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leading new zealand newspapers— Continued
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.
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Short stories, poetry, pen-and-ink sketches, etc., are invited from the general public upon New Zealand subjects.
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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.
Controller and Auditor-General.17/5/37
It has been well said that success is constitutional—that it depends on a plus condition of mind and body, on powers of work and on courage.
It is fortunate for a business or a country when its leaders possess this constitutional quality, for the difference in the comparative progress of the various nations, measured over a long period of time, may be judged as much by the leaders they have thrown up, thrown off, acclaimed or tolerated as by the economic advantages with which nature has endowed them.
In business it is, of course, the plus constitutional condition of one individual over another that makes the difference between success and failure in those contests where the chances in other respects are equal. The constitutionally strong eat well, sleep well and let worry take care of itself. They are consequently in good shape to handle simply and clearly all problems as they arise, and the driving force of their plus attributes makes them bold in experiment and venturesome in enterprise, and it is from experiment and enterprise that all progress arises.
The new railway station which will this month commence to serve Wellington, New Zealand's capital city, as the main centre of the Dominion's transport, is in itself a sign of success. It is one of those striking physical indications of progress that plants a significant mile-peg on the track of Dominion development.
More particularly is it a tribute to the work of railwaymen throughout the three-quarters of a century since railways commenced operating in this country.
There will be a record of this progress published during the current month, wherein the development of every branch of the service will be briefly recorded; but in this month of public and railway rejoicing over the new railway station opening, some thought can rightly be spared for those sons of the rail who, through every kind of adversity, have kept unshaken their faith in the railways as a public service of vital value to the progress of the country. It is well, also, to think of those great leaders who, gaining control over the destinies of the railways through personal merit, have guided the system safely and surely to its present high place in public service and esteem.
Measured by any standard, the railways of this country hold their own with those of other countries; but when the local problems of construction, maintenance and the size and distribution of population are considered, their achievement is seen to be even more remarkable and is a tribute to the high virtue, constitutional strength, courage and enterprise of those who have made, maintained, worked and controlled them.
The receipt of the Judges' reports and awards in connection with this year's railway station garden competitions in the South Island, affords me a very favourable opportunity to convey to the members of the railway staff who took part in the efforts to improve the appearance of railway surroundings, my very warm appreciation of their excellent work in these most desirable activities.
It also calls for public acknowledgment of the splendid spirit of helpfulness which animates members of the Canterbury Horticultural Society, the Gardening Branch of the Otago Women's Club and other groups and individuals who have taken a public-spirited interest in the improvement of railway surroundings.
I have found that in some localities the citizens, as well as railway employees, take pride in their station gardens, many of which are favourably commented on by visitors from all parts of the Dominion, and by travellers from overseas.
The Department's interest in work of this kind is well known, and it is at all times ready to assist by providing soil, fencing and other material, as well as labour in the preparation of the land. But the human interest and pleasure in gardening and its results, the opportunities for tasteful arrangement, orderliness, and skill in the preparation, care and management of these important adjuncts to the business of railroading, and the valuable reactions upon citizens, travellers and railway-men alike of well laid out lawns and garden plots in the vicinity of Railway Stations, are the features which amply reward all who actively engage in this work.
With 450 acres containing 158,000 trees upon 40 plantations in the South Island (referred to elsewhere in this Magazine) and a number of notable plantations in the North Island, the Department's interest in forestry is naturally considerable, and its Forestry Officer is in a position to assist the gardening activities on railway reserves by the selection of suitable trees for planting in settings of aesthetic value to railway premises and the areas they serve.
Only those who travel extensively in the Dominion can gain a conception of the widespread interest taken in the work of railway gardening on the various railway routes from the smallest tablet station to the spacious gardens and lawns of the Auckland and Wellington terminals. Of special interest are the gardening activities at the Department's main workshops, where, besides gardens at the works, the staff have flower shows and gardening circles.
I gratefully acknowledge the assistance rendered in connection with this work and welcome opportunities for any further improvements of the kind.
General Manager.
My genial friend, with a hundred varying interests in the district, stopped the car and said: “This is the farm; there are twelve sheep to the acre on those far slopes.” And they were there all right, their white woolly forms seeming to be almost back to back against the vivid green.
I stood and admired the massively handsome English stallion, Hunting Song, causing bother to my friend with the camera, for, quiet as he was, wherever he trod he was fetlock deep in grass, and would look in the picture as if he were without hocks at all.
I watched from the goods train, the colossal shape of the Waharoa dried milk powder factory, towering above the tall trees beside the Waharoa Railway Station.
I gazed for an hour at the activity at the Manawaru Cheese Factory which handles across its receiving stage, more than one million pounds of milk daily.
These things helped me to solve the problem of Hamilton. For it is profoundly true that these cities in miniature in New Zealand, represented by such a provincial capital as Hamilton, require explanation. They exist nowhere else in the world. They are, in a special sense the creation of their own citizens, and the special production of our New Zealand culture.
Greater Hamilton is a town of approximately twenty thousand people, as a maximum. It has public buildings, shops, factories, huge blocks of administrative offices, and in other ways the amenities of a centre which in any other part of the world would carry five times the population at least.
I can give quickly one striking set of figures which indicates the scope and reach of the municipal activities of this town. The number of consumers of gas and electricity supplied by the city Departments of the Borough Council reaches the staggering figure of over eight thousand. I use the word “staggering” advisedly in case I am met with the provincial type of criticism which proudly recounts the consumption of a city of one million.
However, my first paragraphs explain the secret of the existence of this spacious modern town. To sum up again, Hamilton is there because it is the centre of a great region where to an amazing degree, grass is transmuted into tangible wealth.
Phenomena such as these in the old days of tyrants, art loving but otherwise intolerable, would have led to the erection in every public place or park, of statues to the Jersey, the Ayrshire, the Friesian, the Red Poll and the other mild-eyed workers of this continuing miracle.
The same sort of ruler would liave decreed that the old home of Henry Reynolds should be a hallowed place. Here was made the first pound of Anchor Butter and the oak he planted on his front lawn would be preserved in its mature splendour as a symble of the growth of the mighty industry he founded.
Any, consideration, therefore, of the qualities of Hamilton as a centre or dwelling place for men, is inextricably bound up in a sense which is distinctive of its own personality with the noble hinterland that it possesses.
In saying this, I do not want to detract from the achievement of its citizens: for in its beginnings there was nothing particularly distinctive or advantageous about its actual location to compel that Hamilton should be the premier centre of this wide region.
Its history is an old one but its growth is a matter of recent years. Its original settlement was one of
Captain Steele handpicked his recruits, and it was a fine body of men that pitched camp on the eastern side of the river and valiantly wrestled with the problems that beset them.
As with other parts of the Dominion, the precious gifts of British racial origin and stout tradition, belong to the Waikato capital and its environs.
The first town grew up on the eastern side of the river, and is now a suburb with leafy streets and noble old trees. It is said that a rather ebullient manifestation of private enterprise drove the Bank of New Zealand to seek for cheaper sites on the Western side of the big river to be soon followed by other enterprises. The course of farm settlement also tended to make the western bank the most thriving. The present distinctive beauty of Hamilton is largely due to its great river but in those days, it was a definite hindrance to progress. Of course, its traffic, prior to the days of road and rail was large, but in the struggling township a punt was for many years the sole means of crossing. In 1879 the first traffic bridge was built, and the wooden structure was operated on toll principles. I do not think that many New Zealanders know that the town was named after Captain John Fane Hamilton, a naval officer who was killed in a gallant attempt to retrieve the awful disaster to British troops at the Gate Pa.
The town was made a borough in December, 1877, in the wide and joyous days when the conflicting parties were the east and west sides of the river. The total population was then about 1,200 and growth was slow for many years. A loan policy for development was commenced and from then on progress was steady until the amalgamation with the neighbouring borough of Frankton.
But more important than any of these purely local phenomena, was the revolution caused in the usefulness of Waikato farm lands through the use of top dressing. It is in my memory as a grown man that Waikato lands were held in mild derision by the farmers from the permanent grass lands of the Taranaki, Wellington and Hawke's Bay Provinces and the South Island.
There is a paved road now from Cambridge to Hamilton which might well be called the Golden Journey. It is a path through a fairyland of green, of ordered hedgerows, of lovely soaring trees, of comfortable farmhouses thickly dotted so as almost to resemble a first class city suburb, and in its course there will be seen a continuous panorama of sleek coated beasts contentedly grazing.
I remember that road when it bore the disorderly, sparsely settled, untilled appearance of the settlers' outback scenes in a Christmas number.
This magical change occurred all over the vast area of the Waikato. Hamilton has shared the benefit and its modest total of 1,200 is now in the neighbourhood of 20,000.
Its early builders had the vision to lay out wide streets, and these fine thoroughfares are a feature of the town's beauty. The noble Waikato river is of course an outstanding natural advantage; it is the greatest of our rivers and as it flows through the town, it is seen in its best clothes. Every town of importance in New Zealand has been blessed with public spirited citizens who have spent time, money and unbounded enthusiasm in the beautifying of their place of home making.
Grey Street in Hamilton was the work of very early settlers. Its great trees whose branches meet across the 100 foot street, might be centuries old.
The Waikato river presented a gruesome spectacle only a quarter of a century ago. Its high banks had been generously utilised as dumping grounds for rubbish. The Beautifying Society came into being and to-day the banks of the river for the whole length of its saunter through the town, are things of abiding beauty. Memorial
Hamilton has also broken new ground with its fine policy of planting native trees in the streets of the suburbs and town areas. It is always a source of wonder to visitors as to who the fortunate folk are that live in these mansions that adorn our provincial capitals, and Claudelands is possibly the finest example of this type of suburb in the Dominion. Gardens are everywhere, riotous with colour and elaborately designed. The river, however, has its recognisable nobility and its possibilities were easily discerned; but the park known as the “Domain” is an outstanding example of what can be achieved by inspired vision, love of beauty and steadiness of purpose.
Here, in undulating country, an everyday swamp lagoon in a setting, scrub covered and desolate, has been transformed into a spacious pleasure ground and ornamental waters. As is so usual in our country, the trees have the look of “immemorial elms.” The shrubs are luxuriant and the swards have the shining but gentle green of a thousand-year-old Dublin or Oxford lawn. The growth was speedy and the transformation was effected in a few years. It is long years ago, so my genial guide told me, that after a large and cheerful party of farewell, they drove a visitor round and round three tall trees, while he sleepily complained that it was a shame to miss the way to Frankton station and that he “hated these bush roads anyway.” This park contains 141 acres; there are formed sandy beaches, bathing and boating facilities, a nine hole golf course, and picnic places which are like those in a boy's dreamland. Across its wide waters stand handsome residences, and above it again is the Hospital, the fourth largest in the Dominion.
This is not the whole tale of the recreation grounds of Hamilton for every sport is catered for with parks with modern equipment and surroundings of natural beauty.
The gold course at St. Andrews is known throughout the Dominion as one of the best all weather grounds.
Naturally, the river means that acquatic sports are popular; and while I was on my visit there was a tumultuous “King” competition to provide a handsome new rowing club pavilion.
I have described New Zealand before as a string of splendid racecourses with pleasant towns attached, and Hamilton is no exception. The Racing Club is one of the most progressive in a land where racing is more advanced than anywhere on earth, and its annual prize list is larger than most of the metropolitan clubs of Old England. The Trotting Course is part of the Showgrounds at Claudelands, and here must be particularly commended the utilisation of the native bush as ornamental grounds. It provides a background for the sporting arena which is wholly national in beauty and of aesthetic perfection.
Hamilton is imposing to resemble through as it consists of several main divisions. The river divides Hamilton East and Claudelands with their quite distinctive air from the main town, and still farther west is the populous suburb of Frankton, formerly a sister borough of nearly equal size.
Frankton contains the busiest railway junction in the Dominion. Its figures of traffic and goods handled are impressive, and approximately 100 trains pass through it daily. It has many hotels to cater for the change-over traffic to Rotorua and the Bay of Plenty areas which are among New Zealand's most patronised tourist regions. The travel volume in and about. Hamilton is of enormous extent and it was not surprising to find good travel bureaux busy all the time we were in Hamilton. It seemed to me that both townsfolk and primary producers were planning holidays with gusto and frequency.
The municipality has a fine block of offices on the river bank. I will not weary readers with the familiar list (Continued on page 52.)
The most distinguished of living New Zealanders, and one of the leading scientists in the world—indeed he is considered by many the greatest of all scientific investigators to-day—is our first New Zealand-born peer of the realm, Lord Rutherford of Nelson. The most intellectual man that this country has produced, he has penetrated most deeply into the mysteries of the physical world, and his discoveries have made him a figure regarded with reverence by the scientists of the earth. He has been described as “Britain's No. 1 Scientist.” His discoveries have won him world-wide honours, but he is the most modest of men, delighting in the quiet life in his English home and in his laboratory work at Cambridge. He is Chairman of the British Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, and at sixty-six years of age is still working away eagerly in the field of research which has yielded up to him and his colleagues such wonderful results. It has been said of him that the school of research he has created will produces “discoveries that will change the course of history and that will transform the economics of human life as we live it to-day.”
Ernest Rutherford was born at Spring Grove (now called Brightwater), Nelson, on August 30th, 1871. He was the fourth child in a large family. His father, James Rutherford, had first engaged in timber-milling when he settled in that province; later on he was a flax-miller.
His mother, who was Martha Thomson, was a woman of uncommonly keen alert intellect, and of the physical powers that the pioneer life requires and develops. She was a schoolteacher until she married. She lived to the age of over ninety, clear and vigorous in mind to the last, watching with quiet pride and joy the career of her son, whose greatest pleasure from his youth up lay in the delight his successes gave his parents.
When Ernest was eleven years old the Rutherfords removed to Havelock, in Marlborough, and in that secluded township at the head of Pelorus Sound the boy came under the influence of an excellent teacher, Mr. Jacob H. Reynolds.
This master was not content with the ordinary school syllabus. For an hour each morning, before nine o'clock, he conducted a class in Latin for his most promising seventh-standard boys, of whom Ernest was one. The boy became a source of great pride to Havelock when he won the Marl-borough Provincial Scholarship of £52/10/- for two years, tenable at Nelson College.
Dr. E. Marsden, Secretary of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, who tells of those early days of his friend, accompanied Rutherford to the old school at Havelock when the great scholar revisited New Zealand, and heard many reminiscences of Mr. Reynolds and his brilliant pupil. One old resident narrated how young Rutherford sat alone in the school for the scholarship examination, and how the supervisor read each page as it was written and gave his opinion to callers as to how the candidate was getting along.
At Nelson College the Havelock boy quickly justified his old teacher's faith in him. He won scholarships, and became dux of the college, and in 1889 gained a University Scholarship which took him to Canterbury College. Then, in that congenial home of scholarship the lad's studies inclined strongly to original research in the fascinating world of physical science.
