts was with his old comrade Von Tempsky, now Major, in Lieut.-Colonel McDonnell's force which made the attack on the Hauhau bush stockade at Te Ngutu-o-te-manu, on the South Taranaki plain, in 1868. Many accounts have been given of that disastrous affair, and scarcely any two stories agree, and naturally so, for in the confusion of skirmishing in the tangled bush, amidst smoke and din and the striking down of men by bullets from unseen foes, every man sees a battle from his own point of view and has a very circumscribed area of observation.
It was here that Von Tempsky was killed. When Roberts last saw him he was cutting away rather listlessly with his sword at a hanging tree-vine, and expressing his disgust at the mismanagement of the attack. He and Roberts waited in vain for the order to rush the Hauhau stockade, which could have been taken. It was after Roberts moved away to get a view of the position that the fatal bullet found a target in his friend.
Of the many narratives of Te Ngutu that I have heard, by far the most authoritative and connected is Colonel Roberts’ own account, which I heard from his lips at Rotorua in 1919. Roberts had always been rather modest and reticent about his own share in the events of that day and night in the bush, and this narrative was the first full account given by him. It was his gallant work on that occasion, fighting a rearguard action and collecting the survivors, that chiefly won for him his New Zealand Cross, presented on parade in the Waikato long after the war.
“I had fired a few shots at the palisade,” said Colonel Roberts, “more for the sake of making a noise than anything else, for I could not see a single Maori. Our men were hotly pressed by the Hauhau fire from good cover. We were by this time on the east side of the pa, firing away, and waiting vainly for orders. I heard Lieut. Hunter—who had been the life of the camp at Waihi—calling out to his men: ‘Give it to them, boys; give it to them! I can see the white of his eyes! Give it to him!’ and similar cries. I saw him a little time afterwards, poor fellow, lying on the broad of his back, dead, staring at the tree-tops. There were a few men with me; an officer cannot see more than ten or fifteen when he is bush-skirmishing under such conditions. I asked whether anyone had seen Major McDonnell. I then came to the conclusion that he was fighting his way out. He had not left us any orders. In this situation, I did
“I said to Buck, ‘You stay here, and I'll go and see what has become of Von Tempsky. If I'm not back in ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, you'll know what to do.’ I left him with some men, and scouted back by myself through the bush towards the other side of the pa, passing some of my men who were still sticking to it, taking cover behind the trees and firing whenever they saw a head or other sign of the enemy. One or two of them called to me ‘Go back, sir, you'll be shot.’ They said they believed the Major was shot. I worked along the flank for two or three chains, towards the creek that ran in the rear of the pa. I saw nothing of Von Tempsky, but he must have been lying close by. It was all dense bush there, with some very large mahoe trees, the biggest I had ever seen, and some rata.
“At last I turned to come back, and just as I did so a bullet buried itself in a sapling behind me. When. I made my way back to where I had left Captain Buck a quarter of an hour previously, I found him lying on his back, dead. I got together all the men I could find and disposed them as well as I could to resist the Hauhaus, who were pressing us hard, yelling ‘Surround them, surround them!’ in Maori. I formed the men into a rough half-moon front, and instructed them to fire volleys: ‘Blaze away as hard as you can, boys, blaze away!’ We fired a number of volleys, and this had some effect on the Hauhaus, who kept a greater distance after that.
“By this time it was getting quite dusk in the bush, under the close, dense tree-tops. I came to the conclusion that I had better try and make my way out to camp with the wounded. I had heard firing away on my right, and knew it must be McDonnell fighting his way out to Waihi. There were eleven wounded, but most of these could walk. My total strength now was fifty-eight men. Sergeant Russell fell, shot through the hip; he was a fine brave fellow. We had to leave him there, lying propped up against a tree, with a loaded revolver in his hand: he was too badly wounded to use his carbine. We had some faint hopes of rescuing him later, but the Hauhaus got him, after he had stood them off at first with his revolver. Lieut. Hirtzel was with us, and another good man was big James Livingston, of Waipapa, Hawera, who had come with the force as a voluntcer; he was a splendid fellow, cool and brave, and a first-rate bushman. When we were under a very heavy fire he was picking up the rifles of men who had been killed or wounded and smashing them against the butts of trees, saying that the Hauhaus would never be able to use those guns. He broke Russell's carbine before we left him.
“I kept my men together as well as I could in the bush, and got my wounded along; we went very slowly, occasionally turning to fire. I don't think we were travelling more than half-a-mile in the hour. All of us were now very exhausted, and I ordered the men to sit down in the bush undergrowth, for a rest, waiting till the moon rose, so that I could fix my course. We had two or three friendly Maoris with us, Kupapas (Government men) from Wanganui. I kept them close by me, for I was depending on them to lead us out of the bush. In fact I put a sentry over them to make sure they did not give us the slip.
“We were still within cooey of the pa,” Colonel Roberts continued; “in fact, we could hear the Hauhaus’ yells and war-songs all night, we were so close. About two o'clock in the morning the moon rose over the tree tops, and now that I had an idea of the points of the compass I made a start again. I sent the Maoris ahead, telling my man, who was keeping an eye on them, to make sure that they were not attempting to leave the column. ‘If they do,’ I said, ‘you know what to do.'
“When we started on our retreat we were well in on the Egmont or inland side of McDonnell's route. By about daylight we got out on to the track leading down to the Waingongoro River ford, the track we had come in the morning, and we reached our base camp, the Waihi Redoubt, about eight o'clock. McDonnell and the main body had arrived there the night before. Some of them had given us up for lost. My friend Captain Brown (afterwards killed at Ngatapa) was one of those who hurried down to meet us. As he shook hands with me, he said: ‘Some of them said you were all killed, Roberts, but I knew you'd turn up, because you know the bush.'”
All the dead and some of the wounded were left on the battlefield. The death-roll numbered twenty-four, of whom five were officers. Twenty-six wounded were brought off the field. One man, Private Dore, of the Wellington Rangers, who was shot through an arm, in Roberts’ retreat, was lost in the bush, and did not reach Waihi until four days afterwards. Of the officers, Major Von Tempsky, Captain Buck, Captain Palmer, Lieut. Hunter and Lieut. Hastings were killed. Palmer and Hastings were with Roberts’ force, and were mortally wounded. Palmer died as he was being carried through the bush, and was left there.
That gallant bit of duty was one of the deeds for which Roberts was awarded the New Zealand Cross, the rarest of all military decorations in the British Empire. The other service was his work in command of No. 6 Company of Armed Constabulary at the fight at Moturoa, in rear of the present town of Waverley, in South Taranaki. Roberts had raised that Company (or division as they called an A.C. company of 100 men) in Auckland and on the Thames goldfields, mostly young men whom he quickly drilled into a competent body. They were popularly called “The Young Brigade,” and well they fought in their first bush battle, that engagement at Moturoa. It was an unfortunate affair for the Government forces; a defeat and retreat, redeemed only by the brave rearguard action in which Roberts and his No. 6 took their full share. Colonel Whitmore–Moturoa was one of his very few failures–gave Roberts high praise in his despatches for his cool and efficient handling of his company.
Two more years of fighting were ahead of Roberts after those two tragic Taranaki battles of 1868. He was Major in command of the right wing of Whitmore's force which invaded the Urewera Country in 1869; he served in every important expedition on the East Coast and the West until the close of the war. He commanded that most remote of frontier posts, Opepe Stockade, near Taupo, in the early Seventies; he made roads, and pioneered the wild places of the frontier. In 1879–81 he commanded the A.C. Field Force and the Volunteers in the Taranaki operations and in the occupation of Parihaka. Our photograph of the Constabulary officers in that expedition shows a splendid set of frontier soldiers, probably the most competent in the work of bush-fighting that any country has ever produced. They are all gone now; Roberts was the last, when he died at Rotorua in 1928. As soldier and as Magistrate he was conspicuous for ability, fairness, and fearlessness. A good and useful pioneer New Zealander, who set an example of fine courage and fidelity to the highest ideals of duty.
According to the Natural Resources Department of the Canadian National Railways, railway experts in Canada and in the United States are turning their attention to the possibility oi using aluminium alloys instead of steel in the building of locomotives and railway coaches. Experimental work would seem to indicate the feasibility of a reduction in the weight of engines and coaches sufficient to permit train speeds higher than those at which motor vehicles can safely be operated, thus presenting a new basis on which railways might meet road competition. It is considered that the building of an “alloy” locomotive capable of hauling passenger trains at a speed of 100 miles an hour for average long distances is a practical proposition.
As it struck we came laughing down the road, kicking at paper box lids on the ground, crowning the white railway gates with them, before we turned to cross the line and walk up to the signal box. There was gravel underfoot, stars overhead, coloured signals before us and the voices of men passing and a cold ironic smell about the tracks and yards. The crisp odour of iron sweating in the night air. Car lights shone on our faces while they were still a mile away … detectives of the night, these, that came with a slow searching scrutiny, a roar of first-degreeing naked, brilliant light, and then still doubting, passed with sweet screaming of wheels to the next lonely walker by night.
The signalman's buttons glittered as he stood on top of the steps of the signal box. He peered, invited, and we clattered up to him. Over his sore lips he roved a would-be healing tongue and smiled at us in the green-yellow undying glare of the small room. In black iron slots the signal levers stood regimentally. Black and white. Black and red. Some slanted outward to lock the lines for the train rumbling down the valley. Others stood upright in their iron busbies, deeply wounded with thick letters incised on them. “Home Goods Down.” “Home Goods Up.” “Crossover 14.” “Interlocking 12.” Others merely bore numbers. He patiently and intricately explained their uses. “You see, he (the signalman at the other end) can't move until I release his line, and I can't move till he releases me,” and the act of releasing was demonstrated with a tide of technical terms compared with which, the square on the hypotenuse and Lucian's most recondite dialogues were simple Simons of intellectual achievement. I couldn't understand, but didn't like to ask again and again. He took us down below, and under the signal box we discovered the iron serpents that lie there with their weighted tails and marry the lines, and, after the train has slid across, divorce them again. Toward those long cold coils he held an insufficient looking match, a titbit of light which they mutely rejected. “You see?” he said, but the match blotted out and we couldn't, so we went up the steps with him again.
The roar of the incoming train drowned all other noises and its far-away light whitened with a sort of fear the entire station, and an engine that had had a little to do with some cattle trucks now neatly rejoined its quiescent part and withdrew with much rattling conversation into a humble corner. But the great black bulk racing up the valley roared and came crashing into the station on lines which it ate up as fast as an Italian eats spaghetti, its pitiless metal passenger punctuated, its speed spinning them and its furniture into mere cones of colour.
We too, stood, whitened and awed, conjecturing, paying the great engine the respect we felt was due to it.
Then, suddenly, we remembered the signalman and turned to him, but he was swinging on the narrow arms of the levers, pulling them out, jerking them in and sliding them forward with a small, light energy. “Pulling out six and eight to let the engine come up and put off a couple of carriages,” he gasped hotly, remembering that we had asked him to tell us everything connected with his activity at this crucial moment. And …. the engine did come up to put off its carriages. Under the signal box it panted thirstily with the old song of steam and a reflective glow of action, and the driver got slowly down and crossed her smoking paws to come and see what was wrong with something, while the tall young fireman leapt up into the tender and gave the furnace's seethe something to live across, when his shovel hit the lumps of coal with a decided clang.
The signalman was talking instructively, and with half an ear we learnt that one cannot clear the line until the signals were clear … that the points and the lights worked together … that the work certainly is responsible (as we had respectfully hinted) but being accustomed to it, one does not feel it. There is still one cloudy point not cleared in the yards of my mind, something about a guard in the rear of a train signalling with a coloured light to advise a driver on a certain course of action … but, I don't know yet what he had to do. Therefore he stays with me still, that enigmatic guard, garbed in the clothes peculiar to the be-whiskered railway officials of the last century and waves his little lamp to the driver leaning with a bewildered gape from the cab. I tried to communicate some of this ill-managed state of thought to the signalman, but he picked up the receiver from its hook and into it said, “Yes. When I get this train off the road, I'll lock it and come down.” So, we made him a leg and departed.
