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The New Zealand Railways Magazine is on sale through the principal booksellers, or may be obtained post-free for 6/- per annum.
Employees of the Railway Department are invited to forward news items or articles bearing on railway affairs. The aim of contributors should be to supply interesting topical material tending generally towards the betterment of the service.
In all cases where the Administration makes announcements through the medium of this journal the fact will be clearly indicated.
The Department does not identify itself with any opinions which may be expressed in other portions of the publication, whether appearing over the author's name or under a nom de plume.
Short stories, poetry, pen-and-ink sketches, etc., are invited from the general public upon New Zealand subjects.
Payment for short paragraphs will be made at 2d. a line. Successful contributors will be expected to send in clippings from the Magazine for assessment of the payment due to them.
The Editor cannot undertake the return of MS. unless accompanied with a stamped and addressed envelope.
All communications should be addressed to The Editor, New Zealand Railways Magazine, Wellington.
I hereby certify that the publisher's lists and other records disclose that the circulation of the “New Zealand Railways Magazine” has not been less than 20,000 copies each issue since July, 1930.
The Department's accounts show that the sales of the Magazine during the year ended 31st March, 1936, were more than treble those of the previous financial year.
Deputy-Controller and Auditor-General. 26/5/36.
In every advance made by science and invention there must first be imagination to picture in the mind some semblance of the finished product. Following the work of the imagination comes the necessity for its practical application, and it is here that artistic talent is called for—capacity to picture forth so that others may see the thing imagined by the scientist or inventor, the philosopher or poet.
It is in the realm of mechanics that model-making plays its most important part. Doubtless many conceptions have been spoilt, if not utterly ruined, by the short-comings of the model-maker—the lack of ability to produce the thing the mind conceived—but against these defects, inherent in the use of models, must be set uncounted successes where, as the model took shape, new ideas developed from it to improve almost beyond imagination the original idea.
The successful uses to which scale models are put in experimental investigation regarding buildings, power machines and transport units is interestingly told in a recent issue of “The Engineer”; but the use of models extends, of course, far beyond the limitations of mechanics. Sculptors, painters, dress designers take nature's model as a basis for their work. Preachers and teachers point constantly to models of humanity—“Lives of great men all remind us how to make our lives sublime”—that kind of model.
There are model houses, model gardens, model stations which are not “scale” models but places actually in operation which might be used either as something to copy or to improve upon. The railways of this country, for instance, are gaining good reputation for the model gardens to be found associated with some of their stations or workshops. To anyone who has had an opportunity to see the work, and skill in design, and knowledge of growing things which these places reveal, the thought comes that here at last is the best possible use made of the means available for making the desert blossom like the rose. The attitude towards things of this kind may either be “Here's something done. Can you better it?” or “Make yours like this!”
There is no doubt that example is vastly more important than precept, and that to have something to judge by and to work to is the principal aid in human progression.
In the realm of the social sciences the use of models is not so simple, yet even here the experience of history is a useful guide in showing what is worth following and what to avoid.
The principle of the use of models is as old as nature itself, and it is an interesting and valuable study to trace the origin of inventions as well as the origin of species.
For the purposes of everyday life, it is a lesson of experience that most is accomplished when work is arranged according to some model—it may be rough and sketchy, but a model, a “scheme of work,” an agenda, should be there, like the shafts of a cart or the rails of a track, to help direction or point the way to the desired goal.
The recently published figures of substantial increases in railway traffic are particularly pleasing to railwaymen who have had the opportunity to handle the business and to judge for themselves the friendly public attitude towards the service the Department is rendering.
In the course of recent travel over most parts of the system I have had many indications of the goodwill existing between the staff and the public, and numbers of those whom I met upon Departmental matters were most appreciative of what the railwaymen of their locality have been able to do to help business along.
The present is a most important transition period in railway affairs. There are very great changes being made in the facilities and equipment of the Department as well as in the methods of operation and in the relationship between the railways and other forms of transport. In these circumstances it is especially important that contact between the public and the staff should be on a basis of mutual understanding and goodfellowship, as it is only by such conditions that the best for all can be secured from the improvements under way.