Under Professor Bickerton he studied wireless waves, then called “Hertzian waves.” That was about the year 1893. These were some of the first world experiments in the wonderful wireless. Continued afterwards at Cambridge they led to the construction of the first magnetic detector of wireless waves, afterwards completed and patented by Marconi.
Dr. Marsden tells this little story of a prophecy made by Rutherford while he was a student at Canterbury College. At one of the meetings of the College Debating Society in 1890 the subject was “Is Sculpture or Architecture the Greater Art?”
Ernest Rutherford, then eighteen years old, in his first year at college, gave his views. The architectural beauty of the new College Hall was discussed, and Rutherford complained that the view of the building from the street was spoiled by the intrusion of an ugly great telegraph post, loaded with wires. The day would come, he said, when the telegraph post and the telegraph wires would be unnecessary, for science was on the threshold of further discoveries that would abolish both. Even at that date the eager student had peered with accurate
Graduating at Canterbury with double first-class honours, in mathematics and physics, the young investigator was awarded the 1851 Exhibition Scholarship by the University, and this carried him to Cambridge. There he was quickly immersed in the study of Rontgen's great discovery of X-rays, so called because at that time their nature was quite unknown. The experimental work arising from this discovery has led during the forty odd years which have elapsed to the understanding of the whole nature of electricity and matter and the isolation of the individual units of both. The whole of physical and chemical science has been revolutionised, and the commercial and industrial application of the work has given us a succession of modern miracles.
To a non-scientific writer like myself, marvelling at the mental capacity which can unlock such magical secrets of the physical world, a technical review of the great New Zealander's work is not possible. I must turn therefore to the narratives and explanations of others, and especially to the writings of Dr. Marsden, who has been Secretary of our Department of Scientific and Industrial Research since its foundation some fifteen years ago; before that he was Professor of Physics at Victoria University College and Assistant Director of Education.
We have all read of Rutherford's amazing discoveries in the study of atoms, and of how he succeeded in splitting the atom, but how he accomplished that wizardly feat is a recondite mystery to most of us. Dr. Mardsen has, therefore, most kindly come to my help, and has given this lucid exposition of the Rutherford discoveries, amplifying articles and a radio talk he delivered several years ago.
From X-rays, Dr. Marsden explains, Rutherford turned his attentions to the radiations from radium and so-called radio-active bodies which had certain similar properties and on which pioneering work had been done in France by Becquerel, and by Curie and Madame Curie. He soon made interesting and far-reaching discoveries, including the radio-active emanations, such as are used in treatment in our hospitals; and he worked out the nature and properties of the radiations emitted. He found these to be of three kinds—the alpha rays, or atoms of helium, the beta rays which are electrons emitted with speeds almost up to that of light, and the gamma rays which, like X-rays, were similar to light waves, but because of their small wave-lengths were able to pierce the relatively coarse open structure of ordinary matter. Since that time he has devoted himself to the use of these radiations, in unravelling the secrets of atoms and the way in which these atoms are constructed. He was able to count atoms one by one, although they are so small that in air, for example, in a space occupied by a pin head, the number of atoms is about 25,000,000 times the total population of the earth.
“But perhaps the most amazing result of his work,” Dr. Marsden continues, “is the discovery that these atoms, although so infinitely small, have a wonderful structure very similar to that of our solar system, with a central sun of so-called positive electricity and planets of electrons or units of negative electricity. He has shown that these atoms are storehouses of large amounts of energy, and has been able to disintegrate some of them artificially, leading to the release of some of this energy. It is just possible, that some day this energy may be harnessed for the service of mankind, after all of our easily available resources of coal and oil are used up. At any rate he has achieved the dream of the old alchemists, namely the transmutation of elements or matter. This work has led to a revolution in philosophic thought, and has given rise to the fascinating theory of relativity, which has been developed by Einstein.”
Professor Andrade, of the University of London, in an exposition of Rutherford's experiments with the structure of the atom, said that the scientific interest of atomic transmutation could not be exaggerated, but the prospect of an actual engineering use of atomic energy seemed remote.
The total amounts of energy with which the Cambridge school workers are dealing are ludicrously small, Andrade said, from an engineering point of view. “But they are not so absurd from a medical point of view, for here it is not a large amount of energy that is required, but energy of a very special kind that can be produced locally, as in the radium treatment of cancer.”
Sir William Bragg, head of the Royal Institution, has described Lord Rutherford's working methods and influence in very pleasant terms. Rutherford, he wrote, keenly loved research for its own sake. He had a fine judgment of the essential, and he had the courage to break with precedent and try out his own ideas. “Rutherford has upset many theories but he has never belittled anyone's work. He has added new pages to the book of Physical Science and has always taught his students to venerate the old, even when the writing has become a little old-fashioned…. He always takes a broad and generous view, giving credit to others for their contributions to knowledge, and never pressing for the recognition of his (Continued on page 55.)
Readers who are following this engrossing mystery story will remember that the body of Pat Lauder was found in the signal cabin, and that the super-sleuth, Impskill Lloyd, had pronounced that there were at least twelve causes of death, ranging from drowning to starvation. Gillespie, Lloyd's much misunderstood and much maligned chauffeur proved, in the last chapter, to be a secret service agent who had unmasked Lloyd's nefarious activities. However, in the game of adventure, Lloyd had turned the tables, Gillespie and the plodding P.C. Fanning were neatly tripped, and, bound with ingenious tackle, were condemned to be tattooed by a Maori fellow-conspirator in the pay of Lloyd.
Gillespie lay perfect'y still, staring at the ceiling while Hari Pongi was portentously fiddling about with his mixtures and preparing his pawa shell edge. He was known as Mata Mata Hari on account of an efficient and cheery deviousness. Gillespie attracted his attention and, as the liquid brown eyes turned gently towards him, indicated with a swift, sly sign the butt of a cheque book protruding from his pocket. The Maori picked up the signal with the speed of a company director or a rail car driver, and halted at his task. Then a whispered conversation took place as Hari traced the Manaia pattern gently on Gillespie's smooth cheeks.
“A round hundred,” said Gillespie, “if you dummy the job or just make it a surfaceman's drag.”
With the noble simplicity of his race, the Maori whispered back: —
“By korri, what about you stop the cheque, ay?”
Gillespie answered, “Don't be a fool. It's payable at Hamilton … make some excuse, run down and cash it and come back …”
The patrician features of Hari Pongi dissolved into friendliness and in language that showed his age-old lineage.
“O Kay, ‘tranger,” he said. “You te ferrer!” He walked across to Lloyd and an undertoned colloquy took place. Lloyd shook his head several times, then broke into a smile and Hongi strode from the room.
Gillespie lay in a rather pleasant reverie. Thoughts went vagrantly through his head, and the opening of the new prospect of a getaway, faint as it was, made him philosophise…. “The good die young,” he remembered. “Just as well, perhaps,” he thought, “if they'd lived they'd be just like the rest of us.”
The reverie went on. There was old Fanning, perfectly relaxed. His tattoo job had been quite a light one. There was ample room on that iridescent dome for a portfolio of drawings, and Gillespie could see nothing from the angle of vision possible to him in his chair.
And then Gillespie's reflections wound about in his brain and drifted. What a fool he had been. The contretemps was all in order; it was in the accepted Edgar Wallace tradition; but there was the bitterness of debt itself in the knowledge that he had fallen for Lloyd. There he was, strolling about with the large self-confidence which always went with small moustaches. He was actually trying to twirl the thing, though the most pertinacious groping for a hair to clutch had ever and always resulted in the finger-slip of defeat. He was grinning in the most fatuous, complacent way…. “Can I trust Hongi,” thought Gillespie…. His morals are like a land agent's, and then, of course, he called to mind a land agent in the long ago who was a decent man, never charging double commissions unless justified by results. P.C. Fanning remained calm. He sat there, trying as usual to think of twelve things at once. He turned slowly, and the decorated area came into view. It was the conventional canoe prow scroll,
He mused ruefully … Lloyd was irritating; he was such a bad actor to start with; even when he was imitating himself there would arrive that smile of self-satisfaction, all out of character. Even as the “Man in the Iron Mask” he was easily recognisable as himself. Gillespie dreamingly saw George Arliss in films with Lloyd. Arliss had run out of historical characters and was doing a male impersonation of Boadicea, and Lloyd was playing the left wheel of her chariot … turning … turning … turning. Gillespie could see them years ago, B.M.—before the movies—when there was no wickedness…. He felt drowsy…. Where was Hongi? Had the cow exercised his great gifts of initiative and private enterprise and double crossed … had he met with an accident … had the bank been taken over by Major Douglas … had … Lloyd was still pacing the room, smiling pleasantly and vainly probing his moustache. He had just seized firmly one short golden hair, when there was a terrific crash….
Into the room burst Kidney Jenkin-son. He was an awe-inspiring sight. His face was red, his blue eyes were blazing, and with his white hair he looked like the Union Jack in conflagration. In his hand flashed a steel weapon, dripping with blood. The truth was that he had just finished jointing a large loin of old ewe to look like lamb.
Lloyd, with a howl of dismay, made a running dive, but Kidney was too quick for him. He had, as well as an elementary knowledge of engineering, passing acquaintance with electricity, and as Lloyd moved, he tripped the switch and Lloyd fell as though pole-axed.
Kidney smiled. “Now perhaps,” he said, “they'll understand why I formed the league for the electrification of the line to Okoroire. If this had been a steam plant I'd have had to hit him with the governors.”
It was a matter of seconds to release Gillespie and Fanning. After all, the explanation was simple. Kidney Jenkinson, with his picturesque capacity for minding other people's business, had always suspected these homely prosaic looking bungalows of the Lloyd chain. Kidney himself had shops at Matamata, Morrinsville, Hamilton and other places, and these houses worried him. They looked so respectable that he knew there was something wrong. All his life he had refused to be beguiled by appearances. For four years in the third standard, he had put up a stout fight that eight and six did not come to fourteen, his grounds being that the mathematical authorities claimed that they did… Any everyday fact was enough for him: like the boss, it must be wrong. At a pinch, on a drowsy summer afternoon, he would enunciate a positive statement for the purpose of working round to contradict himself.
Well, here he was, and Gillespie knew that as long as it appeared clear to Kidney that it was not the forces of law and order and authority that were being released, all would be well.
“Well, Kidney, “he said, “what do we do now? You knew Lloyd was not a detective?”
“Yes,” said Kidney, “he looked like one—that was enough for me.”
“Well,” said Gillespie, “he won't lie there for very long, and there are some of his company about …”
“The car's outside,” said Kidney. “Let's throw him in and bolt for Matamata. I've got an idea.”
The trip to Matamata was uneventful. Lloyd twitched and snored sten-toriously, and Gillespie regarded his condition with a loving eye.
They halted at a neat bungalow. “Another Lloyd dwelling,” said Kidney. “Bring him in, and I'll slip over to the shop.”
Kidney returned in a few minutes. He had a small parcel of sweetbreads, tripe and an ox-tail. He placed the blood-stained cleaver in Lloyd's right hand, a copy of the Supplementary Estimates in his left (a good deal of this was missing having travelled out from the shop round various small orders). About the unconscious form he strewed the other articles.
“Looks like Ted Parrett, the morning after St. Bartholomew's Eve,” he said, surveying the look of massacre given by the mise-en-scene.
“Come on,” he said, “leave him.” As the gate clanged, Gillespie saw a portly citizen making his way in. “Who was that?” he asked. “That's the representative of the ‘Matamata Voice',” he said. “I told him there was a good ad. to be picked up here. Anyhow we'll go on to the shop.”
Kidney had an office at the back, and dodging their way through a gallery of hanging carcases of beef and mutton, they entered. There on the stool was the easy-going form of Horsey Stewart. “Hold Your Horses Stewart” he should have been called, according to Kidney.
In his case speech was given to conceal thought. He had an almost infinite capacity for holding his cards, and a pleasant smile, except on Monday morning. The smile was a brilliant worker, but it had no real meaning. It was simply a smile. Some of the best canvassers in the Dominion, steeped in the best business approach methods from the system magazines, had mistaken that smile. It was functioning now at about 25 volts 30 amperes.
Kidney pulled out a form and took the beer from the corned beef vat. He held his secret meetings of the
“Well,” he said, “is there anything I can do?” Gillespie replied swiftly, “You can. We're not one day further ahead in this enquiry as to the murder of Pat Lauder . Fanning will tell you.”
“Yes,” said Fanning, with an appearance of ponderosity that concealed a pretty good workmanlike mind: “I've got a list of false clues, wrong arrests, and so on that is a positive disgrace for Matamata and would be crook in New York.”
“Well,” said Kidney, “I do not know that the motive is so obscure, nor do I think the mystery of Pat Lauder's murder is so insoluble. The mystery to me is why he was allowed to live so long…. Look at some of his habits: He was the world's most copious confessor; his form of alcoholic remorse was a frightful thing. Considering that there is hardly a town in either Island that does not own sufferers from this pest when he got genial … that alone must have left him with a considerable mass of enemies. Then he believed in fairies' money—never got writer's cramp…”
Horsey Stewart interrupted, delivering a slow, sweet smile in neutral, “Yes,” he said, “but did you ever suffer from his writings? They had the most infuriating appearance of being composed in English …”
The smile almost imperceptibly intensified a little and his speech slowed down, showing that he was thinking rapidly. “His loss was most satisfactory in some ways, it could have been done more on purely railway principles, of course, but …”
Kidney Jenkinson sprang into the air and hurled himself at one ten foot bound at the tall figure that was entering. This splendid Carisbrooke Ground tackle took poor Teaswell by surprise.
Dusting the sawdust from his immaculate clothes as he rose, he muttered, “What's all this about—what has the law to say, do you think, about an assault on a toffee maker of my productiveness…. I'm on my fifth volume now.”
“That'll teach you to swing llama on to me for a vealer,” said Kidney. “You've lost me the postmistress, Dr. Brannigan! … toffee flavoured! too!” Teaswell was for once at a loss.
The situation was relieved as Kidney rushed to the front of the shop, heavily crashing a large Jersey heifer carcase on the way. He signalled to everyone to come out, bubbling with laughter.
Along the street of Matamata was prcceeding the quaintest cavalcade. It would have made Noah green with envy. Even the Neon lights were visibly in doubt as to their colours, and blue was vacillating to orange, and reds were trembling to green. P.C. Fanning was in the lead, Impskill Lloyd was held tightly by the arm by a large phlegmatic person, subsequently ascertained to be a visiting detective, sent from the Capital to look for an absconding grocer who had been discovered putting sand in the sugar on Tuesdays and Thursdays instead of Mondays and Fridays.
Walking with an air of fortuitous pride next in line was Stewart Bury, the local mortician.