The cab of the great engine above us was filled with things of shining marvel, with flames that quivered from iron to flesh … with blue lights and golden heats, and the driver seemed to be standing in the cell of a Titan's brain as he stood draining the enamel cup he held to his lips. And in the shadows of flame and dark that swept over him, this little commonplace action, that at the tea table seems so empty of any significance, became fine and real and pagan-god-refreshing-himself-like in that steam lion's cavern above the thin silver fire of the lines.
How difficult it is to do justice! When the German hordes were being stemmed on the Marne and every English man and woman were “doing their bit” to bring victory to the allied arms, a young German farm hand was quietly working on a farm in the heart of New Zealand.
The war had stirred the heart of every New Zealander, and the country districts were sending their young manhood to the training camps for service overseas. Help of all sorts to carry on the farms was eagerly sought, so when Arthur Rottman, a young German, applied for a job at the farm of Mr. Joseph McCann he was soon to be seen bailing up the cows or driying the milk to the nearby factory. Rottman had been a sailor and came to New Zealand only two or three months before war broke out. Luckily for him he obtained a job as a sailor on the Government steamer “Hinemoa” and he was still on board the tiny ship when war descended furiously upon all. Soon every German was relieved of any connection with Government work and naturally enough one of the first to be dismissed was Rottman. He was at once registered as an enemy alien and placed under all the restrictions becoming his nationality. He was not allowed to go more than 20 miles from his registered place of abode and he was under orders to report regularly to the police. Hearing of farm work to be had at Mangaweka he got the necessary permit to travel, and in a day or two was working for Mr. McCann, a well respected dairy farmer in that district.
Rottman soon shewed himself willing and quick to learn, and his quiet behaviour earned for him a good reputation in the district.
Then followed a dreadful tragedy. The whole McCann family was brutally murdered. Neighbours came to the dread scene, fled, and would not return. Men and women shuddered as they hurried past the farm, while children joined hands and fled past the stricken place.
The family of McCann consisted, apart from Mr. McCann, of his wife and infant child, John Joseph.
On Tuesday the 29th December, 1914, a neighbour knowing that the milk from the McCann farm had not, as was usual, been sent to the factory, went to the farm to see McCann. He found him dead in the cow shed. Hastily going to the house and being unable to rouse anyone, he looked through the window and discovered that the fate that had overtaken McCann had been visited upon the rest of the family. Rottman, too, had disappeared. He had been seen on the train for Wellington. Horror unspeakable swept through the district. Then, following a visit by a stranger to Te Karama station at Terawhiti, came news of the arrest of Rottman in the bush at the back of the homestead.
On the 11th February, 1915, before Mr. Justice Chapman and a common jury at Wanganui the story was duly told. The Crown Prosecutor was Mr. Marshall, who had the well earned reputation of being as fair a prosecutor as ever occupied that position in New Zealand. The prisoner had Mr. C. E. McKay as his counsel. (It will be remembered that Mr. McKay, curiously enough, lost his life at the hands of a German in a riot at Berlin some years after the War).
The murder was an atrocious one and had occurred in the Ruahine district. Mr. Marshall warned the jury that they must omit from their consideration the fact that the prisoner was a German and must give him a fair trial, and he specially told them, as was meet and proper, that the onus of proving the case was on him and it was not incumbent on the prisoner to prove his innocence. As it later proved, however, the onus lay upon Rottman to establish the defence that was made on his behalf.
The first witness called was Mr. A. M. Roberts a local surveyor who produced a plan of McCann's farm and shewed that the milk factory, to which McCann's milk was taken daily, was 30 chains away. Then came a neighbouring farmer, Herbert Sweet, who said that the deceased had promised to help him with his sheep on the Monday. That Monday was the 28th December. But McCann did not turn up at Sweet's farm as he had promised.
The next witness was William Neil, who had spent a wild time with Rottman just before the tragedy. This witness must have felt very unhappy as he told the story. He said he knew the McCanns and had met Rottman there on two or three occasions. On Boxing Day he met Rottman riding along the road on one of McCann's horses. They went on together to Rangiwahia and there had a good many drinks together. By the afternoon Rottman was drunk. They stayed together well into the night and by 10 p.m. Rottman was sober again. Rottman mounted his horse and spoke sensibly. On the way back Rottman told the witness that he liked McCann, but he did not care for Mrs. McCann as she seemed to have her husband under her slipper. Such a thing Rottman did not consider right for a woman. He added, too, apparently in a spirit of spleen, and without, as far as can be gathered, any truth, that she drank too much. When the two reached the corner of the road where Rottman would normally have turned off to go to his home he did not do so, as he said he did not want to go home till he was quite sure McCann would be in bed, otherwise there would be a row, as he had not gone home in the afternoon to help in the evening milking. So the two went on together and about midnight Rottman turned back and went to his home. In cross-examination Neil admitted he had had a good many drinks. It was true, too, that Rottman had wanted to go home in the afternoon. Apparently he had been discouraged from doing this.
Albert Patchett, who earned his living as a cheese maker, said that Rottman had worked for McCann from some time in September, 1914. About 7.45 a.m. daily McCann's milk was brought to the factory. Sometimes McCann and sometimes Rottman would drive the milk van to the factory. On Sunday, the 27th, about 9 a.m., Rottman came to the factory. He said that he had had a night out. His eyes were puffy and his face was red. He spoke rationally. After staying talking for about an hour he said that he was going home for a sleep. Next morning Rottman brought the milk about 6.30. He was the first of the suppliers to arrive. It was most unusual for him to be so early. In answer to a query put to him Rottman said that McCann was going fleecing down at Sweet's farm that morning. The weight of the milk was not up to the average weight by about 100 lbs. Again, in answer to a question he said that McCann had had an accident with a can, some of the milk being spilt. The following day the witness was at the factory for the purpose of receiving supplies, but none came from McCann's farm. That was an abnormal happening that needed investigation. Accordingly he and the factory manager, Mr. Poole, walked up to McCann's farm. Inside the cowshed they saw, to their horror, McCann lying dead. There was a deep cut in his head. In answer to Mr. McKay, Patchett said that Rottman was not of a quarrelsome disposition. He was quiet and inoffensive, sober and well liked.
Gustave Kreger, a local farmer, then took his place in the witness box. He had known the McCann family for seven or eight years. He heard that Patchett had been to the farm and he too, with one, Fox, went to the scene of the crime. Both front and back doors of the house were shut, but one of the bedroom windows was open. On entering, he found the child lying dead on the bed and, on the floor at the foot of
The story was then resumed by Phelix Fox who told the story of his going with Kreger to the house and getting through the window. James Badland, by occupation a mail carrier, said that he saw Rottman about 3 p.m. on Boxing Day. He did not think that he was drunk, but he was merry. Witness had a drink with him. Rottman told him that McCann could milk the cows as it was Boxing Day. On the Monday he saw Rottman and invited him to have a drink as he was going to Feilding. Rottman told him he got home at 3 a.m. on the Sunday morning. He added that as Mrs. McCann had had cheek enough to lock the back door, he had had cheek enough to enter the house by the front door. He said that McCann was going to Feilding that day, whereat Badland asked how the cows were to be milked. Rottman told him that McLennan was going to drive him back so that he would be in time to attend to them. According to the witness there was nothing strange in Rottman's appearance.
Police Constable Essen, of Mangaweka, said that he saw Rottman on the Monday at Mangaweka. Rottman remarked to him that he had been told by Mrs. McCann that the constable had been to the farm. The witness then said that he told Rottman it was about the registration regulations affecting aliens, and that he, Rottman, was not to go further than 20 miles from McCann's without a permit. The prisoner assured him that he had no intention of doing so, as he was too well off as he was. He told the witness that the McCanns were very good to him. He chatted on about his progress as a farm hand. He said that he could now milk 25 cows and generally he was getting on very well. The next day, Tuesday the 29th, with Dr. Turnbull witness went to the McCann's farm. He saw the axe and found a pair of Rottman's boots by the door of the house. In Rottman's bedroom he found a sheet saturated with blood. The room was in a state of disorder. Next day the witness found a second axe which bore signs of having been used in the murder of one at least of the victims. He looked very carefully for signs of spilt milk, but he could see none. The value of this evidence of there being none spilt, apart from attacking Rottman's veracity, was to tend to shew that McCann was probably dead when the short supply was taken by Rottman to the factory. The witness said that Rottman was of a quiet, steady, and sober disposition.
Then the story of Rottman's flight was unfolded by William Kelly. He was employed at Terawhiti where, at Karori, there was then a new lighthouse. The witness had known Rottman when he was on the “Hinemoa” but did not know his name. On the 29th Rottman called at the witness's camp looking for a job. He had a horse that day. He rode away and returned two days later saying that he had sold his horse for £5, but he had not yet got the money. He said that he had gone to Terawhiti to catch a boat that would take him to Pelorus where he knew that he could get a job. Witness told him to go to Wellington and catch the Nelson boat. Rottman told him that the place was lined with police locking up all Germans. He said that he would drown himself before he would let the police get him. Under pressure from Rottman witness agreed to let him sleep at the camp that night provided that he cleared out the next day. Next morning as they were talking the newspapers arrived. Witness handed Rottman one and started to read the other. Rottman glanced at his and then said to the witness: “Have you read the Ruahine murder case?” Rottman then proceeded to read out the details. Then he read about the “Hinemoa.” This made witness suspicious, though he did not know the name of his companion, he suspected he might be Rottman, the man who was wanted by the police in respect of the murder. A little later witness told Rottman that he was going into town to see about his letters. At this Rottman said: “It is a strange thing you want to see about your letters so soon after reading about the murder case.” Witness asked Rottman to come to town with him. He refused and asked witness not to tell the police he was there. Needless to say, however, it was the first thing witness did.
The next witness called was Dr. Turnbull. He bore out the statement of Constable Essen and described the head injuries from which the three unfortunate victims had succumbed. Each had received severe blows on the head. It was then that the first indications of the real defence were disclosed. In cross-examination, Dr. Turnbull admitted that insanity might be of short duration. Epilepsy, too, often resulted in homicidal tendencies, and alcohol, also, might bring on an epileptic fit. If no adequate motive were suggested insanity would, the witness thought, be the cause of the act. An excessive number of blows, too, might be indicative of insanity. Moreover, in the conditions described as “mad drunk,” subjects were delirious, violent, and often exhibited homicidal tendencies. Its development was sudden and in some subjects could be produced by very little alcohol. If there was a family history of insanity, that might increase the tendency towards alcoholism. From his examination of the bodies the doctor had come to the conclusion that death had occurred on the Monday morning.
The story then related back to the happenings in Wellington. Detective Sergeant S. Rawle said that with acting Detective Dempsey and Constable Pearson he went to Te Karama
The evidence of the next witness related to certain happenings on the way back from the inquiry. Constable David Crow said that in the train Rottman made a voluntary statement to him. No inducement was offered Rottman to make the statement, which read as follows—
“On the morning of the 28th December I got home about 3 o'clock and went out with McCann to the cowbails. McCann was putting in a new board. I asked him to let me do it as I was a carpenter. He said, ‘You are too full.’ I said, I can swing an axe, and swinging it round my head accidentally hit McCann. I then slept for two hours. When I got up I saw McCann there. I drank another bottle of whisky, wanting to kill myself. I then went to Mrs. McCann's bedroom to tell her what I had done. I don't remember anything more till I came to the cowbail and there I saw McCann. I got sober at once and put four tins of water into the milk and went to the factory.”
Mr. McKay then cross-examined the witness, who said that Rottman did not sleep on that train journey. The statement he made was at 3 a.m. The witness added that he knew that he had received a telegram from Mr. Wilford, a well known Wellington lawyer who practised extensively at the criminal bar, and the telegram read “Write nothing, say nothing, do nothing.”