A recent visitor to New Zealand, a leader in the industrial world, attributed success in business affairs to what he called “The four C's—contact, consultation, co-operation and confidence.” This summary appears to be an almost perfect one, and is in line with the principles in operation upon our own system.
I believe that confidence has been definitely established as between the public, the management and the staff of the railways, that opportunities for contact and consultation are afforded and used to a marked degree, and that co-operation is secured throughout the service and with the business community, to a very great extent.
There is, of course, always opportunity for improvement, and a constant necessity for observation by members of the staff to see in what way new conditions as they arise may be turned to the best account for the public and the railways. It is in co-operation of this kind that the most effective development of our great transportation system lies.
General Manager.
Lord Bledisloe is foremost among those lovers of the New Zealand primitive vegetation who profoundly appreciate the value of the scientific work of the late Dr. Leonard Cockayne. In a notable address, published in his “Ideals of Nationhood,” he described Cockayne as the greatest of the Empire's botanists. Another eminent man in the scientific world, Professor Tansley, wrote that “Leonard Cockayne played the most conspicuous and important part in the development of modern field botany during the first third of the twentieth century. He showed what field botany could become in the hands of a man with the right endowments. Not only could it give us a really adequate scientific picture of natural vegetation, but it could also be most effectively applied to the utilitarian purposes of forestry, pastoralism and reclamation of lands. Cockayne's vigorous indefatigable personality, combined as it was with complete sincerity of mind, wide outlook, and the particularly acute powers of observation and memory that make the born field naturalist, were devoted to a flora and vegetation of great richness and unique interest at a time when it was largely unspoiled by human interference.” His distinction happily was well recognised before he died, and the many publications he gave to the world are his enduring memorial.
Teonard Cockayne was an Englishman whose quick, keen brain early turned to the study of wild nature, and who was fortunately able from his boyhood to engage in the botanical research that developed into the great and all-absorbing love of his existence. He was born at Thorpe House, Norton Lees, Derbyshire, on April 7th, 1855. His father, Mr. William Cockayne, was a merchant. Reared in conditions that made him acquainted with the beauties of nature, his childhood life was a fitting preparation for the pursuits that came to dominate his career. He lived much in the out-of-doors; he was in the midst of gardens and trees. He was educated chiefly at Wesley College, in Sheffield, and he spent two years at a Manchester College with the idea of becoming a doctor. He studied chemistry and botany, but did not take a degree or carry out his youthful desire to be a doctor. His intentions were not very clearly defined at that early stage; it was his migration to New Zealand in 1880—he had an uncle here—that opened up to him interests in the study of wild life that shaped and matured his scientific tastes.
He was first a school teacher, for several years after coming to this country. He was on the staff of the Tokomairiro District High School. It was then that he began the study of New Zealand's plant life; and later, when in Christchurch, he experimented in the reclamation of sand dunes. He established a kind of plant museum close to the sandy coast near Christchurch, and it was there that he became known as a keenly observant student of the New Zealand native plant world. Eventually he gave up his teaching work and applied his whole attention to botanical problems, to the incalculably great benefit of his adopted country.
Henceforth his life was spent in making an intensive survey of the plants of New Zealand and their environment, and in exploring every forest zone, from the kauri groves in the far North to the rich rain forests of the South and the West Coast, and Stewart Island. The alpine and subalpine vegetation particularly interested him, and he was the most vigorous and outspoken critic of the acclimatisation blunders, which have resulted in enormous injury to mountain flora.
In 1904 he was requested by Professor Engler to write the volume on the vegetation of New Zealand for publication in his series of monographs on the vegetation of the earth. This great book was published in 1921; in the meantime Cockayne wrote many reports on botanical surveys for the New Zealand Government.