“If Lloyd gets his, as he oughter,” said Gillespie, “Bury won't be interested he won't even be wondering whether it's oak and silver handles or plain beaver board.”
Proudly holding the collection of small goods that Kidney had left, in walked the newspaper representative, and next him was a small boy brandishing the bloodstained cleaver. It was a great show. The population had turned out and, according to Kidney, looked like “The Eastbourne football park mob on an off day.”
Suddenly Gillespie ejaculated, “Well, of all the fools I'm …” and left at even time pace for the procession. Teaswell followed with more dignity.
The smile left Horsey Stewart's face. He looked almost sinister for a moment. He never felt entirely easy over that intuition of Gillespie's and he feared a getting together of Lloyd and his erstwhile chauffeur. After all, Lauder's death had been more of an execution than a crime, as was shown by the number of willing collaborators who had helped, some, perhaps a mite too enthusiastically. It was, all considered, a splendid instance of good brotherhood and selfless fellowship, working for the good of the community. It would be a pity if a fine lot of fellows were to become the victims of the pitiless majesty of the law. He knew that Gillespie's reverence for the law was almost devotional except that part relating to licensing. It had a resemblance to the burning faith of Ted Parrett who was prepared to send almost anyone to the stake who disagreed with him. Gillespie would go any length over this detection business. Even Lauder's crimes of wrecking English would not absolve those he landed with responsibility or participation. Then there was Teaswell, simple minded, straightforward, good warrior and all that.
Horsey Stewart thought all this out in two flashes and turned to the telephone. He spoke hurriedly in Maori, thanking his stars for Jimmy Cowan.
In the meantime, Tmpskill Lloyd has been lodged at the police station, P.C. Fanning lumbering about now in charge of everything. The temporary charge was his being in illegal possession of Kidney Jenkinson's cleaver and the mixed proteins.
Gillespie lost his indecision. He took P.C. Fanning aside. “I must see Impskill alone,” he said.
P.C. answered, “What about the regulations … I'll look them up.”
Gillespie waited impatiently as time went on. He could see that P.C. was through the regulations under “The Lands for Settlement Acts” “The Stamp Acts” and “The Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act.” However there was nothing to do but wait. P.C. Fanning was nothing if not thorough.
At last, however, the constable gave a majestic nod of affirmation. Gillespie darted down the passage. It was a wooden lock-up, and he jabbed the key in the lock—and laughed grimly. The far side of the lock-up was missing and so was Lloyd! The whole wall had been neatly removed, and there were footprints all over the ground that might have been made in a Springboks Test Match. Gillespie tore across the paddook at the back of the police station. There was no one in sight, except Horsey Stewart, who was smiling in dulcet fashion and sauntering towards Gillespie … (To be continued.)
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For many a year I have written on the subject of the Maori language and urged that not only should it be taught in the native schools, but that it should be included in the general education scheme and given a place at least equal to that of any foreign language. It is, in my view, more important to preserve and popularise the original tongue of the country than to insist on college students spending years on the study of French. It may seem incredible that Maori is not only not taught in native schools, but it has actually been discouraged in some of them. The effect has been, of course, to make the Maori children ashamed of their mother tongue, a complaint that has often been voiced by their disgusted elders.
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Now I am glad to see that some of the younger generation of our Maori people are championing the effort to give the language its rightful place in the national education plan. Mr. C. Bennett, son of the Right Reverend F. Bennett, the first Bishop of Aotearoa, in an address at Hastings lately urged that Maori should be taught in the schools and placed on at least the same plane as foreign languages. He pointed out that French and other languages were of very little practical value to those who were taught them in college. It was at any rate necessary that the pronunciation of Maori should be taught in schools.
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With Mr. Bennett's plea “Tohunga” is, of course, in complete agreement. The Maori language is of more actual use to the New Zealander than French is, because it is to some extent before him daily, in the form of place-names. Many of these names are habitually mispronounced, and it is desirable therefore that the correct pronunciation should be taught. The place to begin is in the public schools; or rather in the training colleges in which young men and women qualify for the work of teaching in the primary schools. Few teachers can pronounce Maori accurately; fewer still have any idea of the meanings of names that are constantly before their eyes in the papers. This condition of popular ignorance about the language that belongs to a population which is increasing at a faster rate than the pakeha, is not creditable to the country.
It cannot, of course, be held that French need not be taught because very few need to use it. Latin and French enter so much into our English language that it is essential they should be part of any system of education. There is the literary and cultural value that needs no stressing. But it is not a question of substitution or replacing any other language with Maori. It is simply claimed that it is of at least equal value.
There is a great literary value in the classic Maori legends and history and folk-lore that make up the very soul of the race and give interest to so much of the country itself. How dull and dead is a land which has no poetic background, which lacks the salt and fire of an ancient warrior tradition! The Maori and the pakeha contact with the Maori supply that element in New Zealand. There is a vast amount preserved in books; but there is more than that. The tongue is a living tongue, though often sadly misused, because in these quickly changing times it is not taught to the young generation.
Now, in the first place, the children in native schools should be taught Maori, by means of the best examples of the language in print and by teachers who are either educated Maoris or pakehas who have studied Maori and have qualified themselves to give instruction. Some people will ask, why teach Maori to Maoris? The only reply to this that is necessary is, why teach English in our pakeha schools and colleges? Native school teachers who cannot speak and teach Maori should gradually be replaced by qualified men and women. Next, pronunciation and elementary lessons in the language could easily be mastered sufficiently by all teachers in the primary schools. Going on to post-primary schools, Maori could be given equal value with foreign languages for examination purposes.
A young teacher who qualified in Maori should find his or her field of usefulness and profit extended. So, too, with those going in for newspaper or other literary work. There are such pathetic examples of ignorance among young writers who look over the fence at the Maori. They will never get across that fence until they learn to speak to the people they so confidently essay to discuss.
It would be amusing were it not so unfair and unjust to the Maori to read the frequent criticism of the Maoris because ragwort and other noxious weeds grow on Maori land. Talkers at Rotary Clubs, editorial writers who have probably never travelled a mile in the Maori country, rate the native landowners for their neglect to kill ragwort. A South Canterbury paper says the Maori “is in a position largely to defy the law.” Alas, that much-defied law!
I have recently travelled several thousands of miles through pakeha farming districts, and I can recall very few places, even in the most productive districts, that were without a spot or so of ragwort. I have seen paddocks that could be described as “Fields of the Cloth of Gold,” in historic memory. A sheet of ragwort; the farmer had apparently given up the struggle, law or no law. The Maori has an adequate reply to his critics. The pakeha has muddled his land titles; the pakeha brought the ragwort and every other tarutaru (weed). “Why pick on the Maori? You pakehas have most of his land. Get rid of your pests first and show me the way.”
That the finest private Dumas collection in the world should have been built up by a New Zealander is a fact sufficiently astonishing. What is one to say, then, when it is found that the collector has spent his whole life, since his thirteenth year, in the little North Auckland town of Whangarei? One of our present problems is the wise spending of an increased leisure, and Mr. F. W. Reed's story is an example and a challenge from which most of us, I think, may receive benefit and encouragement.
The small boy who arrived in New Zealand in 1887 was allowed to bring with him only twelve books. One of these was “The Queen's Necklace” by Dumas. Whereas the average boy wants stories of adventure by flood and field, young Reed had already developed a taste for historical romance. “The Queen's Necklace” had been a revelation. As he himself put it:
“Here at last was history in fiction, written as it should be presented, swift, full of action, with brilliant, clever, natural and sweeping dialogue, and also, though I could not then have divined it, an impassioned delineation of human nature.”
Pioneering in New Zealand meant, inevitably, a shortage of pocket-money. Spare time spent on the gumfields resulted in two or three new books a year—no more. Occasionally another Dumas volume was bought, but it was sheer luck if one of these became available. The boy was apprenticed to a chemist in Whangarei. He was to work for twenty-three years in this shop and then to acquire the business for himself. There was not much leisure in those days. The shop hours were from 8 a.m. till 8 p.m., and till 10 p.m. on Saturdays. In addition, examinations required many hours of preparation. In 1897, Mr. Reed passed his final examination and at once was able to devote more time to reading. History and historical fiction still came first, but the Dumas influence had already opened up a new field—the French memoir-writers. In 1902, two lives of Dumas were published, and, in addition, Messrs. Methuen announced that they were producing a complete edition of the Dumas romances. Their prospectus disclosed a large number of titles till then unknown to Mr. Reed and the books were published at sixpence or a shilling according to length—ah, happy days!
A little earlier Mr. Reed's employer had added bookselling to his pharmaceutical business. Previously there was no bookseller in the town, though a grocer had made a practice of keeping a shelf of “yellow-backs” in his shop and occasionally a Dumas was obtainable from this source. It was not long before Mr. Reed was in complete charge of the book department and the spate of publishers' catalogues was an absorbing interest. It was at this stage that the dream of the Dumas collection was taking shape and hopeless enough it must at times have seemed. However, a large loose-leaf note-book was opened, and methodically, information as to the various romances was jotted down. The introduction in each of the Methuen volumes provided the initial material. Then a copy of Davidson's “Life of Dumas” was bought, the full scope of his work became apparent, and the man himself was revealed. Most of the Methuen introductions were signed “R. S. G.,” but it was not till 1916 that correspondence in “The Times Literary Supplement” disclosed to Mr. Reed that the initials were those of Robert Singleton Garnett.
The Garnett family holds, I think, a unique place in modern English literature. The original Richard Garnett was Assistant Keeper of Printed Books in the British Museum. His son, Dr. Richard Garnett, C.B., well-known as the author of “The Twilight of the Gods,” became Keeper of Printed Books in his turn. It has been said that none in England knew more of books than he. One of Dr. Garnett's sons is the Robert Singleton Garnett of this story. Apart from his translations and other work on Dumas he was the author of “Some Book-hunting Adventures,” “Odd Memories” and “The New Sketchbook.” His wife, nee Miss Martha Roscoe, was also a novelist, “The Infamous John Friend” being the best-known of her books. Another of Dr. Garnett's sons is Edward, author and playwright, whose name is familiar to those who have studied D. H. Lawrence's letters. His wife, Constance, translated many Russian novels and I suspect that Katherine Mansfield's admiration for Tchekov was largely due to her acquaintance with this lady. David Garnett, the son of this couple, is the author of “Lady Into Fox” and other popular novels of to-day.
Promptly Mr. Reed wrote to the hitherto unknown “R. S. G.” He was dubious about getting a reply, but there is a wonderful camaraderie amongst fellow-collectors, and in due course eight
In 1919 Mr. Garnett presented to Mr. Reed a copy of the rare bibliography by M. Charles Glinel, “Alexandre Dumas et Son Oeuvre.” Alas! Mr. Reed knew no French. Nevertheless, in a year's time, he had translated this volume of 110,000 words and had typed and indexed it, including all his own and Mr. Garnett's notes. The drive of his hobby and his own natural persistence saw him through, but lesser difficulties would, I fear, have baffled most of us.
That, however, was merely the commencement. Mr. Reed had taken over his employer's business in 1911, and in 1926 he retired to devote himself to his hobby. He had then 932 Dumas volumes. To-day he has 1,642 and in addition Mr. Garnett at his death left his collection of 625 volumes to Mr. Reed. Fortunately the two collections include very few duplications. I come now to Mr. Reed's own work. He has translated, typed and had bound, all of the available plays of Dumas—seventy-two in number. Only one of these had previously been translated into English as written, and five have not seen print at all. He has also translated entire volumes and many articles and extracts, none of which had previously been available in English. From the information he had so patiently gathered, arranged and indexed, he prepared, in 1928–1929, two typed volumes totalling 858 pages, copies of these being deposited with the British Museum and the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris. The second volume was published in 1933—the most complete bibliography of Dumas in existence.
Naturally the French Government would dearly like to secure this collection, but fortunately for New Zealand, it is destined to be placed in the Public Library at Auckland. France has, however, not been slow to recognise Mr. Reed's work. In 1927, at the request of the Consul for France in Auckland, Mr. Reed received the decoration of “Officier d’ Academie” and in 1934, the higher honour of Officier de I'Instruction Publique”—for services rendered to French literature. The insignia of this decoration consists of two gold palm-leaves with a purple ribbon and rosette. The small boy who came to New Zealand with “The Queen's Necklace” in his box has faithfully followed his dream.
And now to deal with the collection itself. The Reed Collection includes 100 volumes of the original editions of Dumas, many of them in mint condition with the original wrappers. The Garnett collection added a further 66 of these. There are also 331 volumes of the pirated Belgian editions, most of which are in the Garnett collection. Many of these are really the first editions, though unauthorised, having been taken direct from serial publications. They are now very scarce and both collectors have displayed a special pride and affection for these little books. There are as well in later editions 180 volumes of Dumas' work in French and 323 in English translations, of which 138 are early editions now out of print. Finely illustrated editions number an additional 56 volumes, the majority of which are in the Garnett collection. The illustrations reach a very high standard, the best being perhaps Leloir's illustrations for the Routledge edition of “The Three Musketeers” in English and for the French edition of “Dame de Monsoreau.”
Naturally the dry enumeration of the last paragraph conceals many a rarity. For instance, in 1826, Dumas, then a young and unknown clerk, published, partly at his own expense, his first volume. It consisted of three short stories and was entiled “Nouvelles Contemporaines.” Only four copies were sold though Dumas presented a number to his friends. The difficulties of finding a copy of this book a century later are obvious. Nevertheless no fewer than three copies have passed through Mr. Reed's hands and he has retained the finest—in almost perfect condition—for his collection. Apparently rarer still is the four-volume set “La Maison de Savoie.” No bibliographer other than Mr. Reed has mentioned it and it is missing from both the French and English national collections. Mr. Garnett discovered a set in London in 1917 and five years later on purchasing a second set which contained several additional plates he sold his original find to Mr. Reed. One other copy has since been found, so that of three known copies two are now in Whangarei.
Dumas had a passion for editing journals of his own and some of these ventures involved him in heavy monetary losses. His first, “Psyche” was literary and contained a large amount of verse, including some of his own. Not many copies of this journal remain in existence and Mr. Reed has not been able to
secure even single numbers. Of the following other journals he has complete files. “Le Mois” was mainly political. “Le Mousquetaire” which ran for over three years was literary, and contained much of Dumas' own work in the earlier numbers, though later the quality fell away. The “Monte Christo” which was published between April 1857 and October 1862, with a break of about eighteen months, also contains a number of the romances, including some reprints. “Dartagnan,” another literary magazine is complete in the Garnett collection. There is still one journal to be referred to, though Mr. Reed has not been able to secure it as yet. This is a daily called “L'Indipendente” published first at Palermo and then at Naples. It is party in French and party in Italia, and was designed to further the cause of Italian freedom and unity. In this
Mr. Reed has also an admirable collection of volumes, booklets and pamphlets dealing with Dumas. The Garnett collection has contributed only to a slight degree to this section. Some of these concern the man himself, his life and work. Most, however, are histories, memoirs, etc., covering the period of Dumas romances and the lives of the many historical characters appearing therein. Magazine and newspaper articles dealing with Dumas have proved difficult to collect, but Mr. Reed has bound five volumes of these, two in French and three in English. An interesting pendant to this part of the collection is an enormous map of France in sections which was produced for Napoleon by Cassini. The sections, 182 in number, are nearly three feet by two and are enclosed in 27 boxes.