That concluded the evidence called for the Crown. Mr. McKay in addressing the jury said before calling evidence that he felt the weight of his responsible task. He hoped the jury would not be prejudiced against Rottman on account of his being an alien. There would be little controversy as to the facts. There was no denial that Rottman had struck the fatal blows. The defence was that he was insane at the time of the deed. There were many forms of insanity. One was delusions, another was fits of frenzy. When the person recovered from a fit of frenzy he did not know what he had done in the fit. The most deadly cause of insanity was alcohol. Rottman had been mad drunk. Counsel asked for a verdict of insanity and the result would be that prisoner would be detained in an asylum during the pleasure of the Crown. John Moore of the Seamen's Mission at Wellington was then called to speak of Rottman's excellent character and his mild disposition.
The prisoner then entered the witness box. He spoke in broken English. He said he was a German subject and was 21 years old. His father had held high office in the Prussian Civil Service. He arrived in New Zealand in May, 1914, and secured employment on the “Hinemoa.” His mother had been in a mental asylum twice. He had two brothers, one of whom had died from brain fever. His father drank excessively at times. He had had an accident in his youth when he fell downstairs and presumably hurt his head. He said he had also been shipwrecked. Turning then to the facts of the case he said Mr. McCann had always treated him very kindly. He then bore out Neil's statement, though he said that when he wanted to return home in the afternoon Neil argued with him about doing so. They started off, but then returned to the hotel. He was thrown off his horse twice. He then proceeded to get drunk. They went off home about 10 p.m. and he left Neil about midnight. He did not go inside, but waited until about 4 a.m. when McCann came out to attend to the milking. McCann told him that he did not expect him until 7 a.m. and that he had been very wild with him for not returning the evening before for milking. McCann asked him if he would like a whisky to straighten him up. They had a drink and then milked the cows. McCann then told Rottman to go to bed and he would take the milk to the factory. Rottman then had a good sleep and in the afternoon helped with the cows. That evening he and McCann had what the witness called a ‘homely evening’ which consisted in singing and drinking. Both got drunk. The prisoner said he went off to his bed at 1 o'clock in the morning taking more liquor with him for consumption. Next morning McCann told Rottman that he had made an awful noise through the night. Rottman said that he then went off for the cows and brought them to the cowshed. He then remembered swinging an axe over his head, lying on the grass, and afterwards lying in the passage of the house between his and Mrs. McCann's room. He looked into Mrs. McCann's room and saw a lot of blood. He felt as if a shot struck him and it made him feel quite sober. He went to his room. Outside, he was trying to think where McCann had gone to. He went out of the house and saw the axe. Then he remembered going to the factory after watering the milk. He told the man at the factory that McCann had spilt the milk. He then returned to the farm, fed the pigs and calves, and left hot water in the milk cans. Then he said that he went and dressed and rode away. He agreed with the witnesses who spoke of his movements after he had left the farm. The prisoner in referring to his capture said that when he said that he was guilty he meant he was ready to go to the police station. He had no grudge against the McCanns. In cross-examination he admitted that he had thought he might get sacked by McCann for not returning on Boxing Day. He did not remember saying that he would give McCann a piece of his mind if he did get sacked. He may have said that Mrs. McCann drank too much. He denied that he told the constable that the
The next witness was the Superintendent of Porirua Mental hospital, Dr. Grey Hassell. He interrogated Rottman who seemed to answer his questions truthfully. Rottman had a bad mental history. If a more than brutal murder is done by a young man of twenty it would suggest insanity. Three murders suggested acute homicidal mania. Absence of concealment of the victims suggested insanity. All the circumstances of this crime suggested it. These insane impulses were of short duration and might be brought on by seeing an instrument with which it could be done. There might be two periods—one when he remembered what he was doing and the other when his memory was a blank. It was then that the murder was committed. Dr. Maurice agreed with the last witness, and Dr. Alex Wilson said that the circumstances might well be explained by mania apotu.
Then came the addresses to the jury. As the defence had called evidence it was incumbent on Mr. McKay to make the first speech. He did so at great length. He traversed the subject of insanity. Marvellous and complex as the brain was, it was subject to terrible and various diseases. Rottman had had a brain storm. Alcohol was responsible for it. It might of course have been an epileptic seizure or mania apotu. He referred to the heavy drinking bout and the necessarily lowered vitality that would follow. He reminded the jury there was no motive suggested for the terrible deed. The death of the child alone shewed insanity in the clearest terms. Then the jury was reminded of the accused's good temper and character as negativing malice, so necessary in a crime of this character. The doctor's evidence was almost decisive on the question of insanity. No evidence had been called by the Crown to rebut Dr. Hassell's evidence. Rottman had faced the jury from the witness box and had given his evidence in a straightforward manner. He was entitled to be believed. People outside said he had no chance as he was a German. Mr. McKay said: “I do not believe it. I don't believe that such unworthy considerations will influence you.”
Mr. Marshall addressed the jury with great fairness and firmness. He covered all the relevant facts. He reminded the jury that Rottman expected to get the sack from McCann. He said: “He might have had some very inadequate motive of quarrelling with his friends. Inflated with drink he might have carried his intention to give them a piece of his mind to terrible excess.” Mr. Marshall said that when McCann told Rottman he was too drunk to help with the piece of carpentering, that was not a statement of one drunk man to another. Then the doctor had found six wounds in McCann's head. Rottman might have killed Mrs. McCann and the baby in a ‘seeing red’ mania. He had shewn no signs of frenzy just after the deed. He asked the jury to bring in a common sense verdict. The accused knew what he was doing if he stated what the constable said he stated in the train.
The summing of the Judge was lengthy. He agreed that a man might commit a ferocious act and not be conscious of it. Rottman was not insane on the Sunday. Of course he might have negligently swung his axe and be guilty of manslaughter. The onus of proving insanity lay upon the defence. It must be established that Rottman did not know what he was doing when he killed the McCanns. It was to be remembered that he had anticipated trouble with the McCanns and had arranged for another job in the event of his dismissal. The jury had to consider the whole of the facts. They would remember that the accused had fled from the scene of the deed and had tried to hide his tracks. In his statement he remembered hitting McCann and going to tell Mrs. McCann. The jury retired at 12.48 p.m. and at 2.10 p.m. returned with a verdict of Guilty of murdering the whole family.
When he was asked if he had anything to say why he should not receive the sentence of the law Rottman said: “I have received the best of treatment. At no time could there be any reason nor did they give me any for committing the crime. I know nothing of killing the poor people. Although my country is at war with yours, I have received a fair trial and if I have to die like my countrymen who are fighting I will die with good heart and leave it to that great day for Our Good Father in Heaven to judge.”
In sentencing him to death the Judge said that Rottman had been found guilty on the plainest evidence. The verdict was entirely justified, and he was in full accord with it. Rottman received no commutation of sentence, and went to the scaffold, there to pay the just due. To some extent Rottman was at a serious disadvantage. At the time the feeling against any German was too intense to allow for calm judgment. Moreover, there was no way of verifying his statement of his own mental history. The crime was really without motive and it may well have been the fact that he was under the influence of a passion, or frenzy, with which he had no power within himself to cope. If we had not been at war with Germany, Rottman, with his previous good character, might well have escaped the gallows at least.
“That'S a nice voice.” The porter looked at the man who was waiting on Greymouth platform for the late goods train, which had been held up through floods damaging Kokiri Bridge. His clothes proclaimed him a stranger to the Coast, so probably, he had never heard of Jim Johnson.
“Yes,” he replied. “It's a jolly good voice, and he's a jolly good sort, but a little—–.” He hesitated for a word to describe the singer's shortcoming, then shook his head as though it were beyond him.
“Bit queer, is he?” prompted the stranger.
“Well, I dunno. He's what I call queer, and yet—–” he broke off again. Apparently there was a story in it, and it was quite obvious that the stranger was not going to let the matter rest.
“Why, what did he do?” he insisted, and seeing there was no way of explaining the “queerness,” without telling the story, the porter settled himself on a crate of Brunner fire-bricks, lit his pipe, and started.
“When Jim Johnson—–that's him that was singing—–first came to Greymouth, he was a bit shy and quiet-like, but some of the boys at the sheds heard him singing. Not singing quietly as anyone is liable to do when in the right mood, but putting his heart into it. Some of the boys are great leg-pullers, and they kidded him that old Ben was an ex-music teacher and got him to go to him for lessons.”
“Did Ben know anything about singing?” asked the stranger.
“The only sound that meant music to Ben was the blast of the siren on his engine,” was the grinning reply. “However, Ben agreed quite seriously to teach him; free, of course. Ben would not play a dirty trick.
“Ben used to get him standing on a box up at the shed, bellowing as hard as he could. Told him he must strengthen the voice before he could expect to do any good. ‘Until you can drown the sound of No. 9's whistle,’ Ben told him, ‘I shan't be satisfied,’ and though Jim got pretty stiff in the throat at first it was surprising how he came on in power.”
“That must have had a bad effect on his tone,” the stranger interposed.
“Well, as to that, I can't say, not knowing much about music,” answered the porter; “but when he was singing a decent thing like ‘When the Red Red Robin Comes Bob Bob Bobin’ Along,’ he was well worth listening to. But he had a weakness for this high-toned stuff like ‘The Messiah,’ and ‘Mother Macree,’ and rather spoilt himself.
“Still it was the Messiah stuff—Oratorio—he calls it, that gave Ben his great idea. Old Ben persuaded him to enter for the local competitions, and although Greymouth is a small place there is some pretty hot stuff enters for the Comps.
“I forget the thing he put his name down for, but I know it was high-class. Every night. Ben had him bawling his head off, and he stationed men along the road to Cobden Bridge to test how far his voice carried.
“Poor old Jim; when the real training started he could hardly speak of mornings till about time for the express to go—that's 10.20” —he added for the benefit of the stranger.
“As the Comps. got closer, Ben found he couldn't tire him out so easily, and finally we got fed
“Did he enter the Competitions finally?” asked the stranger with a yawn. Obviously, the story was beginning to bore him.
“Yes, and that's the funny part. He did not actually win, but he got some jolly good praise from the Judge. He showed us what it said on his paper: ‘You have a wonderful natural voice and an instinct for music. The tone shows signs of forcing, due to faulty training.’ After the affair, the Judge saw him and told him if he ever came to live at Christchurch to see him about lessons. ‘I'd like to see what I can do with such a voice,’ he said.”
“Well,” commented the stranger; “that was great encouragement.”
“Yes, wasn't it? Strange to say, Jim was offered a temporary transfer to Christchurch a few days later, and though he was going with Mary O'Brien —daughter of old Watty, who used to drive the Hokitika 11.50—and was not keen on that account to leave Grey, he took the offer, as it might mean a bump up sooner or later. He was mad on the Railways—used to come down and look at the yards on Sundays—and his greatest ambition was to drive his own loco.
“Mary told us about him getting lessons from this Judge—Wilkins, his name was—but we thought nothing of it at the time.
“One day, however, Ben was having a look at a Christchurch “Times” that was left in the train, and blow me if Jim's photo wasn't in the illustrated part. Wilkins had coached him hard and put him against all the cracks in New Zealand; and he beat them! Had, I dunno how many, firsts, specials and a scholarship.
“Mary was a bit worried about that scholarship. It seems he could go to some place in Australia where they train big singers and get free teaching for a year. Mary didn't like this at all. ‘Fine chance I'll have,’ she says, ‘if he gets over there among all those fast women! Next thing you knows, he'll be going to Hollywood and getting a divorce before ever he's married at all at all.’ Mary's a bit Irish, as maybe you've guessed.”
“Did he take up the scholarship?” asked the stranger.
“We thought he would be sure to resign,” said the porter, who was not to be hurried in the telling of his story, “or at least ask for extended leave without pay, but a couple of days later, his relieving job being finished, he appeared on the express and said he was starting at the sheds again in the morning.
“We were astounded, as the papers had not finished talking about him, and were saying that his fortune was as good as made. Of course we asked him about it, and he said: ‘What! Leave the Railways, just when I might get promotion out of this relieving business? Never in your sweet life. I'm not the lad to let a hobby interfere with my job ‘”
“And did he do anything with his voice?” asked the stranger, who now appeared really interested.
“No; as I told you, he was wrapped up in Railways. Perhaps Mary was the deciding factor, for she said that her father and grandfather had been drivers, and both her brothers and most of her friends were railwaymen, and she was hanged if she would marry any but a railwayman,” ended the porter.