He wrote about the Arthur's Pass region, which was one of his earliest happy hunting grounds; the Waimakariri River region, the off-lying islands of the South, the Waipoua kauri forest, Kapiti Island bird and forest sanctuary, the Tongariro National Park, the dune areas of the Dominion, and other regional descriptions. Some of his work, such as the Tongariro National Park survey, was done in conjunction with his friend and fellow-lover of the forests and flowers, Mr. E. Phillips Turner, of the Scenery Conservation and State Forest Services.
A most useful handbook written by these two great men is “The Trees of New Zealand,” published when Mr. Turner was Director of Forestry. To this manual I often turn for enlightenment and for sheer pleasure of the study of our trees; its clearness and simplicity, combined with a masterly scientific presentation of the subject, gives it an educational value that should be more widely known. It enables New Zealanders and visitors to the country to identify trees and shrubs and to learn something of their characters and uses. The authors
Cockayne was a fervent opponent of animals and exotic adulterants in the native forest. He was of the same opinion on this matter as Lord Bledisloe, who appealed to the people, in an address at New Plymouth, not on any account to mix up native and exotic trees. “If you or your children,” Bledisloe said, “effect this promiscuous intercourse, this magnificent environment of pure native bush will be forever ruined in the eyes not only of expert botanists but of those who love symmetry and arboreal compatibility.”
Dr. Cockayne again and again emphasised this point, the preservation of the rapidly disappearing primeval vegetation of New Zealand in its original unsullied condition. In the Otari Open-Air Museum at Wilton's Bush he illustrated his principle of faithfulness to Nature's original scheme by stipulating that no species should be added to the bush which did not originally belong to that class of forest—the semi-coastal forest of Wellington. His intention, as the Director of Kew observed, was to bring back the forest as nearly as might be to its original composition and status. We may imagine from this, if we had not known it already, that Dr. Cockayne's objection to what has well been called “mongrel forest” was as deep and great as his objection to deer and other destroyers.
Dr. Cockayne frequently pointed out the usefulness of such small trees as manuka as nurse-trees for the larger timbers, especially the kauri. Yet it has been the custom to get rid of the manuka as mere useless “scrub.” He had a strong belief, based on long experience, in the power of much of the indigenous forest to reproduce itself. In his account of the botany of Stewart Island he wrote: “There is a deep-rooted popular belief that when the New Zealand forest is once interfered with, and the light let in through trees being removed, and so on, it is doomed. This opinion is one of those half-truths that arise from an imperfect acquaintance with the facts. It is true that forests do cease to be; but it is not merely the cutting-out of a certain proportion of the trees which has led to their destruction, but fire and cattle-grazing must be added to the destructive influences. In Stewart Island, cut the forest to the ground, burn its last remnant to ashes, and in a very few years, notwithstanding the presence of cattle, it will reappear.”
The indigenous forest, he held, while-some of it was of great value as a source of timber, was for the larger part possibly of greater value in its function as protection forest for conserving and regulating the water supply and preventing erosion.
The great botanist was always ready to place his vast store of plant-lore and his advice about tree-planting at the service of his fellow New Zealanders. He fired others with his enthusiasm for the saving and reproducing of the country's natural vegetation. One of the visible fruits of his long campaign is the Otari Open-Air Museum, at Wilton's Bush, Wellington, where trees and plants representing the original covering of these islands are assembled in a little wild park. In that beautiful sanctuary of primitive flora he was most fittingly laid, on
Only a botanist can adequately describe the special value of Dr. Cockayne's plant experiments and surveys, and I turn gladly to an appreciation of his work written by Sir Arthur W. Hill, the famous. Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, Surrey, who visited New Zealand some years ago. What appealed to Cockayne so strongly, he wrote, and what fired him to pass on his vision so ably to others, was the study of the living plant in its natural surroundings.
“Unrecognised and unlabelled at first, Cockayne in New Zealand was already an ecologist waiting for the term to be adopted by botanists, and fully trained, with his keen insight, to lead the way not in New Zealand only but in the world. Ecology, as Cockayne himself briefly described it, is ‘the class of research which deals with living plants and their relation to their surroundings, and which gathers its data from actual observation in the field.’ Therefore it is fitted to provide ‘a more accurate knowledge regarding the maximum and minimum requirements of each economic plant and its behaviour when growing with other plants and animals’.”