The twenty-seventh box covering the South-East corner of France is missing, however. In addition to the usual details, posting-stations, wayside inns, windmills, and gallows, as well as churches, monasteries and mansions, are shown. In short here you have France as it was prior to the railways, and in following the wanderings of a Dumas hero, the reader would gain from these maps much pleasure and profit.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the collection is the manuscripts. Up till 1923 Mr. Reed had collected only two or three brief notes in the Dumas handwriting. The first important manuscript came through the good offices of Mr. Garnett. It consists of two chapters of an unfinished romance skilfully combined, and prefixed and followed by comments on the then situation of Garibaldi, who was Dumas’ close friend. The romance referred to is “Isaac Laquedem”—the Dumas version of the ever-recurring legend of the Wandering Jew. The full story of the acquisition of this manuscript is most interesting, but space will not permit the telling here. The next manuscript was a collection of articles dealing with Garibaldi and the Italian situation between 1860 and 1864. This volume is beautifully bound in full green crushed morocco, each manuscript sheet inlaid in a wide border of cartridge paper, the edges fully gilt and the leather binding handsomely decorated. In the Garnett collection are two further volumes, bound to match. These holographs are known as “On board the ‘Emma’.” Later Mr. Reed was offered and bought the complete manuscript of the romance “Conscience I'Innocent” (400 pages), this being the only complete romance to come on the market in Mr. Reed's memory. Then there is “La Jeunesse de Louis XV,” a fine comedy which was refused production on political grounds and which has never been either printed or produced in its original state. Not only has Mr. Reed this manuscript but he has also a copy made by M. Glinel (previously referred to) and in all probability no other copy has ever been made.
This by no means exhausts the Dumas holographs, rather I have given you but a taste of their quality. Even the minor manuscripts contain much of interest. There are a number of letters, a visiting card, an order from Dumas to his steward Michel to permit a visitor to see over his Chateau de Monte Christo and a prayer-book in which Dumas has written a prayer for a child. There are also copies made by favoured friends of the author of four plays, which have never been printed, except that one appeared in a much changed version. One other item I must not omit. It is an account of her childhood written by Marie Alexandre Dumas, the daughter of the writer, for presentation to Prince Richard Metternich. Paper, binding and decorations are indeed beautiful, but the handwriting is what impresses most. A fine Italian hand and a spacious age that considered handwriting an art in itself.
It will be news to most people that Dumas also wrote poetry. His collected verses have never been published, but M. Glinel made in his own handwriting a collection of 155 poems and these are now in Mr. Reed's hands. He has managed to add a few to this collection including a number of originals. A little green notebook of Dumas', formerly in the Glinel collection, contains amongst much interesting matter two or three early pieces of verse in course of composition. Twenty-nine songs by Dumas are known to have been set to music and of these Mr. Reed has fourteen.
Among a number of photographs and portraits is an original pencil drawing of more than passing interest. It is
Finally it must be mentioned that two travel volumes edited by Dumas are of special interest to New Zealanders. One is an account of the experiences of Dr. Felix Maynard who served for a number of years as surgeon on board a whaler in New Zealand waters. The other is the journal of Madame Giovanni who visited Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands in the early part of the nineteenth century. Both of these Mr. Reed has made available for the first time in English.
Mr. Reed has not been unmindful of the town in which he has spent his life, but to enlarge on his services to Whangarei would be to incur his wrath. It must be stated, however, that Whangarei is to benefit from his collection. While he has very properly bequeathed the Reed-Garnett Dumas collection to Auckland, there are still about 1,500 volumes to be given to his own town. In this connection it may be mentioned that a very fine Public Library has recently been opened, a building which would do credit to a much larger place. The moving spirit in this has been Mr. A. T. Brainsby. Here a “Reed Room” has been provided and already a part of Mr. Reed's collection has been housed. This includes a duplicate set of the 72 typed Dumas plays previously mentioned, very nicely bound in 23 volumes. There are also a further seven volumes of typed translations. Then there is a Black Letter “Treacle” Bible of 1557, a “Breeches” Bible of 1599, a Fourteenth Century Manuscript, being the text of the minor prophets from Hosea to Malachi, in Latin, with notes and commentary, and a holograph letter from Lord Nelson to Admiral Collingwood dated from the Victory on 12th October, 1805.
There is much treasure still to come, including fine sets in translation of French Nineteenth Century romances and Memoirs from a much earlier date. There is practically a complete set of John Payne's works—limited editions including “The Arabian Nights,” “Bandello and Omar Khayyam in the original metre. There is a collection of books dealing with the Arthurian legends, another of early Italian novels and literature dealing with them, and there is the first edition of the Mardrus “Arabian Nights” in eight volumes in French, beautifully and profusely illustrated from Persian and Hindu manuscripts—a scarce set.
Any booklover who may find himself in Whangarei would be well-advised to visit Mr. Reed, and this whether or not he knows anything of Dumas. Apart from seeing the collection I have very imperfectly described, he will find Mr. Reed's literary gossip and his stories of hunting down his various treasures most fascinating. Further, if anyone is attempting to collect material about a favourite author—even in a much smaller way—Mr. Reed's advice and suggestions would be found invaluable. This applies with still greater force in regard to arranging, indexing and binding such material. From some small personal experience I can vouch that such a hobby will prove a delight to anyone interested in literature.
We have had a visit from a famous English artist and some of his comments on Art in New Zealand, while pleasing and encouraging in some directions, were also critical of certain defects in the work of our painters and the contents of public galleries. The stimulating note was strong. Mr. Lamorna Birch, marvelling at the clearness and crispness of much of our scenery, and, per contra, the lush rich moist colouring of the rain-forest and lake districts, advises the young artist to paint exactly what he sees, as he sees it. The courage of this opinion should be expressed in his brushwork. “Never mind other people,” was in effect one of his bits of advice; “trust to yourself. If you see that a white cloud casts a black shadow on the earth or the water, paint it black.”
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Lamorna Birch perhaps tried to paint more of New Zealand than he should have attempted in so short a visit. Certainly he saw more of the Dominion's varied landscapes in a few weeks than many New Zealanders see in a lifetime. He took away with him a great number of sketches and colour notes for future use, and these and his finished pictures will help to spread the fame of our scenery. The artist took a great fancy to the pohutukawa tree, not so much for its flowers as for its glorious lawlessness of growth, its irregularity of shape, all elbows and knees, and its fearless habit of rooting-in on cliff-tops and coast edges. In that liking for the pohutukawa and its sister the rata, he brought to my mind an artist of the older generation in the North, the late Kennett Watkins; it was his favourite picture tree.
Another artistic visitor of ours has expressed surprise that New Zealand painters devote themselves so exclusively to landscape without the touch of human life that gives double interest to the picture. Too true, ye artists! There is a maddening monotony in the landscapes we see year after year in our exhibitions, and in some of the permanent collections. I have often suggested that our artists would develop some originality of subject and treatment. There is the wonderful wealth of Maori legend; there is the inspiring history of our country. Most artists seem quite ignorant of both; it may be that they are afraid of their capacity in figure drawing.
There is, too, the life of to-day, all around us. Has no artist the vision to grasp the wonderful dramatic quality of great engineering works in construction such as the Mohaka railway viaduct? It is a subject a Brangwyn would seize upon with delight. The artistic value lies in the scenes of human activity, man's effort to overcome the wilderness, to bridge the gulches. Most of the interest vanishes with completion of such tasks; the artist must show the pioneer at work.
I remember that during the making of the North Island Trunk Railway I rode down the valley of the Ongarue to Taumarunui and thought what a subject it was for an artist—the white camps, tents and slab whares, of a thousand navvies; gleaming among clumps of dark bush and on the pumice terraces by the river, the great rock cuttings in the half-way stage, the busy little puffing locos. Alas! Our artists were all painting “The Waitemata by Moonlight” and “The Rose Bowl.”
In last month's article on this page I gave some account of the rugged Maruia country, between the Buller Valley and the eastern side of the Alpine ranges in the South Island. The olden Maori route between west and east traversed the wild valley called the Kopi o Kai-Tangata, or “Cannibal Gorge.” Continuing the narrative, I take from my notes of many years ago on the West Coast some details of primitive life and travel in the back country in ancient times. The very few surviving old Maoris at Arahura described the manner in which the travellers through that savage territory contrived to obtain food. Their principal items of food were weka (woodhens) and eels. They snared the weka—an easy task, because of its inquisitive habits—and also used dogs to catch them. These woodhens were in abundance, in the valleys and small natural clearings, in the great bush. The Maoris carried eel-baskets (hinaki) for the capture of the tuna, and early European explorers passing through the Maruia country found remains of those baskets in numerous places. Besides those staples there was fern-root; indeed this should be considered as the main item of food in some places. In the mountain-beech country, there was little bird life, because of the absence of berries, but in the lower parts where the miro and tawa and white-pine and other berry-bearing trees and shrubs grew, there were plenty of pigeon, tui and kaka parrots, and the kokako or blue crow, which were snared or speared. In some parts, including Maruia, the kakapo, the flightless ground parrot, was caught with the aid of dogs, which the Maoris trained to hunt silently
What I like about New Zealand (apart from the several things I love about it), is its power of quick-change artistry. It is like a book of small, brilliantly coloured and varied pages; if you are the sort of gastronomically hardened sinner to whom rainbow trout, grilled over a campfire and eaten underneath the lake pohutukawas doesn't appeal, you have only to flick a page, and behold a very fair imitation of Greenland's icy mountains, only much less forbidding, and sufficiently easy for the amateur's alpenstock to make a dent in their sides. In the South, if anything, this infinite variety is even more striking than in our old North Island; which, if I continue to write the flowery truth about the South, will set me down as a backslider and a renegade altogether.
Nevertheless, the way those small clay cottages cling to the black edge of nothingness has its fascination; and the rumble of the green and the yellow rivers.
Dunedin people, in a absentee landlord way, are very proud of what they call “Central.” Sometimes they saddle up and ride into its heart, sometimes their baby cars give an appealing look at the angles and set off to skirt the brinks of cliffs and gorges which are a little too awesome to be a motorist's paradise. One gathers, vaguely, that it isn't only the stern, slightly Scottish grandeur of Central which dwells in their minds, but the romance of the old gold-seeking towns, springing up fifty and more years ago, to harbour some of the wildest characters and strangest legends that ever took root in the soil of a new country. Mr. Bob. Gilkison, of Dunedin, has written an excellent book on the old days of gold in Central Otago, and if you want first-hand information about the “old identities,” you can hardly apply to a better source. I was told by a friend of Mr. Gilkison's that to go with him on a Central Otago trip was an almost unbearably slow process; because, all along the way, old-timers, complete with whiskers and nuggets appeared from their lairs and cried “Hullo, Bob!”
There is tragedy enough in some of the old stories. Mount Misery, Mount Hunger, dozens of other landmarks won their names through the deaths or suffering of pioneer goldseekers, straggling across the great hills, always in hopes of the grand strike which would put them on velvet for the rest of their lives—or, anyhow, enable them to paint bright vermilion the roaring goldrush towns, which look so sleepy to-day. Cromwell, Clyde, quaint little Arrowtown, how much they could say of the way New Zealand diggers had with a mate, a girl, a pickaxe, a good horse and a bottle!—all things which it behoves the well-educated man to handle as well as the next one.
Before visiting Dunedin, I had never seen a clay cabin; and when you do see one, you hardly believe your eyes, so quaint are these ghostly survivals from another time. Yet the pioneers were very proud indeed of their clay cottages, and there is an artistic charm about them which one would go far to seek in tin-roofed, wooden bungalows. Old settlers write that they were warm, dry and comfortable, with only one real disadvantage—the thick clay walls were a happy hunting-ground for fleas. Fleas or no fleas, it may interest New Zealand city dwellers to know that still, far down in “Central,” numbers of their countrymen live on in huts of clay or rough stone slabs, so crudely piled together that one wonders how their sides keep out the weather. Some of the cabins are empty and crumbling into decay, but others show a thin column of smoke, rising above the jade-green of the Kawarau river gorge, the grandest bit of “Central.”
Rivers of yellow, rivers of green. The yellow river tells how, miles to the north, prospectors are washing out alluvial gold, perhaps meagre scrapings which just enable them to keep going with the aid of the Government subsidy, perhaps a more or less reliable £6 or £7 a week. I know one young Christchurch journalist who lost his job during the depression; he “parked” his family, said goodbye to the city, and went out to Central, where he lived in a cabin, washed river gold, and seldom bothered a razor strop. The first year was hard enough, but at the end of the second, he struck the lucky patch about which diggers still dream. Since then, he has been averaging at least £6 a week, and thinks his claim a steady-going proposition for the next several years. His cabin has become a little house, and his family have joined him—young New Zealand growing up with the old gold days under their eyes. Around clay cabins in Otago Central, I saw little gardens, gay with flowers, or boastful with grandiose-looking onions, potatoes and curly kale; and young New Zealand, playing tow-headed and bare-legged outside these little abodes, looked by no means so forlorn as the comfort-loving mortal, who has never been beyond a stone's throw of the talkie palaces, might expect. Nor are the women living in the gold-bearing country of New Zealand entirely cut off from an interest in the world and its affairs. One sees wireless masts popping up on the queerest pinnacles. A souvenir which I am keeping for luck was a specimen of alluvial gold sent to me by the wife of a gold-seeker. A charming, well-educated young girl,
The yellow Molyneux and the green Kawarau could both tell great stories both of the ancient gold-rush, and the modern gold-walk—for that is what to-day's straggling progress across the mountains into lonely ravines amounts to. All the old-timers in Otago Central believe in the future of gold—and not only because of the present high market prices, but because they are sure that heavy reefs still remain to be discovered. Some of them carry within their memory the faces of men who made thousands; whom they themselves “grub-staked” for a few days' desperate combing of the gullies, and who came back to Arrowtown or Clyde, made men until that easy gold slid away as quickly as it came. The little town of Cromwell, perched above the Kawarau, was the scene, of a dramatic episode in New Zealand's gold-digging days, when the famous “Dredge No. 1” was opened. I know an old lady who was present on that stirring day, when the great mouth of the dredge opened to show nothing inside but heavy black silt. It was washed out, and the alluvial gold glittered up in handsful. Cromwell went crazy, that night—indeed, it was told that one well-known Cromwell man, who had staked his last penny on the fortunes of “Dredge No. 1,” really went out of his mind with joy at his success. In those days, even the sweepings of the Cromwell bank floors were a bonus which nobody would object to. And there was a big Chinese population, living its own communal life, smoking opium, burning joss-sticks in its own temple, holding its own concerts of wailing Chinese fiddles and tom-cat orchestration …
Not the glitter of gold alone, but sheer majesty catches one's breath at the first sight of Central. At the Kawarau Gorge, where “scenery” begins, and continues until one gets to Queenstown and the Southern Lakes, the huge black cliffs rise up, so sharp and steep that the sunset is cracked against them like the rind of a pomegranate. All the way from Dunedin to Cromwell, the train rumbles through tussock country. Such trees as dip their green heads into the wind have been planted, in little groups forlorn against the wide-spread yellow. From a little distance, the tussock country looks exactly like a lion's skin. There is the taut-stretched, tawny drum, the lean rocks stretching up for ribs, the high tufts which make the lion's tail. Part of the country is high plateau, splendid, and yet most desolate. But there is no weariness for the eye in this barren gold. The scenery has only one feature which is a nightmare touch; almost as soon as we left Dunedin, the fences bore queer little crescents, sometimes still befurred, sometimes bleaching into mere sticks of skin and bone. The tale of mass rabbit-killing is part of Otago's history. Old residents can still remember how the first rabbits came to “Central,” and to the Mackenzie Country; and how, a few years later, scores of men were employed on every big station, trying to wipe out the hordes whose numbers could not be counted. Evidence that the trapper is still hard at work to-day hangs stiffening on the fences; it is an ugly thing to see, and if you want another touch of the fantastic, nothing could be queerer than the effect of millions of dried foxglove stalks, nodding their withered heads against the cliffs. Evidently some attempt has been made to stamp out the foxglove, and these witch's fingers wag at you for scores of miles, with the bleaching rabbits to keep them company. Mount Hunger … Mount Misery … There is still a touch of the grim and bizarre in the country which gave space to such names.