“And that's the whole story?” was the listener's comment. “Did he get his driver's certificate?”
“Well, he got his certificate, but he's never got an engine yet,” was the reply.
The stranger looked at his watch. “I don't think I will wait any longer. Good-night,” he said, and moved away.
Next day there was a great stir in the Department at Greymouth, and the men were called together to be addressed by the General Manager. The porter trembled when he saw that the General Manager was the stranger with whom he had wasted half an hour of good Government time and before whom he had smoked whilst on duty.
“There is one more small matter,” the Manager said, in concluding his address, which stressed the importance of railwaymen boosting the Railways in working hours and out. “Driver Johnson has been given the vacancy on No. 308, for in addition to being qualified, he takes extreme interest in the Railways.” The porter led the three hearty cheers that followed.
Whether regarded as subtle satire or merely as a genuine laugh-getter, Mr. Joseph's story of “The Wormers” will be found most refreshing in these often prosaic times.—Ed.
You have probably never heard of the profession of “worming.” Yet there are “Wormers’ Agencies” all over the country. It is only the most zealous sales’ patron, the keenest football fan, the most enthusiastic theatre goer who is aware of the existence of that mysterious sect known as “the wormers.” You have, at least once in your life, been jammed in a crowd, trying to force your way into a bargain sale, a football or cricket match or a theatre, unable to move forward or backward, paralysed in the midst of a solid mass of humanity, unable almost to breathe. It is the province of the “wormers” to obviate this inconvenience.
Say, for example, that you are desirous of attending a bargain sale. You know that hours and even days (the chronicles of the “wormers” show that this has happened) before the scheduled moment when the doors will be flung open to the eager bargain seekers, there will be a struggling mass of some thousands swaying and struggling outside. If you know your way in “Bargaindom” you will approach a reliable firm of “wormers” and engage the services of one of their staff. You will then be able to arrive at your sale a few minutes before the opening hour and yet be assured of being one of the first to rush into the emporium when the doors are opened. The procedure is as follows:—
The “wormer” stands on the fringe of the crowd and you stand close behind him, holding his coat tails, or in the case of the higher grade “wormer,” a short leather strap attached to his belt, known in the parlance of the profession, as a “hanger.” You yourself, become his “clinger.” Soon your “wormer” begins unobtrusively to “worm.” He wriggles his shoulders, sways his hips, jerks his body as though it were indiarubber, and gradually creeps through the crowd with yourself in close attendance. A good “wormer” can have you right up at the head of a multitude in an inconceivably short time and with no inconvenience on your part. Then having delivered you thus, with scarce a ripple to mark his path, he “worms” his way out again, perhaps to conduct some other client to the front rank of the crowd.
Now, Oswald Swivel was a “wormer.” For generations before him, his ancestors had been “wormers,” and it was a family tradition that a Swivel had “wormed” his way to the front at the beheading of Charles I. with a Roundhead as a “clinger.” It was at Sandman's Annual Remnant Sale on the Quay that Oswald found Romance. He had just “wormed” his way right up against the door of the great emporium with his “clinger” in close attendance, when he saw her. She was standing next to him, a little rotund woman handcuffed to her “hanger” in the latest fashion. Oswald smiled at her and received a shy acknowledgment.
“What Agency?” he whispered.
“Pushers’ Incorporated,” said the lady “wormer” proudly.
“A good one,” approved Oswald. “I'm chief ‘wormer’ to Shuve and Gettin.”
The girl's eyes became respectful, for Oswald's Agency was the oldest in the Dominion. Oswald read her glance, flushed, and was lost. Simultaneously they unbuckled their “hangers” and thus released their respective “clingers.” The girl from Pushers’ Incorporated turned and began to move through the closely packed crowd. Oswald watched her breathlessly. She left scarce a ripple behind her as she wriggled, twisted and jerked her way through the bargain hunters. Oswald sighed at this exhibition of flawless technique. In a moment, he too, had begun to “worm.” With infinite grace and ease he moved through the heaving mass of humanity. As he arrived at the fringe of the crowd, the girl from Pushers’ was re-entering the solid phalanx of bargain hunters, another client “clinging” in close attendance.
A day elapsed before Oswald met the female “wormer” again. It was at a pantomine premiere at the Opera House. The pride of Shuve and Gettin had just arrived with his “clinger” at the ticket box when he turned and looked into the worshipping eyes of the lady from Pushers'.
“Hello,” greeted Oswald flushing.
“Good evening,” whispered the girl.
“I saw you getting back at Sandman's Sale, and your work was A1,” said Oswald.
“Thanks,” said the female “wormer.” “I saw you at work yesterday at the Athletic Park. Your technique is great.”
Oswald flushed again. He was beginning to like this girl more and more.
“I see that you use the left-shoulder-wriggle,” said Oswald. “Do you find that it gets results?”
“Always,” said the other firmly. “I notice that you use the right-hip-heave a good deal.
I find it unsatisfactory.”
Oswald was a little affronted.
“My father, and his father before him, always said that the right-hip-heave was the ultimate finesse in ‘worming,'” said Oswald, a little heatedly. “My maternal grandfather, Barnabas Bunter, wrote that handbook, ‘The Right-Hip-Heave and why I prefer it to the Elbow Twist.'”
“I have read that book,” said the girl. “It is a classic.”
Oswald beamed on the female “wormer” again, and the language became most technical. Thus did love come into the hearts of the girl from Pushers’ and the pride of Shuve and Gettin.
They met next day by appointment at Belman's Great Annual Sale. Oswald noticed her several yards away, and with a little judicious use of the double-right-elbow-twist, he gradually drew up next to her.
“Hello, Lettice,” he greeted, for he had learnt that her name was Lettice Battlethwaite.
“Oh, hello Oswald,” flushed the girl.
There was a silence.
“Listen, Lettice,” gulped Oswald; “I've something to tell you.”
He was interrupted by a little man who was trying to force his way in front of him. With a measuring glance Oswald saw that he was not of the brotherhood, and with a quick left-elbow-jab, impressed upon the intruder that he had better stay where he was. Lettice nodded her head approvingly.
“Well, Oswald,” she prompted softly.
The pride of Shuve and Gettin gulped again.
“What about getting married, Lettice?” he whispered. “Just think of it, dear. We could revolutionise ‘worming.’ ‘Worming’ in double harness—a thing unknown to modern ‘worming’ could be introduced. A husband and wife could go to a premiere together, ‘wormed’ by us. Just think of it, dear. You and I could make ‘worming’ history.”
The girl caught her breath in a gasp and looked adoringly at Oswald. A slight squeeze of the hand gave him his answer, and something within the “wormer” surged with joy. For the rest of the day, both of them “wormed” in the air.
They fixed an early day for the wedding. Invitations were sent out to all the “wormers,” and it was a great event for the profession. When the day dawned, the church was packed with “wormers,” while the public was excluded by the skill of the professional. The non-“wormer” invitees thronged the entrance and fought for a glimpse of the bridal pair.
When the magic words were spoken which bound them closer than a “hanger,” Oswald smiled into the eyes of his beloved. The organ began to play Mendelssohn's Wedding March, and arm in arm the pair began to walk down the aisle. Oswald gazed into the closely packed mass of “wormers” and suddenly caught his breath. His wife's eyes were shining with excitement, for already she understood the workings of Oswald's intelligence.
“Shall we try it, dear?” he whispered tensely.
“Yes,” replied Lettice, clutching his arm.
To the surprise of the assembled guests, the bridal pair suddenly dived into the crowd and were lost to view. Arm in arm they “wormed,” with every twist, jerk, roll or sway known to the profession. As they passed through their guests, where passage seemed an impossibility, scarce a ripple in their wake, an admiring gasp went up from the assembled “wormers,” for they knew technique when they saw it. Once outside, passage through the non-“wormers” was easy. They halted on the kerb and smiled into each other's eyes. Oswald's brilliantined hair was unruffled, and his wife was as fresh as when a few moments ago she had taken her solemn vows. The admiring gasp of the assembled “wormers” swelled into a mighty roar of acclamation as the pair were seen.
“Our system works,” whispered Lettice thrillingly.
“A new era has dawned for ‘worming,'” breathed Oswald, his eyes shining as they gazed into the future.
Night. A steel locomotive dragged its burden up the curving incline of a mountain, over deep, wooded ravines, and north across flat, rolling plains. All around hung a mantle of darkness, rendering the countryside meaningless. Had it been daylight, the landscape would have slipped past in an ever-changing panorama. But it was night. And raining. Crystal drops fell on the carriage windows, hesitated a moment, then slowly welled down the smooth glass, joining together like the tributaries of a river flowing to the sea. Occasionally a solitary gleam in the darkness spoke of a quiet, country homestead, or a blurred jumble of lights and letters marked the passing of a wayside station. The Auckland express roared through the night, carrying onward a human freight, strangers flung together for a few hours, perhaps destined to become friends, perhaps never to meet again. Where were all these people going? And why? Did they travel in happiness or sorrow, did they anticipate or dread their journey's end?
The commercial traveller opened his eyes and made a fruitless effort to frustrate a yawn. For the sake of comfort he had removed his shoes and encased his feet in carpet slippers. His long legs were stretched out at an angle so that they obstructed the aisle. The portion of rack on which he had established a monopoly was full of luggage, decorated with the coloured labels of a dozen hotels. A discarded evening paper and a yellow-backed novel lay beside him. He was tired of reading, unable to doze for more than a few minutes, and his restless mind wandered into the realms of business.
“Must get Jackson's order to-morrow,” he thought. “He ought to be good for five hundred gross. Even a thousand. Depends what sort of a mood he's in. Say five hundred—better not anticipate too much. That'll be enough to show the firm I'm still with them. Nice little cheque for me, too. Commission on five hundred gross would be ….” He worked it out without recourse to pencil and paper. So gratifying was the result that he increased the imaginary order and worked it all out again.
Only the aisle separated him from a rather attractive girl. Not exactly pretty, he thought, but a pleasant face which suggested an equally pleasant disposition. He wondered if she were with the man sitting next to her. They certainly didn't behave like lovers, for they had only exchanged a few words, and those might have been merely the usual pleasantries in which fellow-passengers invariably indulge. Perhaps they were brother and sister. The girl was aware that he was watching her. She turned to the man at her side.
“George,” she whispered, “that man across the aisle …”
“What about him?”
“He—he keeps looking at me. Do you think he's guessed that we've just been married?”
George smiled tolerantly. “Don't be silly, Joan. How could he guess? We're not behaving like a couple of love-sick doves, are we?”
“No—but …”
“But what?” asked George, with the same tolerant smile.
“Perhaps we look newly-married. They say there's an indefinable something about honeymoon couples which makes them easy to detect. I should be so embarrassed if I thought all these people knew.”
“Listen, darling,” said George in a soothing voice. “Didn't we plan this a month ago? Didn't we agree that it would be perfectly ghastly to be pelted with confetti at the station?”
“Yes, George,” she admitted.
“And didn't we tell all our friends and relations that we were going on a motoring honeymoon, which was only an excuse to run the car into the nearest garage and to board the train without having a crowd of howling lunatics telling the world we'd just been married?”
“Yes, George, you arranged everything wonderfully.” George preened himself slightly. “Well, I must confess that it was a brilliant piece of strategy.”
He felt for his handkerchief, drawing it out with a flourish. A shower of multi-coloured confetti shot into the air. Joan blushed scarlet. George gasped, and hurriedly brushed the evidence from his coat and trousers. They both took a quick, side-long glance at the commercial traveller. He was grinning broadly. They were compelled to laugh. Their laughter disturbed the occupant of a seat in front. He turned slightly, and for a moment his profile was visible. He was obviously very worried. He looked tired, perhaps disillusioned. Depression seemed to intensify the lines time had carved deep on his face.
“The laughter of youth,” he thought; “joyous, carefree youth. Why should'nt they laugh? They'll be caught in the maelstrom of life soon enough without meeting it half-way.” He took a typewritten sheet from his pocket. It was divided into two columns, ominously headed Assets and Liabilities. He tried to study it, but the figures danced before his eyes, and with a sigh he returned the paper to his pocket.