In recognition of natural hybrids—which at the time was considered almost heretical in the botanical world—Cockayne opened up a new branch of study, and stimulated investigation. His attention was first drawn to the prevalence of natural hybrids in the New Zealand flora by his study of the native beech trees. Two distinguished botanists who visited the Dominion, the late Dr. K. Ritter von Goebel and the late Dr. J. P. Lotsy exercised a profound influence on Cockayne and stimulated him further in his special lines of research. When von Goebel came, in 1898, Cockayne was studying the seedlings of our trees and shrubs and their remarkable juvenile states.
The two great botanists deeply appreciated each other's worth and discoveries, and Cockayne wrote in 1933 that “Von Goebel's visit was the greatest stimulus to my botanical career.” It was owing to Goebel's representations that the honorary degree of Ph.D. was conferred on Cockayne by the University of Munich in 1903.
For his researches and writings on plant ecology Cockayne was awarded in 1912 the Hector Medal and Prize by the New Zealand Institute (now the Royal Society of New Zealand).
In the same year his work was recognised in England by his election to the Royal Society; this was crowned in 1928 by the award of the Darwin Medal. New Zealand's great native son, Lord Rutherford, President of the Royal Society, said in conferring the award at the Anniversary Meeting:
“The award of a Darwin Medal to Dr. Cockayne is fitting because of the distinction of his work in fields in which Charles Darwin himself laboured. That distinction has been gained by the use of the Darwinian method: a true naturalist, Dr. Cockayne has waited patiently upon facts before drawing conclusions. For over thirty years he has made it his task to deepen and widen our knowledge of New Zealand botany in the broadest sense…. The taxonomic studies rendered necessary by his ecological results have led to those remarkable discoveries of natural hybrids in New Zealand that have won for him a worldwide reputation and have made on modern thought an impression akin to that produced by the results of Mr. Darwin's studies of plants under domestication. Dr. Cockayne's researchers have had, on sylvicultural and agricultural procedure, a practical bearing which has been appreciated by and has influenced the policy of New Zealand statesmen.”
Lord Rutherford also spoke of the remarkable local effect of Dr. Cock-
(Continued on page 49
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These incidents are complete in themselves, but the characters are all related.
”Too much local colour,” exclaimed Impskill Lloyd, wiping the lens of his detective microscope as he stared abstractedly at the blankly bland face of his faithful but erring henchman, Gillespie.
“What!! me?” said “Gill,” putting his left hand over his highly incarnadined dial, “I'm just about as usual, I think, Boss!”
“Gill” was sensitive about his high complexion, which, as he often explained, was like some meters he knew—“it registered more than was consumed.”
“My observation,” replied Impskill, with a haughtiness which wiped out “Gill's” incipient guffaw like a damp sponge over a slate—“My observation applied to Matamata—not to your grossly illuminated map of Ireland. Your countenance, ‘Gill,’ merely accounts for the use of dark glasses by those who have to view you frequently.
“An investigator,” he continued, impressively, “must get away from the influence of local colour which, among the Matamatarians, is developed to an extraordinary degree.
“That is why I have brought you back to Wellington. Here, in the seclusion of my own home, with all the facilities for examination that modern science has placed under my control, and with the opportunities for deep thought which only silence and complete freedom from distraction can bring, I can concentrate upon the remaining clues in this most baffling mystery.
”‘Gill,’ bring me my stethoscope and an Imperial pint of ale.”
“Gill” bounded briskly from the room, while “Imp.” bent once more over the microscope, through which he was examining the stitches in the initials of a handkerchief.
These initials, “M.U.G.,” he instinctively recognised as a blind. The handkerchief had arrived by air mail that morning, addressed to himself in disguised English, with two slight French accents, one somewhat grave over the second “1” in Lloyd, and the other quite acute over the third or unseen L in Impskill.