A lonely thing to see, past Cromwell (and by that time, having travelled all day in the train, you have transferred to a service car, and are sitting side by side with two diggers who have been celebrating in Cromwell, and insist on singing all the way back to their clay hut), is the old garden-patches that have been abandoned, and run into wilderness. The colour of gold is oddly reproduced in marigolds and escholtzias, great banks of them; but the white irises outnumber them, taking little dips and gullies to themselves, while behind rise the black cliffs, and the huts and cabins clinging on their eaves like swallows' nests. The car swoops through white irises on either hand into a thick waft of scent from hawthorn hedges, white and pink, so heavy with blossom that their great plumes trail in the dust; and that is the approach to Arrowtown, which is of all spots in Central one of the prettiest and quaintest to look at, and was the home, some seventy years ago, of a fine, fat, notorious buccaneer, Bully Hayes.
I met in Arrowtown an old man of ninety-six, with blue eyes and a back as straight as a dart. His name was Romans, and on being told there was a stranger in the service car who would like to speak with him about the old days, he strode across the main street, and shook hands with me. There was nothing wrong with his sight, hearing or memory, though I thought he seemed a little bit hurt when I called him an old identity; for, said he, he had only been in Arrowtown three and sixty years. Mr. Romans, who was a gold-digger in the past, is a butcher now, and still makes the sausages, was not in Arrowtown when Bully Hayes was living there; but Bully had quit the town only a short time before his arrival, and his public house and singing-room were well remembered. The singing-room was the place where visiting troupes of concert performers, chorus maidens and other bright blowsy flowers of the old days, could congregate when they came so far from civilisation; and Bully Hayes was their very debonair host. You will find a good deal about him in Mr. Gilkison's
book, including the fact that he wore black crepe for a long while, and was most pious, after his poor wife had been mysteriously drowned; but was not restrained by this from going blackbirding in the Islands later, where, as the Victorians would say, he came to a just and a miserable end.
Do you know of another town, or townlet, in New Zealand where the street is still lighted with oil lamps? Or is Arrowtown in this way unique? But before I had time to ask Mr. Romans if here, in all the world, there was still a town lamplighter, the service car driver remembered his duty and his schedule, and off we went again. I had time to see, though, passing, more clay cabins under more great hawthorn trees, a very odd little sign-mark; and that was a bronze standard oil lamp, handsome in design if weather-beaten in aspect, which had been erected in honour of the Coronation of King Edward VII. And if anybody, for any reason whatsoever, ever takes that bronze standard oil lamp away, I hope all the choicest spectres of the gold country, Bully Hayes included, will besiege his midnights.
Rain and mist as we ran on towards the Remarkable Mountains. They are well-named; indeed, the whole of this country is an oddity, majestic, lonely, carried out on the grand scale, but with queer patches of pathos, like the white irises. And it was with the memory of the clay cabins still clinging against my eyes that darkness came down. It was not in this gold-bearing district, however, but in another, on the West Coast, that I met the goldminer from up the Howard, who was out with three nuggets in a little glass bottle, going into town, and who intended to get himself either a new set of teeth or a wife, whichever took his fancy when the time came. With gold over £8 an ounce, and every pennyweight of three ounces in that bottle, what was to stop him from pleasing his whim?
Bearing in mind the vast improvements introduced at the new Wellington Railway Station, considerable interest attaches to the remodelling and rebuilding of several important Home railway passenger stations—work which is now in hand, or contemplated in the near future. One of the biggest improvement works in progress covers the creation of a new and greater Euston Station in London, where our largest group railway—the London, Midland and Scottish—has its headquarters. Curiously enough, we celebrate on July 20th next, the one hundredth anniversary of the opening of the first section of the London and Birmingham Railway, from Euston to Boxmoor (24½ miles). The London terminus of this pioneer line was known as Euston Square, throughout operation between London and Birmingham commencing in 1838. The original Euston Station was quite adequate to the needs of the period, and the great arch and hall, designed by that genius among early railway architects, Hardwick, were remarkable contemporary contributions to advanced station design. The new Euston should produce equally outstanding examples of the railway architect's genius and adaptability, and provide a fitting headquarters terminus for its owners.
City passenger stations have undergone tremendous improvement in the last few decades. Time was when a railway station was merely a place for the entraining and detraining of passengers, and nothing more. To-day, the railway station is a most important civic and recreational centre. Leipzig, in Germany; Milan, in Italy; and the Eastern station, in Paris, are three continental examples of outstandingly well-designed stations. At Home, numbers of the principal city stations combine space, dignity and artistry, among the better-known being the Southern Railway's Waterloo and Victoria stations in London, the Victoria station of the L. M. & S. at Manchester; the Great Western Company's London terminus at Paddington; and the York station of the London and North Eastern. Some of the London tube stations, also, are fine works in their own class. The railway station being the veritable city centre, it often becomes possible for the modern station designer to provide a fine edifice at reasonable cost, through the additional commercial uses to which the building may be put. Rows of shops, and so on, are frequently included in modern station design. They add to the attractiveness of the station, and the rents derived therefrom provide a valuable source of revenue.
Like New Zealand, the Home railways are making extensive use of railcars of various types. An experiment that may have an important bearing on the future use of Diesel railcars is being tried out on the Great Western system. Based on the experience gained from the running of seventeen streamlined single-unit railcars, a new type of car has been constructed, capable of taking a “tail” load, of either passenger or goods stock, up to 60 tons in weight, and of performing light shunting operations. In appearance the new railcar, which may be driven from either end, resembles a huge seaplane
float, with large flush-fitting observation windows running along the top half, and merging at the end into sloping control cabins. The car is driven by two 130 h.p. heavy oil engines, fitted below floor level. Seats are provided for 49 passengers in two saloons opening from a centre vestibule. For branch line working, the advantage of employing a railcar capable of hauling additional vehicles, when required, is obvious.
Said to be the longest railway rails ever fashioned in one piece, there have recently been produced for the L. & N.E. Railway one hundred tons of steel rails each 120 feet in length. Each rail, which is of the 100lbs. per yard standard section, weighs over 1¾ tons. The rails are to be laid in the L. & N.E. mainline at Holme, south of Peterborough, at a point where expresses like the “Silver Jubilee” regularly travel at 90 m.p.h. They are being introduced experimentally as part of the plan to do away with as many rail joints as possible, and so to improve train running, both by making smoother travel and lessening noise. At the commencement of the present century, the standard Home main-line rail lengths were 30 and 45 feet. After the War this was generally standardised at 60 feet,
ft. rails in their main-line track north of York. The same company were also the first to introduce at the beginning of the present decade the medium manganese steel rail which has since been adopted as standard for Home railway use.
Train signalling forms a most important branch of railway working, and it is surprising how signalling practice varies in different lands. In a report prepared for the forthcoming International Railway Congress, by Mr. W. A. Fraser, Engineer (Scotland), L. & N.E. Railway, it is stated that in Great Britain upper-quadrant, mechanically-operated semaphore signals are now standard, except on the Great Western. Large numbers of lower quadrant signals are still employed, however, both types operating through angles varying from 45 to 60 degrees. Canada, South Africa and the United States also employ upper-quadrant signals, while in Japan both three-position upper-quadrant and two-position lower-quadrant signals are favoured. Among other railway systems retaining the lower-quadrant type, the most common angle of operation is 45 degrees. In Great Britain and Ireland, 5,280 feet is the maximum distance at which mechanical signals are erected from the cabin. This compares with the New Zealand figure of 4,500 feet, the Indian 3,000 feet, and the South African 4,000 feet. The maximum length of track circuit under favourable ballast conditions varies on the Home railways from 2,400 to 15,840 feet. For India the figure stands at from 1,800 to 2,500 feet, and for the United States from 4,000 to 7,000 feet.
Important schemes for the modernisation and extension of freight terminal facilities, at Manchester, Coventry and Derby are being carried out by the L.M. & S. Railway. A feature of these schemes is the introduction of electrically-driven machinery for use in connection with the unloading of wagons, in conjunction with other new equipment and methods. With a total trackage of about 50,000 miles, the Home railways handle about 45,000,000 tons of miscellaneous merchandise annually; 50,000,000 tons of minerals other than coal and coke; and 180,000,000 tons of coal, coke and patent fuel. In addition, approximately 11,000,000 head of livestock are carried. At strategic points, large hump marshalling yards are located, and between these, specially fast daily goods trains operate, giving “next morning” deliveries. One of the largest and most modern marshalling yards is that of the L. & N.E. line at March, Cambridgeshire. This is the “key” rail traffic centre for freight passing from London and East Anglian
points to the midlands and north, and vice versa. Some 10,500 wagons may be accommodated, and the total trackage runs to something like 50 miles. Outstanding among the items of equipment are mechanical wagon retarders, working on the Froelich hydraulic system, as originated by the German railways in their Hamm marshalling yard.
The employment of dogs for assisting in policing some of the Home railway dock premises has for long been common. Now we hear of canine intelligence being utilised in another direction in the railway world, this time by the Great Western Railway. On certain of the South Wales tracks, sheep have a habit of straying, and to round up these trespassers, sheep dogs are allotted to the permanent-way staffs, and perform invaluable service. The dogs are trained to answer verbal commands from their masters, and also to understand and answer to whistles and hand-signals. In addition to driving sheep off the track, the dogs give warning to the permanent-way men of an approaching train, and will not leave the track until all the men are clear. The track sense of the animals is truly remarkable. If caught between the sets of rails while driving a sheep off the track, they calmly lie down in safety until the two trains have passed.
Record passenger business is reported between Britain and Holland. Between Harwich and Hook of Holland, the L. & N. E. Railway operates a nightly mail steamship service in each direction. A corresponding daylight service is provided between Harwich and Flushing by the Zeeland Steamship Company. Leaving Liverpool Street station, London, at 8.30 p.m., and dining on the train, the Dutch city of The Hague is reached by seven o'clock next morning, and Amsterdam before eight.
Very early in the history of the New Zealand Railways the advantages of tree planting and preservation, and the beautification of railway reserves was recognised by the Department, and in 1888 it was operating a tree nursery — actually about ten years before the Government commenced to operate its general forest nurseries.
The advantages of these early efforts in protective and amenity planting are seen to-day, particularly in the South Island, where, between Christchurch and Timaru, there are over 40 plantations on a total area of 450 acres and containing 158,000 trees. The plantations at Rolleston, Hinds, Winchester and Temuka are recognised as definitely improving the landscape.
In the North Island the railway plantations are less extensive, but some of them, notably at Papakura and Rotorua, and in various localities along the line in the Waikato district, provide a very attractive setting for the stations at which they are planted.
In 1903 the occupiers of Railway houses were circularised regarding the necessity for protecting trees planted around stations and on the land adjacent to these houses, and they were also advised as to the advantages of cultivating gardens on the house properties.
It has also been a practice of the Railway Department for many years to welcome the co-operation of Local Bodies, Beautifying Societies and others interested in improving the aesthetic appeal of their particular localities, in utilising any spare land belonging to the Department for beautification and general amenity purposes. Besides the various Beautifying Societies and Associations who have taken an active part in this valuable work, and the local Borough and Town Councils which have regarded this cooperation as part of their civic duty, various other interested groups and individuals have assisted with fine enthusiasm in making the precincts of railway premises more pleasing to residents and visitors. At some places groups of settlers have combined in this work, at others Girl Guides and School Teachers, and in every instance the Railway Department has appreciated this assistance and provided, where required, soil, fencing and other material, and labour in the preparation of areas for the improvements desired.
When interested groups desire to help in this way, the practice is for the Department to lease the land at a peppercorn rental to the body concerned, and only to take the land back if it is required for immediate railway purposes.
The result of this policy is that at very many places in the Dominion are to be found splendidly kept reserves, either at stations or in the near vicinity, which serve to improve greatly the environment of stations and which are a credit to all concerned in their care and preparation.
In Canterbury, Otago and Southland, there are Ladies' Clubs interested in beautifying their localities and districts, whose members devote much time and care to the beautification of railway premises. The Railway Department associates itself with their work, and station garden competitions are held annually when cups are awarded to the winning stations. The railway staff at the various stations are keenly interested in this friendly rivalry and work enthusiastically and with much skill, knowledge and judgment to make the best possible use of the areas at their disposal.
The result of all these efforts in co-operation for beautifying purposes
is seen in the appearance of stations and their surroundings.
The public response may be judged by the following typical comments:–The Mayor of Hawera (Mr. J. E. Campbell) wrote in July of last year: “Our citizens are as proud of the gardens as your own Department is.”
From another correspondent:—“I am an old lady, very fond of flowers, and I send these words of appreciation.”
At many stations individual tablet porters and others have found pleasure in beautifying the immediate surroundings of their stations, by gardens, lawns, and other decorative efforts, while many railway houses are notable for their finely-kept gardens and well-tended orchards.