“I'm getting old,” he thought; “twenty years ago I'd have met a crisis like this and revelled in it. I'd have gone down fighting to the last ditch.” He ran a hand through his snow-white hair, and shaded his eyes a moment as if the light were too strong for them. “But I'm too old. Tired. If Blair won't back me to-morrow, I'm finished. A few years ago he would have put thousands behind me without hesitation. To-morrow he may force me into liquidation.” He shivered slightly. “Liquidation!”
The express glided into a station and drew to a standstill. So many people passed him in the search for refreshments that he thought he must be alone, but, on looking round, he found one other remained—a woman! She sat with her chin cupped in her hand, staring into space. Presently she roused herself, and looked at her wrist-watch.
“Bob will know now,” she thought. “It was his late night, but he'll have been home half an hour. He'll have found my note. He'll know I've left him!” Oblivious to everything, she lit a cigarette, inhaling deeply to steady her nerves.
“He deserved it,” she told herself. “How could he deceive me? How could he be so cruel? I loved him so!” A quiet voice within her asked a question.
“If you loved him, couldn't you have forgiven him, or was your love just a poor, weak thing—valueless?” It staggered her for a moment, that question. But she recovered.
“I couldn't forgive him,” she thought. “He's shattered my faith in him. It could never be the same again.
Her cigarette burnt unevenly down one side. She ground it out and leaned back in her chair. Strange thoughts came to her. Her subconscious mind awakened as though from sleep, bringing back memories. She remembered the day they first met. How flattered she had been when he singled her out of a whole crowd of people! She remembered their honeymoon, their first year together. Of course they'd quarrelled, stupid, little quarrels which started about nothing and ending in both of them admitting they were wrong. They were absurdly happy in those days. She shook her head fiercely, trying to thrust out of her mind the memories that haunted her. But they gave her no peace. Bob was ill. Pneumonia. The doctor said it was touch and go. She could see it all so plainly. How she had prayed that he would not die. How desperately she had bargained for his life. And he had lived. But suppose he was ever ill again. She would not be there to nurse him. He might—die.
She was panic-stricken at the thought. She gripped the arm of her chair to steady herself. Should she go back? All she would lose was a little pride. Was it such a sacrifice to forgive someone you loved? If she left the train now, she could catch the Limited to Wellington when it came through and be home in the morning. But she must hurry. The passengers were returning to their seats. A bell clanged loudly. Gates were shut. She got to her fect in a panic. Her gloved hand reached to the rack for her bag, reached, and inexplicably paused. The enveloping panic fell away from her. The moment of forgiveness had passed. Her heart hardened till it was cold and unresponsive.
“He deceived me!” she thought, and slowly sat down. She had fought the same battle many times since leaving Wellington. She would fight it again and again until love got the upper hand of pride, or pride ousted love definitely from her heart…
The Auckland express moved on. When everyone else had settled down, a youth entered the compartment. He was obviously on holiday. The look in his eyes spoke of freedom from bondage, his attitude was distinctly blase and he sported a most hectic tie. It is doubtful whether the firm of Spiller, Bates and Young would have recognised their junior clerk. Pausing a moment for effect, as it were, he made his way to his seat. He pulled up the slack of his trousers—how carefully his mother had pressed them—and opened a newspaper. He did not wish to read, but by holding the paper at a certain angle he could watch Her. Even though he had not as yet spoken to her, he
The girl with the red hair had an open film magazine on her knees, and she was gazing rapturously at a photograph of Ronald Colman. Curiously enough, her thoughts had no connection with the film star.
“That nice boy wants to talk to me,” she was thinking. “I like the wave in his hair, and he's a rather strong chin. I hope he doesn't think the old gargoyle in the next seat's with me.”
“The old gargoyle,” unaware of this disrespectful thought, was nevertheless acutely aware of the proximity of a flapper. Mrs. Kirkby-West did not approve of flappers. In fact, she approved of very little. Her life was spent in interfering with other people's business under the guise of social reform. Journeying to Auckland for a visit to her married daughter, she was thinking with malicious delight that her son-in-law would not welcome her in his heart whatever words he forced himself to say. She had never liked him, for the simple reason that her daughter had fallen in love with him without consulting her. She would not have been unduly worried if her daughter had left him, for then she would have been able to say: Well, I warned you, didn't I? But then I don't expect you to take any notice of me. I'm only your mother. She half-hoped her son-in-law wouldn't come to meet her or that he would be late. She could then adopt the role of martyr, would insist that no one wanted her, and that the sooner she died the better. That would upset her daughter dreadfully.
“Isn't he wonderful?” said the girl with the red hair.
“Who?” demanded Mrs. Kirkby-West with instant suspicion.
“Ronald Colman. I think he's just lovely.”
Mrs. Kirkby-West sniffed. “For myself,” she remarked, “I dislike public idols. They are inevitably shallow.”
Privately she thought, “Ronald Colman, indeed! I suppose she thinks I don't know she's making eyes at that young man in the horrible tie. Presently, she'll drop something and he'll pick it up. He's only waiting an opportunity. There—I knew it!” A ball of wool attached to some article the flapper had been knitting rolled off her knee and careered merrily down the carriage. The flapper gave a cry of consternation. (“Just in case he wasn't looking!” thought Mrs. Kirky-West.) The clerk jumped hastily to his feet and pursued the truant ball of wool, which was finally halted by a masculine foot.
“Thanks!!” said the clerk, delighted with the turn of events. He hardly looked at the owner of the foot, a rather insignificant little man who seemed to have shrunk into his seat until he was hardly visible. But the little man hardly noticed him. He was busy with his own thoughts.
“I hope she's all right,” he was thinking. “It's rotten having to leave her at such a time, but men must work and women must weep.” He was much given to quotations, and even reasoned with himself in proverbs. “I couldn't have had to go away at a worse time. A cog wheel. That's all a man is. Perhaps there'll be a telegram for me at the next station. I hope so. The suspense is driving me crazy.”
He was out of the carriage before the train stopped. The first thing he heard was “Telegram for Jackson.”
“That's me!” he said, lacking his usual grammatical care. He feverishly opened the telegram, smoothed it, and …
“A son; both well,” he read.
He heaved a great sight of relief. The second phase was one of elation. For a minute he had to hold himself in check lest he should dash up to the nearest individual and babble the news. Then slowly he calmed down. His chest expanded, his shoulders squared. He trod the platform boldly. He was the proudest man on the Auckland express.
(Illus.rations by M. Matthows.)
The most astonishing thing in the life of Jimmy Lee was his sudden discovery one night that, apparently, he possessed amazing physical strength, which was all the more amazing, since Jimmy was a little man. His job did not tend to make him a Hercules, for he tapped the carriage wheels at the Junction with a long-handled hammer. Sometimes when he thought he had discovered a faulty wheel he tapped twice or even three times, so that his right arm might have acquired unusual punch. At any rate, when his wrath overcame him and he hit Long Charlie, during an argument at the Junction, to his horror, and the surprise of the other men, the big driver fell prone to the ground and lay there. Jonah rushed Jimmy away before Long Charlie could come to and kill him, was the way Jonah put it. So Jimmy went home in wonderment and missed the hilarity after he had gone.
Railwaymen are great practical jokers and this was a joke on Jimmy.
Next day, he noticed that everyone spoke to him respectfully, though none referred directly to the episode of the night before. Once when he was stooping to test the wheels of the Overland, he heard someone say something about what would happen when Long Charlie got hold of him; and it worried him a bit till he straightened up and saw that the speaker was only one of the young cleaners.
He went to the Junction that night, but Long Charlie was not there, being on the night run on the Limited. Jimmy kept his temper, an unusual thing for him, even when Mascot teased him about playing tunes on the wheels, for Jimmy often boasted that he had a musical ear.
At the Junction, however, for some reason a man picked on Jimmy and gave him a shove, and then Jimmy turned, still determined to keep his temper and shoved the man. He did not use all his strength, being afraid after the previous night's experience. Nevertheless, the man fell on his back with a crash and it took Jimmy and Mascot all their time to bring him round.
“You want to be careful,” Mascot said, “or they'll be locking you up. You're too dashed strong.”
After that, whenever Jimmy got a bit wild, the men would draw away and speak to him in placating words. And although he tried not to, Jimmy began to be cheeky, even to big men.
A new driver from the North came in one night on a special, and seeing Jimmy shouldered him roughly, but not intentionally so. Jimmy hauled him off to “crack him,” but Mascot grabbed his arm and when Jimmy had cooled down Mascot spoke in quiet tones to the stranger. What he said Jimmy could not hear, but the man shook Mascot off, and said—
“I don't care if he is ‘Whiskers Blake'.”
As he said it he turned and glared at Jimmy and laughed.
“What, that little squirt!” he sneered.
And then Jimmy hit him, right on the ear, and down went the driver, while his fireman, who was not in the joke, stared in amazement and edged away, in case Jimmy was fighting a tribal war, which would include him.
While Jimmy was still gazing at the prostrate man, three enginemen made a rush at him, and grabbed him with his arms held tightly against his sides.
“You're dangerous,” one of them said. Jimmy just went mad then.
“Am I?” he yelled. “Well look out,” and to the amazement of the fireman and himself—the only two who were not in the joke—he flung the three off, knocked one of them down and walked off majestically.
“The next time you touch me, you won't get off so easy,” he said, and went off into the night to think about this strange access of strength which had come to him. Perhaps it was heavensent, he thought. When he looked down at his slight form and bandy legs, he remembered that bandy men often were very strong in the legs, but it was in his arms, too, that the strength lay, and they weren't bandy. Perhaps, thought Jimmy, if he trained he might become a great wrestler and make big money.
When Jimmy's wife woke the next morning, she was confronted by the spectacle of her husband with very little on, standing before the narrow slit of mirror in their time-payment-wardrobe. He was posing like a strong man, flexing his arms and waving his hips about.
“What the devil's the matter with you?” she asked in disrespectful tones, not at all suited for addressing a man who was the terror of the Junction. But then, Jimmy was not a boastful man at home and she knew nothing of his prowess as a strong man.
Jimmy looked at her pityingly. Women were so superficial. They never looked beneath the surface of a man. That was why any flash fellow could win their affections, while men like himself, real men, had to demonstrate whatever qualities of charm they had hidden away inside themselves.
“I'm just wondering” Jimmy said.
“Wondering what?” she asked acidly.
“Where my great strength came from.”
“What?” She sat up in her astonishment and stared at him. “Why you haven't got the strength of a rat.” With an exclamation of disgust, as though all her disappointment in ever marrying him had at last found vent, she lay down again.
For a moment Jimmy considered the idea of showing her how strong he was. But there, she was a woman, and who could man-handle a woman without losing dignity? So he went on with his posing, till his exasperated wife told him to clear out and milk the cow. The cow offered him a fair chance to be strong without any come-back. That astonished beast never had such a rough handling in her life, and at last expressed her feelings in a long, sad “moo.” This brought Mrs. Jimmy to the back door to ask what he was doing. She caught him in the act of trying to throw the cow's hind-quarters towards the leg-rope, when he could have pushed them.
“Well, if you aren't batty,” she said.
“You mind you own business,” said Jimmy. “Who's milking this cow, you or me?”
There was a quality in his voice which made Mrs. Lee pause. After all, women didn't handle men by brute strength, only in special cases, and it was well to humour them. So she laughed and said, “All right, Samson, don't get your hair off.”
But that morning, she spoke to Mrs. Day, her neighbour, whose husband worked at the coal bins and had an arm like a sledgehammer.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Day, “Tom's been telling me about Jimmy laying into half the men, sometimes three at a time, and knocking them out.”
Tom had not told his wife the joke, though, so she could not tell it to Jimmy's wife, and that lady decided she had better reconsider her idea of giving Jimmy a thrashing, to show her superiority, as she had done once or twice before, she being quite twice his size. Jimmy came home that evening, walking like a gladiator. He had just “cracked” Danny Blow, the shunter, for cheeking him and only a friendly switch handle which Danny grabbed, had saved him from going into the ditch.
“I want my tea,” Jimmy said, “and when I want it, I want it.”