These peculiarities, only distinguishable by a scholar trained in the Hit or Missler School of European Etymology, might be significant or negligible according to the mental speed of the stitcher. But the stitches, themselves, he felt to be the nub, or hub, or nucleus of the problem.
He could easily see that they were worked with Coats cotton, of 25 guage, and that every other stitch was somewhat longer than each alternate one.
He noted, too, that, on every fifth stitch, there was a discoloration that looked like a rust mark.
There were 70 rust marks—so Impskill divided this number by 5 to produce 14. If the first mark were regarded as a “sighter” this left 13, and as he had only twelve clues upon which to work so far, this sign from the cotton fields of old Alabama confirmed his growing suspicion that there did exist a thirteenth clue, which some unknown friend was anxious he should know about.
He remembered immediately that a stitch in time saves nine, which left four clues still to be pursued after the one upon which he was engaged—perhaps the most awkward of all the clues—the evidence of Lauder's death by a fall, or push.
He remembered Milton's lines about Satan's fall—how the Arch-Fiend had been “Hurled headlong, flaming from the ethereal sky, with hideous ruin and combustion down to bottomless perdition.”
Had the same fate followed Lauder; and if a fall had ended his career, had it been accidental? Or had Lauder been pushed! Thoughts of the evil reputation of some Australian “pushes” he had met, and a recollection of the great push in the Great War, made his mind warm towards the theory of evil intention.
Never had his path been so beset with obstacles. First there was the gang of what could be called “legitimate” murderers who appeared to be receding as fast as they could from his vicinity.
And then there was a mob of crude amateur murderers, cursed with the habits of modernity, who paid not the slightest attention to the sound rules which every good murderer of the
Mixed up between these two groups of associates was a third body consisting of amateur detectives. These sought notoriety, followed false clues, and got themselves into outrageous situations from which even the nimble pens of clever recorders could scarcely extricate them. For besides the dualnatured Imp-Lloyd (Tab. Lloyd to his friends) and Unimp-Lloyd, who is the hero of this drama, there were many lesser Lloyds who deserve to be remembered if only to show by comparison how superior Impskill was to any of them.
There was, for instance, the haughty or stuck-up Lloyd, known as G. Lloyd, or Gloyed, for short. Then there was Deep Lloyd, who had been in the Army and who now couldn't walk a straight line after 6 p.m., and Al. Lloyd, a mixture of brass and boldness; the notable salesman Sellu Lloyd; the fiery Jell Lloyd; the sugary C. Lloyd, called “Cloyed” for conciseness in classification.
It is clear, then, that with the landscape littered with Lloyds, contending professional and amateur murder associations, and a bunch of amateur detectives, it was particularly disconcerting to have two Pat Lauders in the field—one dead and the other imitation.
But Impskill's plight was further complicated by the arrival of another Lauder in the country, this time Sir Harry himself. Although well known to a few with inside information, his arrival caused great surprise in the country. Little did any one guess that it had anything to do with the “to do” about the Matamata murder mystery and Pat Lauder's clue-rich body. But riches are like gold—they are where you find them—and tastes differ in Lauders as they do in whisky—some preferring the Irish Pat (or straight) Lauder, and others the Scotch Harry (or with a dash) Lauder.
The combined effect was that of a diabolical conspiracy to frustrate the application to this case of those methods of cold analysis, after intensive research, which had never failed to find the criminal in every case where the genius of Impskill Lloyd had been engaged.
Amongst those who had stood in the way of this gigantic investigation, readers will recall some of the following:—
There was the notoriety - seeking Blobson, a decadent relic of the stagecoach days, an ex-super of the old Vic, who had masqueraded for a few days as a Lauder come to life again.
Then there was the fatuous Unna Lloyd, a distant cousin of Impskill's but a fellow of no standing, who had counted upon his family resemblance to the great Impskill to deceive the men of Matamata—with what effect we have seen in the last chapter, where, but for the timely arrival of P.C. Fanning with his two revolvers blazing, the foolish Unna would have paid the penalty intended for a more worthy, but infinitely less easily trapped member of the famous Lloyd family. Fanning's fame was fanned to its highest pitch by this episode—which would never have occurred had he not been “DeLloyd” on the way by four frothing handles and a Mendelssohn's Police March, and a crowd who called Bach to him with all the ardour of a Llama's Lament.