The new stations at Auckland and Wellington gave the Department an opportunity for expressing the value it places on aesthetic considerations not only in the design of the buildings but also in their setting. At Auckland station the Railway gardens are recognised to be a valuable asset both to the Railways and the City, and a large area of valuable land was specially provided to enable this effect to be produced. There the Department employs regularly a skilled gardener, and it has nurseries for flowers and plants on the roof of the Auckland station.
At some railway centres, e.g., Otahuhu and Hillside, the railway staff run their own flower shows very successfully, and they sometimes have garden circles, with regular advice from professional gardeners, the results of whose efforts have been the subject of frequent favourable comment both by visitors and in the newspapers.
On many occasions photographs of railway gardens in various localities have been featured in the press of the Dominion and also in overseas publications.
At the Wellington new station a very large area has been provided by the Department in front of the station and is now being prepared with the best available professional skill for lawns and gardens.
On the station roof there is to be a glass house to provide a nursery for young trees. Provision is also being made for considerable beautification along the route of the Tawa Flat deviation.
When new lines are built (as in the case of the Waterloo line) reserves are set aside for beautification purposes and this feature will also have attention along the routes of lines at present under construction.
When circumstances warrant, subsidies are granted to Societies who have helped in beautifying railway reserves, and free railage for requisites as well as shrubs and trees for planting are provided by the Department where desirable.
Among stations where railway reserves and premises have been improved by the co-operation of local interests and the railway staff may be mentioned: Port Chalmers, Balclutha, Burnside, Mosgiel, Stirling, Sawyer's Bay, Dunedin, Timaru, Winton, Lumsden, Palmerston, Waikari, Fairlie, the Lyttelton Line, Little River, Dunsandel, Papanui, Rangiora, Rakaia, Heathcote, Picton, Hawera, Otaki, Lower Hutt, Port Ahuriri, Te Awamutu, Morrinsville, Hangatiki, Tahora, Kiwitahi, Kaiwaka, Whangarei, Hamilton, Manurewa, Otahuhu, Penrose, Sylvia Park, Katikati, Puha, Leeston and Southbrook.
The Railway Department does whatever is possible to preserve the native flora on lands under its control. It will not sanction the cutting of trees except in cases of necessity, and all members of the Department are instructed not to remove native plants or greenery from railway reserve or other Crown land for decorative purposes.
Some time ago the Department appointed a highly qualified Forestry Officer to care for its forest property, its groves and plantations, and he is applying to his work the principles of aesthetic forestry, especially in the selection of appropriate trees for planting in settings which will help to add aesthetic value to the relations between railway premises and the cities or the countryside they serve.
At present the Department operates two nurseries which contain approximately three million trees, mainly eucalypts. These will be planted in various parts of the country, but mainly on a consolidated area near Waihi.
Here there was last year planted and sown some 230 acres in various species, mainly eucalypts, and in addition near the main Waihi-Tauranga highway, a two-mile strip of Red Flowering Gum with an outside line of pohutukawas, the object being to obtain bright colour for a considerable part of the year, the two species supplementing each other.
The plans for the coming winter include the planting of the greater part of three thousand acres, near Waihi, together with small areas in various other localities.
“You'd hardly believe,” he said to the Chum who'd dropped in, “how pernickety some men are when buying a pipe. A bloke blew in yesterday who priced all my choicest briars and ended up by buying a ninepenny Cherrywood.” The other chap laughed. “Good job,” he said, “smokers aren't like that when it comes to tobacco. Generally smoke same old brand?” “That's right, one of my regulars has been smoking same brand for 25 years.” “What's his fancy?” “Same as your's—Cut Plug No. 10.” The caller nodded, “I sure freeze on a good thing when I strike it; what's the other toasted brands, again?” “Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Cavendish, Riverhead Gold, and Desert, Gold: When I open a case of tins it's empty in no time. Smokers can't resist toasted.” “True, O King!—I know I can't!” “Yes, toasted has a lot to recommend it,” said the tobacconist, “being toasted it's practically without nicotine, the flavour's O.K., and it has a bosker bouquet.” “You've said it,” laughed his pal, and with a “Cheerio,” he went his way.
The present condition of the railway plantations is perhaps the best indication of the attitude of the Department and its servants towards trees. The trees have been carefully guarded, and such plantations as at Papakura, Rotorua and Rollestion are amongst the best existing samples of early plantations.
At the new Railway Workshop in the principal centres the Railway Department has shown what can be done in providing an aesthetic surrounding for the performance of factory work, and the grounds at these workshops are a frequent source of admiration for visitors and are also greatly appreciated by the staff of the workshops.
All the big things have been done by Man! yes, sir—with Woman pushing him from behind. Where there's a will there's a way. The woman supplies the will and the man has to find the way. Man is naturally a back-slider; woman is a forward pusher. Man seldom looks for trouble; but his wife does—and passes it on to him. Man is a peace-at-any-pricer. He is satisfied to be satisfied. There are other names for it, too. His wife calls it bone-laziness. Left to his own he-vices he would live in a whare, a wigwam or a barrel, provided there was room enough to put his feet on the mantelpiece.
But the female nine-tenths of the connubial fracas spends much of her time thinking up things to make him think. In the first place she was an after-thought, and she has been after it ever since. Contemplate the average married man, when he images that the heat and burden of the day are o'er, comfortably parked on his dorsal fin with his feet on the marble presentation clock and the warmth of the fire playing pleasantly upon him. He is a picture of content—cubic and otherwise. His spouse sits spouselike at his elbow. Her feet are on the ground. His are on the mantelpiece. There you have the difference. The average wife's feet are always on the ground, which makes her such a disturbing mate for the average slothful male. Notice how his expression of digestive rumination, his contemplative calm, dissolves when he detects in his wife's eye that pensive, expensive, look. Does he suspect that her mystic gaze foretells that he will shortly have to gird up his suspenders? Too right he does! Is she looking into the future? Yes, sir—his.
Is she thinking up such comfort slaying activities as laying a carpet, mending the wash-house door, or even shifting house? We'll say she is!
He buries his head in the newspaper like a kind of literary ostrich, and his expression is a combination of “Just Before the Battle Mother,” “His Master's Voice.” “A Hopeless Dawn” and “Stag at Bay.”
He has seen that look in his wife's projectors before, and it has always resulted in his taking off his coat and rolling up his shirtsleeves. Not that she is inhuman. She always softens the blow by saying “we.” She says, “I think we will dig up the lawn and resow it,” or “Isn't it time we put new posts in the back fence?” But she knows that he knows that, when she says “we,” she means only half of what she says.
An innocent listener might think, “What a wife!” He might regard her as a kind of late-model Boadicea or Helen of Troy, or one of those old-fashioned girls who weren't afraid to
be themselves and share the white man's burden. But no so! The married man knows that the pronoun “we,” when used connubially, is always first-person-singular. It is a figure of speech. The wife supplies the speech and the husband the figure.
So, when—at eventide—she broods over him like the Sphinx giving the human sacrifices the once-over, the flavour goes out of his flake-cut, the strength goes out of his legs, the cubic content is spilt out of his heart and even the warmth of the fire seems to go cold. Unless his spirit has been thoroughly broken by recurrent attacks on his male morale, he will put up a futile resistance. He will try to sidetrack her although he knows full well that she's a single-track loco. He will say, “By the way; I saw the Deadbeat-Snobsons to-day in their new car. I don't know how they do it.” It's a low trick to play on a woman, but, as he never gets away with it, it doesn't really matter. Or he might mention a hat he has (not) seen in town—the despicable coward!
Presently she puts on the pressure, and he is sausage-meat in her hands. She says, dreamily, “I've been thinking, Harold—–”
Then, of course, he knows that she's about to put horror in his horoscope.
When a woman says that she has been thinking she means merely that she has come to a decision, which is quite a different thing. That's where the female is the superior sex. A man has to think a long time before he can decide anything. But not a woman. She can decide things with no thought at all. At the shortest notice she can decide on anything from taking a bath to taking a world tour; from making a cake to making a fuss, from doughnuts to divorce, and from bad to worse.
It has been optimistically stated that an Englishman's home is his castle; but, in reality, all he has charge of is the keep. But he is more or less content. To him, a house is a place designed to keep the rain out and the warmth in. To his wife it is an excuse for shifting furniture about. She contends, strangely enough, that she “has to live in it.” For this reason she often itches to get out of it. If Harold had his way the house that he entered in his wedding suit would be the house he'd leave in a bath-chair. Certainly the chimneys smoke, the roof leaks over the bed, and even a land agent would jib at putting it into prose, much less poetry; but living in it saves the bother of shifting out of it; and, anyway, Harold has grown so used to it that he would probably stray back to it if he left, and would have to have butter put on his feet to remind him where he lived.
However, just when he is complimenting himself on the comfort of the old homestead his wife says: “Harold, I've been thinking.” Immediately, he sees the furniture on a cart and himself next to the driver holding the marble clock. A shudder shakes him to the suspenders. He flinches as though struck over the face with a draper's bill.
“This house—–,” continues the shatterer of his dreams. Harold tries a pitiful bluff, “Yes; cosy old dump, isn't it?” he croaks.
His wife treats his pathetic feint with the contempt it deserves. “The Woozles have just shifted into their new bungalow,” she murmurs dreamily.
“Pah! Those new places,” says Harold, game to the last. “Haven't got the timber in ‘em that the good old places have got. Now this little crib! Sound as a bell! Heart timber every bit—–”
Of course, it's touchingly pitiful. Like a cornered guinea-pig he yelps, “Now look here!”
“Inset bath, glass all down one side, every conceivable convenience!” she breathes with her eyes half-closed and trance-like. Even brave men know when the last ditch is reached and the last bullet fired. Harold knows that he is a beaten man. He sees himself looking at sections that resemble upended slabs of the Great Gobi Desert. He sees plans and builders. He sees his Saturday afternoons spent chopping the whiskers off a particularly noisome chunk of hillside. He sees liberty curtailed, life reduced to blue prints and grey days. He visions himself in a new house that smells of varnish, red lead and new wall-paper. He knows that he'll have to buy a new pair of slippers because the comfortable old ones will never harmonise with the modernistic aesthetics of the new house. He knows the mantelpieces will all be too high or too low for foot comfort.
His wife has said practically nothing, so far. But he knows, he knows. The writing is on the wall, all over it— six feet high. Harold remembers a little hymn he used to sing at Sunday school that began, “We want but little here below.”
He mentions it to his wife in the dim mad hope that she may see the light. But, if he reads the message in her eyes aright, they say, “Sez you!”
With deep regret we have to report the decease cf Mr. I. J. Howell, District Engineer at Wanganui, on the morning of the 13th May, 1937.
Born in New Plymouth in 1895, and educated at the New Plymouth Boys' High School, Mr. Howell joined the Railway Service on 11th February, 1913, as a Civil Engineering Cadet in the Chief Engineer's Office, Wellington. Later in the same year he was transferred to the District Engineer's Office at Wanganui, and a year later to the Department's New Works Office at Auckland.
Mr. Howell enlisted in the New Zealand Expeditionary Forces on 24th November, 1915, and was in active service in France until sent home suffering from shell shock early in 1918. He resumed duty on 26th June, 1918, as a Draftsman in the Auckland District Office, where he rendered valuable service, although not always in the best of health, for six years.
On 24th July, 1924, Mr. Howell was appointed Assistant Engineer at Ohakune, which was then the headquarters of a district covering the North Island Main Trunk Line from Frankton to Marton. Next year he was again transferred to Auckland where he became Assistant District Engineer on the 1st April, 1927. On the retirement of Mr. J. K. Lowe, District Engineer, early in 1931, Mr. Howell was for about a year Acting District Engineer at Auckland.
On 13th January, 1932, Mr. Howell was promoted to District Engineer at Wanganui. On the closing of the Ohakune District in 1935 a large portion of that district was added to the Wanganui District, greatly adding to Mr. Howell's responsibilities. The combined district embraced all the railway bridges over the many fast streams flowing from Mt. Egmont, which frequently scoured out the bridge foundations, the treacherous papa cuttings of the inland regions, the high viaducts of the Main Trunk Line, the famous Spiral with its tunnels and boulder cuttings, where New Zealand's most important trains pass in the night. At all times he had a firm grip in every detail cf his difficult charge, and always held the confidence and respect of his whole staff. He was at his best at times of slips and washouts. Called out in all weathers, generally in great discomfort and often in failing health, he always managed to keep smiling and his cheerfulness was infectious. He would never be beaten.
His range of duties brought him many contacts. His outside interests were many and varied. He will be remembered most by those who knew him best for his capacity for friendship, for the way his face would light up on meeting an old friend. He was the same to everyone, high or low. The representative assembly at his funeral at New Plymouth showed the esteem in which he was held. On behalf of the management and of railwaymen of all ranks we offer our sincere tribute to his memory, and our sympathy to his widow and to his brothers and sisters who survive him.
of municipal enterprises, but I was particularly struck with the commercial efficiency with which the gas and electrical departments were handled. As noticed before, the volume of business is quite unusual on a population basis. The library is a fine one, and the presence of good bookshops with the most modern representations of serious books gives evidence of a good standard of reading taste. In common with other provincial capitals Hamilton's inhabitants enjoy all the modern amenities such as deep drainage, paved roads, good theatres and cinemas, and an up-to-date transport service. The latter by the way is privately owned and is soundly run.
Hamilton has its own peculiar problem of development. Its main thoroughfare expansion is prevented by the river and on the other side there is a small low hill in the middle of the city which sits squatly athwart the parallel streets. The constantly increasing motor traffic makes the main street a spectacle every hour of the day as it is lined two deep. It seems a pity that the rather disfiguring little hill cannot be removed. A scheme for enabling this went astray though its financial implications had been scrutinised by the highest authority in the land. It would have undoubtedly ennobled and wholly altered the layout of the city.
I have referred before to the name of Mr. Henry Reynolds, and it is not an undue play on words to say that the prosperity of Hamilton is “Anchored” to its giant dairy organisation which is known the world over.
It is an example of logical, complete and skilful rationalisation. The New Zealand Co-operative Dairy Company Limited consists in point of fact of an association of over 10,000 farmers. It is farmer-owned and controlled and is the largest business of its kind in the world. A massive pile of buildings houses its executive headquarters with a staff of one hundred and sixty. The detailed story of this great concern is however too long to give here. Figures are seldom picturesque, but this company's output last season reached the remarkable figure of 64,349 tons. It owns or controls its own box making factories, its tin manufacturing plant, and it operates its own coal mines. It founded and operates the Challenge Phosphate Company, now the largest artificial manure factory in the world and it concerns itself with the bacon industry, pig raising, and indeed every activity allied to the dairy industry.
Besides the making of butter and cheese, it manufactures, inter alia, two great food product lines. Its Skim Milk Powder used to improve bread making is a highly concentrated food essence of nutritive value, and “Ankoria” Baby Food is a commodity whose value is attested by rapidly growing sales. A London office is maintained.