“Yes,” his wife quavered. “It's ready, Jimmy.” She hurried away wondering who had been Jimmy's latest victim and what she should do if he became violent. For Mrs. Lee's only explanation of Jimmy's herculean strength was that he was going mad. Madmen it was said
While Jimmy was eating his tea, Mrs. Day informed her, in a hurried talk over the fence, of the man-handling of Danny.
“Dear, oh, dear!” Mrs. Lee exclaimed, “what chance will I have if he takes to me?” and even her great size did not make Mrs. Day laugh, for Jimmy's outbreaks were becoming the talk of the Junction. In fact, more than that, for the tales were carried up and down the line and trainmen, who only occasionally went to the Junction, hoped for an early call at that station, so as to see Jimmy at work.
Sometimes, in the yard, a man would ask Jimmy to give him a hand with a big lift. But Jimmy had got proud and would say, insultingly, “Lift the thing yourselves. I'm not a porter.”
Then he would go to his job of tapping the wheels, with a song of exultation over his strength weaving into the “tink-tonk” of his long hammer.
One day after doing this to the “fast passenger” Jimmy went into a goods shed to see some of the men there. They included Danny, the shunter whom Jimmy had taught to keep his place. A mixed train was shunting outside, and Jimmy thought Danny was taking a spell while the train was working up the yard. Someone spoke of Jimmy's strength and hoped, ingratiatingly, that Jimmy would never take to him, the speaker. Jimmy regarded him superciliously and said:
“It all depends on yerself, how ye behave.”
Then a man spoke.
“Them shed doors are heavy and hard to move. Takes two men,” he said, “to move them.”
“You mean two ordinary men,” Danny said.
“Yes, that's what I mean. But why?”
“Why? Because Jimmy here could shove one himself.”
“Bet you a pound he couldn't?”
Danny looked at Jimmy inquiringly, as though to get the tip about backing him for a pound. Jimmy's look being friendly, Danny said: “I'll bet you a pound he can. Go on Jimmy!”
With a strong man's dignity, Jimmy walked across to the big door which hung from oiled wheels and rails high up above the doorway. The door was wide open. He suddenly heaved and the door ran smoothly, till it quite closed the opening, when it came to rest with a soft thud, leaving the shed in semi darkness.
Still swaggering, Jimmy walked after the door to shove it back. Then it seemed the end of the world came. There was an ear-splitting crash, and a steel truck, one of a “rake” of six which were being shunted into the shed, came clean through the door, almost running over Jimmy, whose agility much eclipsed his strength.
Leaving the door a tattered shred hanging from its rollers, the trucks rolled into the shed where Danny cleverly braked them, a process which he had been waiting to do, but in which he was much handicapped by the paralysing laughter which afflicted him, along with the other men there.
Jimmy just stood there, bewildered and speechless till the yard boss, who had heard the crash, came over, and in heated language wanted to know all about it.
When they could speak, and it was only in gasps, they tried to explain, but the only coherent part was Danny's words.
“Jimmy shut the door.”
“They bet me I couldn't,” Jimmy exploded.
“Couldn't shut that door?” the yard boss said, with its patent rollers, why a baby could blow it along.”
The yard boss looked at the shattered door.
“I reckon that will cost £20 to mend,” he said, “and who is to pay for it?”
“What about Jimmy giving a strong man show at the picture palace,” Danny suggested. “That would bring in a few pounds.”
Even the yard boss laughed then—this was in the days when yard bosses did laugh sometimes—and he took Jimmy by the shoulder and said:
“Look, Jimmy, they've been pulling your leg. You couldn't kill a flapper. But we'll get back on them. I'm going to pass the hat round and make them all put in to pay for that door. And here comes No. 61. You get right down and tune up her wheels, while I fix this mess.”
And every man paid up—for railwaymen are kind as they are hard, in a grim way. And Mrs. Jimmy—well, she was so incensed at the trick that had been played on her husband, she worked the women at the Junction up to such an anti-man feeling that all the husbands were afraid to go home at nights.
“You and your kids’ tricks, said Mrs. Long Charlie scornfully to her husband, and she voiced the anger of every wife at the Junction.
Turning out an old drawer during one of those intermittent fits of tidyness that come spasmodically to irritate every family, we came across an old railway ticket. It was somewhat the worse for wear and punched in a multitude of places with calabalistic signs, meaningless to the traveller, but telling their story in detail to the railwayman.
It started a flow of reminiscences that lasted until the fire was only a glow and the chill of the room sent us off to bed with the drawer still untidy, but with all the memories of a happy journey once again fresh in our minds.
We went back to that day when we were on the station—the Mate and I—to say nothing of the luggage. With the exception of two small suit cases, I had booked the whole of it through, taking advantage of the comprehensive scheme by which the Railways Department takes both the worry and your travel paraphernalia off your mind, to return them only when you cross the threshold of your final destination.
I have nothing to say against the Mate. She is a wife in a thousand, which is as it should be; but, at the same time, she is a woman with all the eternal feminine distrust of official systems. Although we had booked our seats and could thus have arrived even at the last moment and walked into them, I found myself on the platform half an hour before starting time.
Being a mere male I put our bags in our reserved seats and started to become imbued with the holiday spirit. We had our tickets and our seats and the railway was looking after the rest. But the Mate had different ideas. Our luggage? Had they brought it? Was it on the train? She didn't care what they said. If I didn't go and look, she would. In the end we both went. She got satisfaction, and I got a lesson in tact—a sample of the courtesy we were to receive from one end of the trip to the other.
To the uninitiated the guards van was the centre of chaos. Parcels, boxes and miscellaneous freight were lying in heaps everywhere, intermingled with piles of luggage. People were coming and going; porters were arriving, pushing contrivances with three wheels, swinging them round the crowd, through the crowd. Nothing remained the same for more than a minute. Porters seized parcels, glanced at the address and pushed them into the van, calling their destination as they did so. From somewhere inside, a voice answered, giving the impression of an echo. Standing nearby, giving instructions, answering questions, making entries, receiving papers, the calmest man in the crowd, was the guard.
“Ask him if it's on board,” the Mate persisted.
I looked at the crowd, at the hustle, and the mountains of things of all sorts, each item of which had to be stowed in its proper place during the next twenty minutes, and then at the guard, and my courage forsook me.
“It will be all right,” I answered meekly.
“It won't. If you won't ask him, I will, snapped the Mate, adding—woman-like, in parenthesis—“so there!”
Lessons are good for women, and especially for wives, and I stood aside and watched her go to her rebuff. The guard was answering a porter's question, reading some papers that had just been given to him, and trying not to see two men standing waiting for a chance to break in. They never got the chance. The Mate joined them, speaking ere she arrived.
“Guard, can you tell me if our luggage is on board. It came by carrier and is supposed to go right through.”
I chuckled inwardly in anticipation of what must follow, but the effort died away, for the guard turned to her instantly, touched his cap, and smiled.
“If you will tell me the name and where you are going I will find out for you, madam.”
She gave both, and putting his head in the opening of the van, he called into its depths.
“Hold a minute and I'll see,” came a reply from the echo. “Yes, it's here. Anything wrong?”
“No, only the lady was inquiring. Yes, it's there, madam, and I'll see that it's put off myself.”
“Thank you, Guard.”
“Isn't he a nice man?” she chattered.
“Who?” I asked vacantly.
“The guard, of course. He is going to look after it for us and put it off himself.”
As we made our way up the crowded platform I was wondering why it is that a woman will take the word of a total stranger before that of her husband.
A sudden flood of womenfolk engulfed us, and I was gradually eased to the edge of the circle that was a babel of talk. It was the first moment's real respite I had had for two days, and rolling a cigarette, I stood and watched the crowd milling about the station platform.
Already there were groups about the carriage windows. At the feet of one such crowd I noticed confetti, and, looking up, saw a girl radiant with the excitement of the greatest day of her life, laughing and crying at the same time, while beside her, happy, but with a somewhat sheepish grin on his face, was the newly-made husband.
A porter pushed his way through the crowd toward me, protecting and guiding an old lady upon whose snow-white hair rested a rusty black bonnet.
Romance! To-day just an old woman, commonplace and worn. But sixty years ago a winsome, bonny lass who also in a shower of confetti, had stood by the side of her man and had gone out into the raw back country to do her share in the making of a new land. Work had cruelly lined her hands and seamed her face, but in the eyes that looked into mine for a moment was that which spoke of the full understanding of the peace which passeth all understanding.
Who was she? Where was she going? I do not know, nor ever shall. Just another of the hundreds who, like ourselves, would take a seat in the train, be borne to their destination with speed and comfort, without giving a passing thought to the skill and genius of the men of vision who had planned and constructed the railway, or of those who would work and watch over the flying Express on this occasion.
I strolled up the platform to where the engine had just been coupled up, a white feather trailing from its safety valve. To me there is always a fascination about a railway engine. Always my mind swings back to the boiling kettle and the youth watching it—and wondering. The evolution of that boiling kettle into a machine of tremendous hidden power translating you for a moment into a different perspective; making you feel puny, infantile, and somehow insufficient, interests me profoundly.
A little while earlier in the day the engine and the carriages had been but isolated units of railway gear. Now they were united and became the Express, a living, vital unit that would pull out from the station, leave the old familiar landmarks behind and disappear—not into the unknown, but to where other people lived in other places, to where new environment lent enchantment.
The sudden clangour of a gong brought me to the realisation that I should be missed at the circle. I found that I had been.
“Wherever have you been? Here have I been looking for you everywhere. Come and look after things.”
Being experienced in those things that make for “Safety First” in the marital department, I answered not, but shepherded the Mate on board the train, put her in the seat next the window, smiled inanely every time one of the cluster at the window politely remembered that I was also going on the trip, and prayed that the tactful guard would wave his little green flag and let us go where women friends were not—at least not those who knew, and regarded me merely as the Mate's husband.
True to code, he did; and the next moment the Express had started, carrying us with her to new things, new scenery, and holidays.
I rested my back against the comfort of the seat, stretched my legs and relaxed.
“Thank God,” I said.
“What's that?” asked the Mate.
“Nothing,” I replied. “I was only thinking aloud.”
There are wild horse hunts now and again in the wide fenceless areas in the West Taupo sector of the King Country. That rough territory, one of the few wild corners of the country remaining in the North Island, waiting for the transforming touch of the pakeha settler, is roved over by many mobs of ownerless horses. These are the descendants of horses which strayed from the settled parts of the King Country and the Waikato borderland.
There have been wild horses in the Rohepotae ever since the early settlers, just as there were on the great Kaingaroa Plain until the State fencing and tree-planting operations narrowed down the free prairie country. There used to be exciting sport and profit combined when the Maoris of Galatea and elsewhere in the Rangitaiki Valley rode in chase of the wild horses and captured the pick of them by driving them up into some blind gully where cliffs barred their escape and roping them quite in the Wild West manner.
In the mid'-eighties, riding about the fern and flax and manuka-covered plains south of Puniu River, we used to see many mobs of wild horses, watching us and scattering away over those then silent lands of the King Country, unpeopled except for a small Maori settlement here and there. The Manukarere plain, now a well-settled region of good farms and homes, was a great free, roaming place for countless horses. They could be described as mostly weeds and scrubbers, but now and again a spirited-looking stallion was seen that the Maoris and some of the border settlers chased and sometimes ran down. It was risky work riding over that fern country, as some of us discovered; the deserted cultivations of the Maori were full of old potato-pits, overgrown, and unseen until one was right on them, and occasionally a horse stumbled into one—but never the wild horses, they knew them too well.
Something has been written in past issues of the Railways Magazine of the charm of old historic churches in New Zealand. One not previously mentioned comes to memory at the moment. It is, I think, unique in its setting. This is the little English Church in that pretty and old-fashioned township, Pirongia (formerly Alexandra, named in 1864 after the just-wedded Queen Alexandra), on the Waipa River, one of the pioneer military settlements of the Waikato. It stands in the centre of a redoubt, the long-deserted headquarters of the Armed Constabulary, on the summit of a commanding knoll, with the Waipa River curving round its base.
The redoubt is a square earthwork, consisting of a deep trench and a parapet, with flanking angles; the ditch is crossed by a rustic plank bridge, replacing the original drawbridge. Whares and tents once occupied the little frontier fort, which was garrisoned by the A.C. force until about the year 1885. Then, when a watch on the Maori border was no longer necessary, the soldier-policemen were withdrawn, and the place was given over to the Church as a site for the place of worship. Fortunately there is a sufficient local sense of historic values to ensure the preservation of the entrenchment in as nearly as possible its original form, the one surviving relic of its kind in a Waikato township.
The historic lava-rock Church at Mangere, on Manukau Harbour, is a place with quite a remarkable history. The famous Te Wherowhero Potatau, who became the first Maori King, and his people, built it about eighty years ago, when those Waikatos were regarded as one of the bulwarks of infant Auckland; Sir George Grey and his Government gave them a special grant of land at Mangere. In after years it fell to pakeha
Leading spirits among the descendants of the pioneer Scottish Highland-Nova Scotian settlers of Waipu, in North Auckland, are having a historical record of the settlement compiled.
To the clan lists of Waipu, Mahurangi and Omaha, there really ought to be added the tribe MacNeptune. They were amphibious bushmen and ploughmen, for nearly every man of them had had a turn at the sea some time or other. Two or three of the barques and brigs which brought the Nova Scotians out to this part of the world from cold and bleak Cape Breton were manned by families. There was a doughty Hielan'man named Meiklejohn, who built a vessel in a Nova Scotian bay and sailed it to New Zealand; his nine sons formed the crew. The patriarch and his family settled at Big Omaha, where they built many a brigan-tine and schooner for Auckland owners.
The extinct volcanic mountain, in its various forms, gives much that is arresting and dramatic to New Zealand's scenic beauty. The Far North, the Auckland isthmus, the northern part of the King Country, and in the South the hills around Akaroa and Lyttelton Harbour, are enhanced in beauty and sense of power and forcefulness by the presence of those long-dead cones and crags and peaks of volcanic rock, many of them now softly grassed in token of the long reign of peace.
There is one mountain above most others that has always seemed to me charged with the possibilities of a great awakening and that is Mt. Edgecumbe, the Putauaki of the Maoris. It is quite startling to come out on such a peak, after passing out of the Otitapu bush on the main road from Rotorua to Whakatane. It plunges up from the plain, grandly isolated from all other mountains; its crater is clear cut, its sides are set at a steeper angle even than those of Ngau-ruhoe.
From the upper Rangitaiki plain the old volcano at sunset sometimes gives a wonderful picture of a burning mountain, when the lofty cone top seems to blaze again with its lava fires that died down centuries ago.
No wonder the much-berated shore-whaler of Old New Zealand was a chronically grimy, or rather oily fellow, as described by the missionaries and other disapproving persons. How could he be expected to wash to any purpose, with soap at five shillings a bar? That is the price he was compelled to pay, according to a chronicle lately given to the light, the journal of Captain James Heberley, one-time whaler at Port Underwood and later the port of Wellington's first pilot. His story is included in a book of historical reminiscences of the Marl-borough district by Mr. C. A. McDonald. The Sydney shipowners and merchants who controlled many whaling establishments on these coasts established stores in the bays and sold necessaries at exorbitant prices. Heberley mentions the five-shilling bar of soap as an example. Sugar cost a shilling a pound. A pair of moleskin trousers cost £1. At that rate it would have been sound economy to take to the Maori mat. And if a whaler wanted to get back to Sydney, there was a kind of combine amongst the profiteering shipowners and captains, who charged him £60 for the passage. The good old times!
There are no revolutionary style changes this month, but, to the keen observer, slight developments are noticeable—a returning simplicity of line, a slackening in the power held by gingham and organdie, the growing importance of the sleeve theme and the omnipresence of the ensemble.
Fabrics are becoming richer; silks have a soft, dull lustre. Georgette and lace in combination, or the latter alone, form graceful robes.
A charming afternoon gown I saw recently featured the new long cowl sleeve. The frock was in a draped princess style with a diamante buckle at the waist.
Many ensembles comprise a dressy frock in patterned silk with a plain three-quarter length silk coat for street wear. The coat may be sleeveless, or have full three-quarter or long sleeves. On one outfit, in pink and black checked silk, a wide organdie and lace collar and bow on the frock matched the gauntlet cuffs on the coat. A simply cut frock is lent interest by a checked or striped scarf knotted loosely at the neck-line. Bows showing on the latest frocks are not placed merely for effect. With some gowns, tie-ends, attached to the yoke or centre panel in front, pass to the back and tie in a smart bow. For freshening up holiday frocks, nothing could be easier than the acquisition of collar and cuff sets. These are showing in organdie and cotton lace fabrics, and in many cases feature frilling and bows. Collars are mainly of Peter Pan or Quaker types, and cuffs in fancy gauntlet shapes.
Smart two-piece suits for summer wear are fashioned of assam or heavy tussore silk or of the new linen tweed. Jumpers are still smart. I saw an unusual cream jumper knitted in a lacy design with heavy silk. The long full sleeves had wide, green stripes, running from shoulder to wrist. With this was worn a slim, green skirt, in which the fullness was supplied by two inserted pleats back and front. For wear with suits blouses are becoming more decorative. Lace, drawn-thread work, faggoting, broderie anglaise and peasant embroidery are featured. One charming blouse, worn with a midnight-blue suit, was of white China silk, hand-embroidered down the front panel in shades of blue, black and coral.
Handbags with scarves to match have been featured in tweed for some time. Now we see expensive leather bags sold with smart silk scarves to match. The other day a friend, bound for the links, showed me her new golf hand-bag, in dark brown leather, fitted with delightful coloured tees, golf-scorer and pencil.
Raincoats, so necessary during our New Zealand summer, are showing in many styles, but mainly in two-colour combinations. White and black are particularly smart, especially in checks or plaids. Umbrellas feature stripes as does the latest travelling gear. It would almost seem that some super-smart deck-chairs had got their canvas involved in the latest
In accordance with the return to femin-ality in fashion, dressing-gowns are becoming daintier. They feature lace, ruffles and fur. Nightgowns, beautifully embroidered, are having an equal showing with pyjamas. Dressing-jackets are again coming into vogue. I saw a charming trousseau one in egg-shell blue, featuring sleeves puffed to the elbow.
The laundering work of many a housewife has been reduced since breakfast and luncheon sets became popular. For the small household, a delightful striped or checked cloth, with napkins to match, is quite large enough. Quite a new idea is to have china striped in the same colour as the cloth.
Afternoon-tea cloths are often exquisitely embroidered. They, too, have napkins to match. The “sit-down” afternoon tea is becoming very popular among those who “bridge.”
Gay buffet runners, luncheon cloths, wagon covers, can be worked in bright shades of coarse embroidery twist on linen or crash.
Whatever your bathroom colour scheme, towels can be obtained to match it, and very reasonably. For guest towels, pale pastel embroidery on white or cream linen is charming, while huckaback in pastel shades needs only to be hemmed.
Any confirmed picnic enthusiast must covet one of the new picnic cases, fitted with expanding sandwich tins, thermos flasks, and the new unbreakable ware in complete sets for from two to six people. Even if you cannot obtain one of these, set aside a box or a corner of the kitchen cabinet at home for picnic gear. If you like to “boil the billy” you will need bottles of varying sizes with screw tops for milk, the billy, and tins of suitable sizes for sugar and tea. Small spice tins are handy for salt and pepper. If you have to consider the weight of the picnic basket, keep a supply of cardboard plates and goblets on your picnic shelf. Paper tablecloths and table napkins, and grease proof paper for wrapping sandwiches, should also find a place. The packing of a picnic lunch is no longer a problem when all the necessary jars and tins are waiting for you to fill them.
During the Summer season the hair often becomes dry and brittle, owing to the action of salt water. It is necessary to wash the hair thoroughly with fresh water to get rid of the salt. Oil shampoos are beneficial for dry, bleached or sunburned hair. Warm the oil and apply to the scalp with a piece of absorbent cotton wool. Then massage the scalp thoroughly for at least ten minutes.
Then take a towel and wring it out in hot water, and wrap round the head, When it cools, wring it out again in hot water and apply once more. Renew several times. This treatment opens the pores of the scalp and allows the oil to be
Regular massage is essential to keep the scalp healthy and the hair glossy and luxuriant, by stimulating the circulation through the scalp and roots of the hair.
To massage, first part the hair in the centre, then press the tips of the fingers firmly on the scalp on the line of parting, and moving them in a rotary motion, at the same time pressing the sides of the head with the heels of the hands, so that the scalp moves with the action of the hands. Repeat this process until the whole of the head has been massaged, which should take at least five minutes.
Regular brushing also stimulates and invigorates the hair and scalp. Do your one hundred strokes with the brush every day. Brushing keeps the hair clean and glossy. Make a parting every inch or so and brush first on one side and then on the other of each strand of hair, using the brush from the scalp upwards.
Brushes and combs should be kept scrupulously clean.
Peggv (aged seven): There, I thought so, Dolly has an awful cold.
Nancy: What are you going to give her, some medicine?
Peggy: Oh, no, I'll give her “Baxter's.” That's not a medicine.
Nancy I know it's not; it's too nice.
That is typical of the way kiddies regard Baxter's Lung Preserver, as a pleasant, soothing remedy that quickly fixes their coughs, colds, and sore throats. They like its pleasant flavour.
Always give “Baxter's” to your children. Get a bottle with your next groceries. 1/6, 2/6, and 4/6. *
During the hot weather it is a good plan to rub the feet with talcum or boracic acid powder and also to shake a little into the stockings. This will keep the feet comfortable and cool.
Daily massage with methylated spirits or Eau-de-Cologne is very comforting. This treatment stimulates the circulation and tones up the skin, if your feet are inclined to be inflamed or painful during the hot weather. Q-tol is also found beneficial for this purpose.
To the person who is predisposed to chilblains during the winter, daily massage is essential.
Fruit for jam must not be over-ripe and should be picked on a fine day. It must be clean and dry, as when wet it is likely to get mouldy if not used immediately, and the keeping and setting qualities are impaired. Use pure white sugar. Stir with a wooden spoon.
Do not leave fruit standing in a metal pan, as the acids of the fruit are likely to form poisonous compounds with the metal.
In making jelly, cover the fruit with water and boil for at least an hour. Skim well and strain through a bag. Do not squeeze. Add one pound of sugar to one pint of juice and boil until it jellies—usually about half an hour. The less jelly is stirred the clearer it will be.
6lbs. Tomatoes, 6 lemons, llb. preserved ginger, 6lbs. sugar. Skin the tomatoes (if the tomatoes are put in hot water the skin is found to come off easily) and cut into slices. Peel the lemons as thinly as possible, and shred the peel and ginger. Squeeze the juice and add to the tomatoes, with the sugar. Boil all together until it jellies when tested on a saucer.
N.B.—Green tomatoes may be used and oranges substituted for the lemons.
Use winter pears for preference. Allow 3/4lb. sugar to 11lb. of fruit, ½lb. of preserved ginger, and two lemons to six pounds of fruit. Cut the pears into pieces, sprinkle half the sugar over them, and leave overnight; next day add the ginger (cut small), shredded lemon, and the remainder of the sugar. Boil for two hours, or until fruit looks clear.
11b. Tomatoes, ½lb. passion fruit weighed in their skins, 3/4lb. sugar. Boil the tomatoes to a pulp (after skinning them) and add the strained passion fruit. Bring to the boil, then add sugar, and boil until it jellies (about half an hour).
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If one has a vegetable garden, the question “What vegetables will be best for dinner today?” is easily answered when there are rows of fresh vegetables to choose from. In the town it is not so easy and requires thought.
Care must be taken in the preparation and cooking of vegetables, in order to conserve their nutritive value. Vegetables should be washed thoroughly in cold water but not soaked, as there would be a loss of vitamins and mineral matter. Never put soda in the water, as it destroys the vitamins. The colour of green vegetables is kept by cooking them quickly in an uncovered vessel. Cook vegetables until soft in boiling salted water, or in some cases steam them. Time for cooking the same vegetables varies according to the age and freshness, so judgment must be used in modifying the time table. The water in which vegetables are cooked should be saved for making sauces, soups and gravies, as this water contains the most valuable part of the vegetables —the vitamins and mineral salts.