“Anchor” was an inspirational name to typify this great achievement's standard of goods.
We may be proud of this model creation of the brains and hands of New Zealanders. Here is co-operation in its real sense and rationalisation in its highest degree of economic efficiency. Rabid competition has been replaced by co-ordination of effort. Quality as a single aim can be pursued here, for the days are gone for ever when a supplier, reproved for poor milk could say, “Oh, very well, I'm going elsewhere;” the opposition factory three miles down the road no longer exists. Here in this great concern we have the fine example of a multitude of men of an occupation held in common, disciplining themselves for the common good and the national benefit.
The management has an unbroken history of efficiency; its financial strength is impregnable to-day, and its counting house, insurance, and general business aids to farmers are models of common sense and helpfulness. The New Zealand Co-operative Dairy Company Ltd. is a constituent factor in the well being not only of Hamilton and the Waikato but of the whole Dominion.
However, it must be remembered that the Waikato is not wholly given up to the changing of grass into butter and cheese. It is a sheep grazing country as well, and it is also typically suitable for the raising of thoroughbred animals, sheep, cattle, pigs and horses.
I have Vice-regal authority for the statement that New Zealand is destined to be the thoroughbred farm for the whole world; all that is required being human attainments. I visited the Hillcrest Stud of Mrs. Gaine Carrington where this factor is in evidence. She and her sons are carrying on the tradition of breeding knowledge and skill which is inherited from the great founder of the stud. Here is the best possible example of the fact that New Zealand has the gifts of rich soil, mild climate, gentle rains, and, indeed everything to make an equine paradise. The yearlings running about are like kittens. Hunting Song is of course, a household word wherever racing men congregate or sporting talk is made. He is our country's leading sire for these many years. He is docile and intelligent, and as one bystander said with a direct glance at me “he has more sense than the average sporting writer.”
It is hard for me to write of Baffles, the latest importation with the sobriety required in the “Railways Magazine.” He is a son of the famous Blandford and is one of those streamlined, flawlessly shaped thoroughbreds, which only Old England gives us. He stood like a tenor to have his picture taken and like his mate, Hunting Song, is full of high intelligence.
Hamilton itself was lighting up for the Coronation festivities and we looked in at the Winter Show. This modest name is used for a great annual industrial exhibition and a show of primary production.
The new Bledisloe Hall must be seen to be believed and for five days and five night this combination of fair, industrial exhibition, horticultural display and educational display is thronged by visitors from all over the Dominion.
It is a show window for this fortunate province and fortunate capital.
Let Hamilton folk count their blessings. Their welfare is founded on the firmest of rocks, and the outlook is rosy with promise.
“Don't cram a new pipe with tobacco and smoke it right out,” writes “Old Smoker,” in a Melbcurne paper, “if subjected to intense heat the bowl, until protected by a layer of carbon, is very liable to crack; knocking a pipe against something hard to get the ashes out, and lighting up from the flame of a candle, should also be avoided.” Correct, Sir! But how about the baccy? If loaded with nicotine, (as it often is) a pipe quickly fouls, necessitating constant scraping until the bowl's worn thin as a sixpence. Impure tobacco's bad for the pipe and worse for the smoker. But why smoke it, when you can get “toasted,” combining a fascinating flavour with a delicious bouquet, at any tobacconists. As for purity—there's no tobacco like it. The nicotine is absorbed by toasting and the baccy's rendered as harmless as it can possibly be. The five brands Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead), Cavendish, Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold, merit their immense popularity. The world can show no finer tobaccos.
own. For this reason, his, students here worked under him with loyalty and affection, knowing that their interests were safe in his hands. For this reason, too, he has friends among the scientific workers of every country, and is welcome everywhere.”
Moreover, as Sir William Bragg says, Rutherford has a sound grasp of the essentials of business and a quick understanding of the thoughts and feelings of those with whom he is dealing.
“It has happened at more than one gathering that progress has been slow until Rutherford has taken the lead, and with his driving power and natural kindliness has brought about a successful issue. It is this unusual combination of so many qualities that has won for Rutherford a host of admirers.”
To this tribute Dr. Marsden adds his own words of appreciation of a friend he is delighted to honour: “He is kindly, just and helpful to his students, always ready to do a kindly action without ostentation—keenly interested, as a citizen, in public affairs, and yet unostentatious, and always practical in outlook, and willing to learn …. He is essentially modest and unassuming, and one of his human traits is that throughout his whole career he found time each fortnight or month to write a long letter to his mother describing the daily occurrences of his family and work, the various functions he attended, and such news as would interest his far-away mother.”
Those letters were too sacred to publish now, but if they had been kept, as he hoped, they would be invaluable as a record of the times when the work on which he was engaged was seen, in its perspective, as the foundation of the newer industries of the future.
Our first New Zealand peer, though so busy in his research work and his many professional duties, keeps a close eye on public affairs.
Physically Lord Rutherford is a capital product of the healthy strenuous open air life of his native land. He is tall and big-boned, a competent frame that houses a great heart and a great brain.
One of his English interviewers said that “he looks like a peer … a ruddy outdoor complexion and easy, rather old-fashioned clothes, put you in mind of a country grandee up from the west… When he goes there (the House of Lords) to make one of his rare speeches on scientific matters, he commands instant attentive respect, which is the rightful due to an aristocrat of learning, the greatest experimental scientist now alive on the earth.”
Lord Rutherford met Mary Newton, the lady who became his wife, in his student days at Canterbury College. His only daughter died some years ago.
He and Lady Rutherford have a comfortable old English home at Cambridge, where many New Zealanders call to greet and honour the renowned lord of science who is also one of the most unassuming and kindly of men.
Still they come! The long list of successful railroad film romances is further extended by “Florida Special,” in which the whole of the action takes place on the train. Jack Oakie, Frances Drake and Kent Taylor are the stars of this romantic, and often vastly amusing production. The printing press is also adding its quota to the undiminished popularity of the railway. “Famous British Trains,” by R. Bernard Way, is a book every train lover will enjoy. It tells the history of British trains, and much about the country through which they travel.
—O.W.W.
But why Helen? Why not Concordia, or Nancy, or something French? Does it matter? It does—to me.
When I first essayed the writing of Women's Notes for the “Railways Magazine,” I was exercised in my own mind as to the propriety, or not, of signing my own name. Advertisement or anonymity? Anonymity won, for reasons hereinafter given. Canvassing among friends for a suitable pen-name produced a great variety of nomenclature, from the erudite (classical Latin or fashion-note French) to the warmly related (Aunt Jenny or Cousin Sue). I dislike the pedantic and I have a positive hatred for fulsome friendliness.
The pen-name puzzle reached such a pitch that I could write nothing but lists of foolish nom-de-plumes wrung from my fevered brain. The date of publication was drawing near. The Editor was waiting. Like cool rain from a brazen sky came the suggestion “Helen.” The problem was solved and I gaily despatched my first assignment.
It was not until I saw the Women's Page in print that I recognized the affinity of Helen to a dream-name of my childhood. “Helena” it had been then, and to me it still is Helena, in sympathy with that child I once was. That child, like most young things, had a quaint habit of mispronouncing words, sometimes quite simple words. Such an one was “Helena.” The proud heroine of an early birthday gift book remained for years “Hel-een-a,” until an unthinking adult, until then rather admired, on being told some of the story, corrected the heroine's name to Hell'n'a. “Hell'n'a”; What a hideous name! Dear Hel-een-a! Must you suffer such an indignity? The book lost much of its magic, and was put away. The memory of a glorious name, dragged down to the commonplace remained.
So, in resentment, and in vindication of that child I was, I sign myself Helen—to me, “Hel-een-a.”
As to the delights of anonymity, these are they. I become so free. I revel in liberty; in the equality I confer on myself by writing familiarly of others, of the great, of the lowly, of the merely eccentric; in the fraternity authors know—how friendly, in the name of art, we greet the opening bud, the dipping gull, Phoebus Apollo himself—with what warmth we espouse the cause of an ill-starred hero, with what sympathy view the soul struggles of our heroine.
Furthermore, anonymity allows one to use, so much more freely, the known. Not that you, who are unlucky enough to be known to me, will find yourselves displayed by my pen. Ah, no! I am a little abler than that. As the artist mixes his colours, so do I blend my friends; from them choose characteristics which, filled out by means of that faculty I can find no other name for than imagination, form a composite personality. No, you will not find yourself in my pages—a touch of you, perhaps, but you won't recognise that.
As to environment—city, village, train, boat, hotel—neither my power of description nor yours of observation is, in all probability, great enough to allow of recognition. Guess, if you like. And while you vainly probe, I shall continue to sign myself “Helen.”
More and more New Zealanders are taking advantage of their winter playgrounds. Of sports, ski-ing gives, in full measure, the pleasures of skill, grace and speed. Here, as in everything, we poor humans have to clothe ourselves suitably against the elements and for ease of movement.
For a ski-ing holiday, the wardrobe is as important as transport and accommodation. The best material for ski-suits is proofed gabardine. Have plus-fours or trousers, whichever you prefer. The suit is best made in a dark colour (black, navy blue or green) with accent given by gay accessories—gloves, scarves, caps. Don't forget the long, woollen, knitted stockings for wear with plus-fours. Good ski-boots are very important. Of course, they may be hired at the mountain hostelries; but once having ski-ed, you are bound to do it again, so it is well to buy your own boots, made to your own measurements. Skiing is like golf. It requires a fairly large outlay at the start, but once having begun, the initial expense is soon forgotten or regarded as well worth-while in view of the pleasure already received and still to come.
The most useful garments for wear round about the accommodation house are tweed skirts, silk shirt blouses and woollen jumpers or cardigans. Woollen undies, of course, are an important part of a winter wardrobe.
Be ready for merry evenings. Have two or three pretty dance frocks and a comfortable wrap.
My best wishes for one of the best holidays you've ever had.
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Perhaps you have a woollen frock with a rever collar. You are accustomed to wearing a tuck-in scarf. As a change from that, and in order to bring your frock more in line with high-neck fashions, have the material standing up round your neck. There are several smart ways of holding it in position.
A cord and “boblets” are easy. If you know someone who is clever at threading beads in flat strips, have her thread some for you in shades to suit your frock—half an inch wide and up to thirty inches long, according to how long you want the dangling ends in front to be.
I saw one frock with a choker of bone rings. Of imitation tortoise-shell, they were joined with windings of wool to match the dress. Ordinary white rings can be crocheted over in any colour required. Remember that the more wool you wind in joining your rings, the more effective will be your choker.
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I suggested painting the kitchen. Mirabelle opened her eyes wide. “Now?” she asked. “Of course. The sooner the better.” “But wouldn't you leave that till the spring? Everything looks so dirty after the winter. It's so nice, in the spring, to make everything fresh and new-looking.” “Oh, yes, but …. Anyhow, I'm going to paint it now.”
I can't be bothered arguing with Mirabelle. I always feel I'm really up against her mother, and that I can't put my case effectively through Mirabelle.
What I'd like to tell Mirabelle's mother is that I don't use a coal range which makes everything even grubbier in winter, and even if I did, I would prefer my kitchen to be cheerful. On dull winter days a kitchen can be a very depressing place. Anything I can do to lighten and brighten it, is worth doing.
Another thing I almost said to Mirabelle is that the spring itself is such a cheerful season that, even when one is indoors, one's eyes and thoughts are outside. I'm afraid a kitchen can't contain me in the spring—there's usually a leaf tapping at the window or a stray sunbeam to beckon me out.
Meanwhile, I'm going to have a working bee. Anyone can try his or her hand at washing down the walls, but I need an expert for painting the ceiling. A boxer would be best, as he is used to keeping his hands up. But I don't think I know a boxer.
I'm going to be the one to choose the paint. It's going to be a very good enamel, as kitchen-walls require fairly frequent washing.
I don't think I'll have white this time, but a warm cream. There are a few nail-holes that I must putty up. My trouble is that I'm always thinking of new places to hang things in my kitchen and cup-hooks have a great attraction for me. I'm going to be ruthless, though. Out comes everything except what holds something in a truly labour-saving position.
And when my kitchen is painted, I'm going to make some flat cushions to tie on the seats of my kitchen chairs. Age must have its comforts.
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Rheumatism.—A disease with fever, pain, inflamation and swelling of the joints.
This scourge of modern life is familiar to us all. Even if we ourselves have escaped it (and no doubt we have a secret feeling that we might not always be so fortunate) we have come into contact with sufferers afflicted with rheumatism.
We have in the past more or less looked upon rheumatism as a liability that age is called upon to accept, but now we are realising that it is no respecter of age and should consider why so many persons have it, and how we can try to protect them. Rheumatism attacks children even more insiduously than adults, and in their case the joints are less often affected than the throat, heart and nervous system.
Children predisposed to rheumatism should not be over-excited or overworked. They need a placid, cheerful existence, and any signs suggestive of rheumatism should be treated thoroughly without delay.
In early childhood the so-called “growing pains” may indicate a rheumatic tendency, and the attacks of tonsilitis and sore throats should be attended to with the utmost care.
We particularize here a few factors which play an important part in the causation of rheumatism:
1. Actual germs producing poisons in the system and a slight injury in a joint or muscle or other part of the body causes the trouble to settle there.
2. Uric acid in the system.
3. Various glands failing to function properly.
4. Insufficient exercise.
5. Neglect of the teeth.
6. Excess of starchy foods and meat is susceptible to rheumatism.
7. Insufficient fluids—partake freely of water, barley water, lemon and orange drinks, etc.
8. Sleeping in damp beds, or exposure—rheumatic fever may result, eventually causing various heart troubles.
Dealing generally with the above, we realise how easy it is to neglect our general health and allow ourselves to become prone to develop the characteristic aches and pains which, if neglected, may ultimately lead to rheumatoid arthritis, lumbago or sciatica. First of all it is very important to have adequate suitable daily exercise, and to resist the frequent temptations of using motor cars, tram cars, etc.
We should be grateful to be able to walk a few miles daily instead of allowing ourselves to be driven from place to place. What equals the buoyant feeling experienced after a brisk walk?
Diet naturally comes in for a fair share of attention and we can help to keep ourselves free from this disease by a light nutritious diet of foods rich in vitamins, such as butter, milk, fish, fresh fruits and vegetables and an avoidance of an excess of starchy foods and meat.
In conclusion, we might add that the cause of rheumatism varies in each individual and that a person susceptible to this complaint may even acquire it if her tissues become “run down” for any reason.
Much can be done by attention to our general health to check the ravages of rheumatism, and it seems a small price to pay for freedom from this disease which is gradually claiming more and more victims.
Chilblains are really a slight frostbite. They develop when there is poor circulation in the part affected. The best preventive therefore is to eat nourishing food and have sufficient exercise—warmth being an important factor.