“There's many things a chap can do without at a pinch, when times are hard and the clouds refuse to roll by, but tobacco is not one of them,” wrote a contributor to a London weekly not long since. “Hard times? Why then it is precisely that the smoker craves more than ever the soothing, care-dispelling influence of good tobacco.” So it is. Despite the depression, the demand for the weed in the Old Land is constantly growing. And it's precisely the same in New Zealand where nine out of every ten men smoke—to say nothing of women—yes, and most of them smoke one or other of the four famous brands, Riverhead Gold, Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Cavendish, and Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead). Once you try them you always buy them!—So sweet, so pure, so fresh and fragrant are they! The toasting does it! How's that? Because it eliminates most of the nicotine and thus makes this beautiful tobacco safe for the smoker, who can indulge ad. lib. with absolute impunity!*
Browsing in a second-hand bookshop the other day I made another interesting addition to my collection of first numbers, in the initial issue of ‘“The Huia,” a New Zealand annual which made its appearance twenty-two years ago. Whether “The Huia” received a sufficiently encouraging reception to bring out a second issue I know not. The goods were there all right, but the window-dressing was dolorous, the make-up being painfully amateurish, and in the eighty-two pages never a picture was to be found.
But what he lacked in expert salesmanship, the editor, one Edward Kempe, made up in the quality of the wares presented. Kempe was evidently a good picker, for every name in the table of contents was destined to be well-known throughout New Zealand in later years. Just a few of the contributors:—G. B. Lancaster (now a prosperous novelist), Johannes C. Anderson (Librarian of the Turnbull Library and author of several works on New Zealand), Will Lawson (our nomadic poet), Alan E. Mulgan (playwright and man of letters, now on the Auckland “Star”), Miss Jessie Mackay (one of our best-known lady poets), and Miss Alice A. Kenny. Quite an imposing selection for such an unpretentious little journal as “The Huia.”
The editor's foreword is sadly interesting: “We believe” (he wrote) “that ‘The Huia’ will help to alter the popular opinion that local talent is not worth considering. As things are at present, the writer of promise in the Australasian colonies only waits his chance to migrate to the market of the world, there to be swallowed up in the host of talented men and women who feed the London press. His few distinctive notes are lost in the tumult of voices, and his native country is the poorer.”
Alas, Mr. Kempe, you wrote these lines some thirty years ago, and “public opinion” in New Zealand is still the same. And so it will remain until New Zealand editors give greater and more material encouragement to our own writers and artists.
One of the most interesting book printing jobs ever turned out in New Zealand was done by the “N.Z. Times” Office in 1908, when it produced Frank Morton's “Laughter and Tears.” One thousand and twenty-five copies were printed, quite a big figure for a book of poems in those days. In addition, 125 numbered copies were printed on special paper, each signed by the author. Although twenty-five years of progress have followed the production of the book, we can look at the work now and admit that the “Times” people made a wonderfully fine job of it. My copy is inscribed by Frank Morton to the late Dick Harris as “a slight token of appreciation and cordial comradeship.”
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Writing to me recently, regretting the non-publication of the “New Zealand Artists’ Annual” this year, a leading New Zealand art critic observed: “They say that people never value a thing till they are deprived of it. I think the publication of the ‘Annual’ next year will bring a reaction in its favour.”
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Discussing art in general, the same writer goes on to say: “One thing is striking and that is the number of leading Australian artists who have come from New Zealand—Elioth Gruner, Roland Wakelin, Charles Wheeler, Albert Collins, Maud Sherwood, Robert Johnston, H. Septimus Power, George Finey, Ellis, Unk White and so on. Low was one of the big cartoonists on the ‘Bulletin’ and there must be several others.”
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A sweet simplicity and a deep love for Nature are revealed by Miss F. D. Chepmell in the booklet of verses recently published by South's Book Depot, Wellington, under the title of “Songs of the Unseen.” A charming little gift book.
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Some time ago I mentioned the possibility of a branch of the famous P.E.N. Club being formed in New Zealand. A preliminary meeting in this respect will probably be called in the near future.
Another Annual recently made its first appearance in the “New Zealand Radio Record Annual.” Brightly written and illustrated, it has a general appeal, and is not solely designed for radio fans. It was encouraging to note the number of stories, poems and articles from New Zealand writers—all paid for, too!
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That well-known Sydney publishing house, Messrs. Angus and Robertson Ltd., have of late been specialising in children's gift books. Two charming examples reached me recently. “A Bunch of Wild Flowers” is both written and illustrated by Ida Rentoul Outhwaite. The spirit of the child rambling through the fields and murmuring sweet little poems to those rare flowers of Nature's own garden, has materialised in this book like a daisy chain built by the fairies themselves. If I were a millionaire I would give a copy of this book to every child in New Zealand. And now to be mathematical. There are twenty-one poems in the book, four beautiful plates in colour, nineteen full page drawings and other illustrations, and the price is only 4/6.
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The other book is just as delightful. A story this time, “Blinky Bill the Quaint Little Australian.” Blinky is an Australian bear, and the authoress, Dorothy Wall, tells in a captivating manner all his wonderful adventures. Being an artist as well as a writer, Miss Wall gives us the real pictorial aspect of her story, in many delightful illustrations in colour and black and white. This book is also moderately priced at 4/6.
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I heard a good yarn the other day about a bookseller's representative who called on an up-country farmer.
“Do your children go to school?”
“Yairs,” said the cocky.
“Well, you should buy them an encyclopaedia.”
“Danged if I will,” said McMutton. “Just let ‘em pad the hoof, like their dad did afore them.”
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S. G. August, of Invercargill, is one of the keenest literary enthusiasts in New Zealand. When he is not busy with a growing business in books, old and new (Sam is a keen first edition enthusiast), he is either writing poems or articles on spurring on literary endeavour in other directions. His verses, written under the pen name of “Southerner,” are well known, and certainly many of them deserve to be preserved ‘tween covers. Several years ago his Stewart Island verses appeared, and now we have his “Oreti Anthology,” being the best of his poems published in the “Southland Times.” The author's facility in verse is demonstrated in a wide range of subjects—from compositors to kingfishers. Living so close to Stewart Island, “Southerner” should, under the right inspiration, give to the world one of these days another book, “Odes to an Oyster.”
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“For Those That Love It,” by Myrtle White (Angus and Robertson, Sydney). The title of this fine novel of Australian station life is inspired by Banjo Paterson's lines:
For those that love it and understand The salt bush plain is a wonderland.
Mrs. White “understands.” She proved it in her earlier novels, notably “Sheepmates,” and now we have her engrossing story of “Tarra-watta,” and the romance and adventure it held for those who lived on the Darling Station. Price 6/-.
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“Pat of Silver Bush,” by L. M. Montgomery (Angus and Robertson, Sydney). It is claimed that over two million of the Montgomery books (“Anne of Green Gables,” “Anne of Avonlea,” etc.) have been sold. This story of Pat should add further to this substantial total. It is a story of youth and romance on Prince Edward Island. Price 6/-.
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Robert Desmond Tate, the author of the recently published Australian novel, “The Dough-man” (Endeavour Press, Sydney) was educated in New Zealand.
William Moore, the well-known art critic, is publishing shortly his “Story of Australian Art,” in two sumptuous volumes (edition 1000, subscription £2 2s.). The author's wife is Dora Wilcox, the well-known New Zealand poetess.
Amusing to read in the papers letters from amateur financiers and reformers embodying wild schemes to cure depression. Some of these effusions would make a cat laugh. One Auckland correspondent proposes a further tax on cigarettes of 2d. per packet, and a similar additional tax on tobacco. Smokers objecting are counselled to smoke less so that the increased prices of tobacco won't matter to them! This genius ought to be made Finance Minister right away! It is a fatuous idea. Surely it should be obvious that any further taxation of tobacco must result in a largely lessened demand, with a corresponding drop in customs’ revenue—to say nothing of the inevitable increase of unemployment occasioned by the decreased production of tobacco. Smoking is not necessary, argues this correspondent. Isn't it? Pure, soothing, and nerve-calming tobacco, such as Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Cavendish, River-head Gold, and Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead), are more necessary than ever just now. Practically free from nicotine they are a boon and a blessing unspeakable when times are hard and things go wrong.
One great advantage of railway travelling is that the time can be occupied in reading, knitting, card-playing, etc. One railway journey proved very lucrative to me; comfortably seated in a corner by the carriage window, I correctly solved a crossword puzzle, thereby winning a substantial cash prize! Upon another occasion I was travelling by train to an examination centre. Taking out a text-book, I felt an urge to “swot” up a certain chapter. A jolly good thing for me I responded! That chapter was the answer to the first question on the examination paper! Trains for me.—“Pohutu.”
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Anthony Ward's interesting article, “A Romance of the Forties,” in the December issue of the “N.Z. Railways Magazine,” giving the experiences of his grandfather, reminded me of my own great-grandfather's history. As a young man the craving for adventure caused him, about 1839 or 1840, to emigrate to Sydney from the West Indies, where his father owned large sugar plantations. Leaving Australia, he sailed on the ship “Indemnity” for Auckland, where he entered the Government service in April, 1843. Shortly afterwards he was appointed Chief Postmaster at Wellington. As he was Collector of Customs as well, it is more than likely that Anthony Ward's grandfather and my great-grandfather met in the office of the Customs Department in days gone by.—N.F.H.
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In one of our island dependencies the gaol was rather a nuisance to an already overworked constable. Hence the following. One prisoner, the sole occupant of the gaol, condemned to hard labour, used to do his daily dozen unsupervised, have his dinner at a nearby hotel, and at nighttime return to the gaol. On one occasion, finding the constable had not returned, resulting in his being locked out, he actually had to climb over the door in order to get into gaol for the night.—K.B.McC.
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Some twenty years ago, when the furniture and effects of Mr. Eric C. Goldsmith, of Auckland, came under the hammer, an unusually fine collection of books was practically given away to the fortunate few who happened to be present. No special attention was focussed on the books, and the collection, which included many notable New Zealand works, was distributed to casual purchasers in sixpenny lots. My dad, for the meagre sum of sixpence, acquired a Buller's “Manual of the Birds of New Zealand,” “Musings in Maoriland,” by Thomas Bracken, and a beautifully illuminated copy of “Lalla Rookh.” Surely a good sixpennyworth!—R.W.
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The occasion was the running of the Otaki Cup some years ago. The course was thronged and Maori and pakeha availed themselves of anything in the way of sheds, vehicles, etc., that made it possible to obtain a clearer view of the momentous event. A number of pakehas clambered upon what they took to be rubbish, over which a large canvas had been thrown. They had just made themselves comfortable when they were surprised to see several Maori officials puffing upon the scene, waving their arms wildly and shaking their fists. The foremost Maori spoke in indignant tones: “You pakeha chaps come down quick! What you mean sittin’ on te Otaki Cup. Py korry—–.” Speech failed him. The men swiftly descended from their perch, and later in the day looked under the canvas. Hidden beneath, lay a huge stack of potatoes.—N.F.H.
“Packet cigarettes still command an extensive sale in New Zealand,” states a big importer, “but a change is coming. In fact, it has begun. Thousands of smokers who formerly purchased their cigarettes ready-made now roll their own. This is partly due to the bad times, doubtlessly. But it is indisputable, nevertheless, that even the choicest packet goods cannot compete with the newly-made article smoked as soon as it is rolled. Ready-mades are often in stock for months, even for years, and the longer they are kept the more they ‘go off.’ The flavour deteriorates very rapidly. Now the chap that rolls his own usually buys his tobacco an ounce or two at a time, so that it's always fresh and moist. And look at the saving to the smoker! Myself I smoke toasted New Zealand. It makes beautiful cigarettes. The four toasted brands are: Riverhead Gold, Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Cavendish, and Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead). You can't over indulge because, being toasted, and almost free from nicotine, these tobaccos are as harmless as they are fragrant and delightful.” *