Persons who are predisposed to chilblains should aid circulation by massage of the hands and feet. The use of methylated spirits, with the massage, is helpful as it hardens the skin. Any affected parts may be painted with weak tincture of iodine, but this should not be applied to broken chilblains.
The average woman is proud of her dressing-table, the toilet appointments, besides being necessary are nowadays a source of beauty.
Women who spend a large portion of their allowance on beauty products and are scrupulous as to their hygienic application to the face, are sometimes most unhygienic in their treatment of the products themselves.
It is so easy to spill the powder when refilling the bowl, to forget to replace the cover, to keep the puff in the container and to leave a film of powder on the table top after wielding the puff. Powder puffs are neglected and become virtually dirt traps; and the powder in the open bowl collects foreign matter easily, which is then transferred to the skin. In fact, the “thing of beauty” in the morning becomes a “messy looking” affair at the end of the day, the accessories being kept neither healthy nor hygienically.
It is stated that nothing is more revealing of a woman's character than her dressing table, and we should avoid having the term “messy” applied to our dressing-table, if this is taken as symbolical of our character.
Brushes and combs should be washed frequently.
Soup is a necessary and wholesome item of the diet during the winter months. It adds variety to the menu and can be made at little cost.
A thick soup should be about the same consistency as cream, while a clear soup can never be too transparent. It is most important that stock should never boil quickly, but just simmer. Do not add vegetables till the stock has been well boiled and skimmed.
1 lb. pumpkin, 1 tablespoon butter, ½ pint boiling water, 1½ pints milk, 2 tablespoons flour.
Cook pumpkin till mashed, rub through sieve and add milk, butter and flour (rubbed smooth with milk), salt and pepper to taste and cook till smooth and thick as cream.
Here is an easy way of saving ten shillings on every 20lbs. of soap that you use. The only ingredients required are 5lbs. fat and a two-shilling packet of” Soapsave “—the wonder soapmaker. Add to one gallon water as directed on packet and you have approximately 20lbs. of the finest household soap. It not only lathers easily, but has a special advantage in that it does not harm delicate colours and fabrics in the washing of clothes. It is also pleasantly perfumed. If unable to obtain Soapsave from your local store, send postal note and grocer's name to A. Murdoch & Co., Manufacturing Chemists, Dunedin.
2 sheep's kidneys, 1½ pints stock, 1 oz. butter, 1 oz. flour.
Skin kidneys and cut them up. Melt butter and fry kidneys and flour till brown, add stock, boil, add vegetables, simmer till cooked. Some kidney may be served in the soup.
Take 2 quarts stock with vegetables cooked in it, 1 tablespoon curry powder, 1 dessertspoon chutney, an apple cut very fine, 1 dessertspoon cocoanut, salt. Boil all together for ½ hour, thicken with a little cornflour.
2 lbs. tomatoes, 3 onions, 1 cup barley, 1 pint milk, 2 quarts hot water.
Boil tomatoes and barley in the water for two hours. Strain and add milk. Bring to boiling point and season to taste.
As far as I can see not one of our reviewers has appreciated the romantic story wrapped up in the recent publication of “The Whalers,” a copy of which I have received from my good friend, Mr. F. W. Reed, the noted Dumas authority. Because I played an unsuccessful part in the first attempt to interest an Australian publisher in this story Mr. Reed has been kind enough to favour me with a copy. Since then the book has been published by Hutchinson's (London) and will, I am sure, meet with a big sale. However, to the story behind the story as to how two New Zealand literary authorities chanced, after the lapse of nearly a hundred years, to link up with a meeting that took place between Alexandra Dumas and a certain Dr. Maynard, a French surgeon. It was in the year 1854 that Dumas happened upon a parcel of disconnected articles dealing with the sea adventures of Maynard. He arranged to meet the French doctor and prevailed on him to enlarge on his experiences. The articles were in due course edited and probably added to and re-written in parts by Dumas and published in France in 1858. The amazing thing is that although the story intimately concerned the early whaling days in New Zealand it was not until this year of 1937 that it has been published for English readers. For this we have to thank Mr. Reed, who made the translation and who sought the help of Johannes Andersen who wrote a most interesting introduction and provided the notes. The result is no dry historical document but a thrilling story of the old whaling days, reminiscent in parts of the immortal “Moby Dick.” We must feel proud of the part this country has played in giving this remarkable book to the world. I am amazed though over the fact that the publishers have failed to make more use of the story behind the story as briefly sketched by me in this paragraph.
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It was only the other day that I came across a copy of Bolitho's biography of Marie Tempest. Bolitho is very much before the public at the moment because of his King Edward biography, so a few words about his biography of a lady who still wears a crown as queen of comedy may not be out of place. Bolitho makes a success of a difficult task, mark you though, not a difficult subject, for Marie Tempest has had a marvellously full and guarded life. Bolitho's difficult task was to encourage his subject to talk of the past, for this Marie Tempest has so little regard for the past that she has destroyed letters from such a notable figure as Oscar Wilde. She received a fortnightly letter from him while he was in gaol. It was from the torn memories of her own wonderful life that our New Zealand biographer had to reconstruct his story. From the moment that Gladstone warned young Marie Tempest against the stage to her recent triumphant golden jubilee as an artist, Bolitho tells in his own delightful style the romantic life story of the famous little actress. The biography was written in close collaboration with Miss Tempest. It is wonderful what a soul revealing document it is even to intimate details of her three husbands. Although Bolitho is a young man he is a Victorian in heart and soul and therefore eminently suited as the writer of the life story of the sedate little genius of the comedy stage.
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The results of the annual short story competition held by “Art in New Zealand” are announced in the latest issue. The winning story “Understanding” by Mrs. E. D. M. Doust, is a model in economy of words. For this reason it is worth study by budding short story writers. This is only one interesting feature in the March “Art in New Zealand.” There is a fine appreciation of the Labour Government's encouragement of cultural arts, an article by J. H. E. Schroder on Cecil F. and Elizabeth Kelly (with beautiful examples of their work in colour and black and white) verse by Marie Conlan and F. H. Harris and other items of interest to the literary and art world in this country.
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Noel Hoggard, editor of “Spilt Ink,” writes to me as follows:—“I noticed in the April issue of the ‘Railways Magazine’ in your book page, you referred to the fact that the Canterbury Public Library Magazine was practically the only literary journal in New Zealand. You may be interested to know that from the April-May issue of ‘Spilt Ink’ my journal will be enlarged to twenty pages, including a cover with a modern cover design by Mr. Lindsay Constable, a young Wellington artist. It will also have a coloured inset of photographic blocks and will be illustrated throughout with original line-cut blocks and wood-cuts. As ‘Spilt Ink’ has now reached Vol. 4, No. 7, and between 500 and 600 are distributed each issue, I think you will admit that it has reached the distinction of being called a New Zealand literary journal.”
The New Zealand Women Writers' and Artists' Society is doing useful work. Besides competitions held inside the Society, several members have come to the fore in outside competitions. The two lady prize-winners in the recent radio play contest, Mrs. Alice Waldie and Mrs. Isobel Andrews, are both members of the Society. The one-act play competition run by the “Taranaki Daily News” was won by Mrs. Audrey King, while Mrs. Andrews gained second place. The “Manawatu Daily Times” short story competition was won by Mrs. King, with Miss L. Morgan second. Mrs. E. D. M. Doust won the recent short story competition in “Art in New Zealand.” This is, of course, quite apart from ordinary acceptances in current publications, where many of the members are regularly represented. The Society has now adopted a new policy and instead of restricting membership to women who have actually had their work published, it is admitting affiliated members as well. That is, members who, although they have not actually had work published, are yet interested enough and promising enough to be regarded as members.
“Backs to the Wall” by Captain G. D. Mitchell, M.C., D.C.M., is the most vivid and convincing war book I have read. Certainly no other soldier has given us such a graphic and sincere story of the four terrible years of strife. Captain Mitchell must have a charmed life. He confesses that time and again an instinct that he never dreamt of fighting against saved his life. He takes readers through a ceaseless storm of shot and shell, at times almost as casually as a tourist guide. With the ear of a musician he traces the gamut of sound of the flight of a shell and then turns on the full orchestration of the devilish cacophony of a mass offensive. A fascinating yet terrible story.
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“A Naval Wife Goes East,” by Eilleen Walker (Blackwood, London; Whitcombe & Tombs, Ltd., New Zealand agents) is a delightful and unaffected story of travel in the East. The author is candid without being rude, an engaging frankness particularly palatable in the surfeit of highly spiced literary dishes that load the world's reading table these days. Well known and little known parts of China and Japan are visited in company with this charming literary hostess. A valuable guide book and containing travel tips worth remembering.
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The magazine sensation of last month was the big Wellington Station Number of the “New Zealand Railways Magazine.” Not only was it a record in size but more important a record in sales. A few copies are still available from the Editor of the magazine.
“I'm Happy, I'm Happy” is the title of a fox-trot song published by the Southern Song Service, Gore. Words have been written by “Oliver Twist” and music by “Northan Southe.”
Will Lawson has been in Hobart writing a history of the old shipping days. He has also secured colour and theme for a whaling novel.
It was little short of a tragedy to this railway worker to have to give up his job after 30 years. But his rheumatism was so bad that he had no choice. The advice of a friend led to his taking Kruschen Salts—and he went on taking it until he was able to go back to work again. This is the story in his own words:—
“For three years I had arthritis very badly and had to walk with a stick. Also I had to give up my job as a railway shunter, after 30 years in the Yard. I was advised by a lady to try Kruschen Salts, and I took bottle after bottle to give it a fair trial. I found it was doing me good, and continued until it cured me. To-day I am in the best of health and am back at work again.“—W.T.
Rheumatic conditions are the result of an excess of uric acid in the body. Two of the ingredients of Kruschen Salts have the power of dissolving uric acid crystals. Other ingredients of these salts assist Nature to expel these dissolved crystals from the system.
Kruschen Salts is obtainable at all Chemists and Stores at ⅙ per bottle.
january of next year is going to be a most important month in the history of New Zealand sport for in that month this Dominion will send to Australia one of the biggest sports teams ever to leave these shores.
The British Empire Games—second only in athletic importance to the Olympic Games—will be held in Sydney as part of the 150th anniversary of the founding of the State of New South Wales, and a team in excess of sixty members is expected to represent New Zealand.
Embracing practically every branch of sporting activity, the Empire Games were revived in 1930 when they were allotted to Hamilton (Canada). New Zealand was represented at that gathering by a moderately-sized team and had the distinction of securing two Empire titles. Billy Savidan, the smiling Aucklander, won the six-mile track title in record time, and Stan Lay captured the javelin throwing crown. Remarkable athletes both of them!
Savidan emerged from retirement this season to win the New Zealand three-mile track title for the seventh time, and put up a wonderful performance to register 14 min. 40 sec. And, not to be outdone, Lay came back after an absence from the competitive side of sport to regain his N.Z. javelin title. There is every reason to expect both these men—title-holders in 1930—to carry New Zealand's colours to victory at the Empire Games of 1938.
Swimmers, boxers, track and field men and women, wrestlers, bowlers, rowers and cyclists in New Zealand at the present time have one big incentive to reach their best early next season. The goal is Sydney and the Empire Games!
Whereas in past international competitions our representatives have had the disadvantage of having had to travel half-way round the globe, from one summer to another, they will for a change have the advantage on athletes coming from the Northern Hemisphere. New Zealand athletes— and the term embraces all the branches of sport—will be able to train right up to the time of embarking for Australia and with only a short steamer journey, sufficient to freshen up the most jaded performer, will step ashore at Sydney in condition to do their best at a moment's notice.
Few New Zealanders, perhaps, have realised the true merit of the win scored by the New Zealand amateur wrestlers against the pick of Australian wrestlers a few weeks ago.
Wrestling under Olympic conditions —with the exception that the ring was enclosed with ropes which are absent in Olympic contests—our representatives managed to defeat men with more experience and with the added advantage of having had several weeks of training and many bouts as a preliminary “warming-up.”
To Leo Nolan, over whom a mild controversy raged because he was not sent to the Olympic Games in 1936, must particular praise be given. He defeated Purcell, who was considered by competent Australian judges to be “unbeatable.” Purcell had only once previously known defeat until he met Nolan, who scored a one-fall win. This was the first fall Purcell has conceded during his career. Another grappler who is due for particular mention was Ira Palmer, who was defeated by Knight, the British Empire heavy weight champion, after a dour set-to. Palmer made his debut last season when he defeated a Wellington amateur who had been spoken of by visiting American mat-men as a prospect for high honours in professional wrestling. He has not yet had six matches but proved capable of extending the amateur champion of the British Empire. And he was only included in the team, at the last moment, because Anderson, the official representative for the heavyweight class, was light enough to wrestle in the light-heavyweight class! Both Nolan and Palmer are young men who have to thank Anton Koolman, an Esthonian Olympic representative, for their knowledge of the wrestling game.
Although New Zealand has worthy representatives in the heavyweight wrestling ranks with Blomfield and Elliot there are many enthusiasts who hope that some day the trend will sway toward giving the lighter-weighted wrestlers an opportunity of showing their wares in New Zealand. It is claimed, and rightly, too, that better wrestling and more science is displayed by the lighter men and with New Zealand rich in talent among the smaller men a golden opportunity is being lost to allow local products to share with American mat-men the honours of the wrestling season.
A New Zealand polo team has been invited to tour New South Wales early next year. City residents have no conception of the thrills which attend the game of polo. Of course, the screen has shown them the excellent “Sportlights” by Grantland Rice and portrayed the keen interest—and skill —of the late Will Rogers, but for sheer thrills one must see the skilful manoeuvring of the ponies by the daring riders to appreciate the fastest of field sport.
Polo is a family game—or was before a golf course became a necessary part of every village or small settlement in New Zealand. As a lad I marvelled at the prowess of the Murphy Bros., well-known Gisborne settlers, who kept a regular horde of polo ponies and later years recalled tales of “polo families” in Hawke's Bay and South Canterbury. It is a game that is once more growing in popularity but one, unfortunately, seldom to be seen by city folk. Just another advantage enjoyed by country residents!
In his efforts to improve the health of the nation, the Minister of Internal Affairs, Hon. W. E. Parry, has embarked on a mission which may not have its true value shown for some years to come. But once awakened to the value of systematic and sane exercise New Zeaalnders will take wholeheartedly to his suggestions.
Opinions may differ as to the best means of developing and retaining physical fitness but there are so many means whereby good may accrue. What must be guarded against is the specialisation which might be attempted.
This is a point noted by Americans and commented on in the report of the Wingate Memorial Foundation which has made the Public Schools of America its principal “fitting up” starting point. Lads with good chest development are not encouraged to take up sport which will still further develop their chests; they are given exercises to strengthen their lower limbs. Likewise lads with good leg development are given special exercises to develop their chests. In other words, the weak points are developed.