His deep concentration was disturbed by the return of Gillespie with the Imperial pint of ale and the stethoscope.
Impskill, with all the skill of a finished practitioner, immediately applied the apparatus to his own chest and listened intently to what his heart had to tell him.
The tale it told was unfolded in a regular series of beats, like the footfalls of a cantering horse over a gently undulating field of red clover.
He next drank the Imperial print of Crown ale, specially imported from Russia for such tests—and again applied the stethoscope.
The heart beats now sounded like the guggle of the soda syphon used by hospital nurses for cleaning sinks; or like the flurried breathing of a bull in its first desperate charge upon the Matador; or like a cow-bell rung hurriedly to break up the Fire Brigades' Annual Conference; or like any old-time cow-cockie counting the spurts as he milked into the pail “over-draft, over-draft, over-draft — mine !” every seventh pull representing his quota from the cow.
Impskill remembered that where the treasure is, there will the heart be also, and he was proud to find that this vital organ still responded, as of yore, to the impetus of internal stimuli.
He measured with a pair of callipers the difference in the measure of the heart beats, and found that the proportions were as four is to five.
Now that was exactly the proportionate difference between the alternating stitches in the letters “M.U.G.”
This proved the matter quite beyond the power of mere coincidence.
A lightning flash of intuition told him he was definitely on the trail of the sinister power that had so badly baffled him so far, and he laughed with glee, and then without, as he noticed the diabolical lengths to which the legions arrayed against him would go to gain their ends.
The different objectives of these forces were very evident to his inner consciousness. Would he win out?
He pulled out his medal for winning the “Flat-Foots' Handicap” of Pinnacle Creek. Of course he would win!
Handing “Gill.” the stethoscope which now needed some repairs from the strain of recording his faster heart impulses, and surrendering the empty mug, he rang No. 13 on the telephone.
A sepulchral voice answered him: “Is that you, Chief?”
Disguising his voice to an equally sepulchral note, Impskill replied “You betcher!”
This reply appeared to be the correct one, for the man at the other end said: “Been trying to get you all day, Chief. The meet's at 13 Tucker Street. Johnny had to change it, as the cops are fly!”
Any one but Impskill might have been misled by this talk of meat and tucker and flies.
But Impskill now knew he had correctly interpreted the significance of the stitches on the insignificant handkerchief, and that he had at last identified the new meeting place of the head of the underworld, who had evidently abandoned his previous rendezvous because of police activities at the old quarters.
Impskill hung up suddenly, marked the site of the rendezvous on the map, and then lay down to think things out.
He had long ago discovered that the brain gets tired if it stays long in one position. Hence he did his thinking in some extraordinary attitudes, with even more extraordinary results.
He even sometimes stood on his head to produce certain of his most notable thoughts. But this, of course, he did only behind a locked door.
To-night he let the whole weight of his high head rest upon the back or cerebellum position. This eased the tension on the base of the skull.
Very soon the frontal section got active, and then he decided all was ready for the next stage of the drama. He was loaded to go!
Steered by the dispirited Gillespie, who had up to this point been puzzling over his master's most recent criticism, he called at the local gas-works and borrowed a petrol lamp. This he carried to the front door of a chimneysweep living in the locality and by its light proceeded to blacken himself until his skin resembled the pure ebony of an African negro.
So disguised, and using a limp which he could put on with impunity, and closing one eye to look as much like a calendar as possible, he quickly walked to the place of meeting.
It was a very handsome house in generous grounds.
Impskill went to the coal cellar which he knew would be in the rear of the premises. He climbed with his lamp, like a will-o'-the-wisp crossing a dry creek, the bulwarks of the outside chimney, cornering his way up by elbow jolts learned in the wrestling ring.
Once on the roof he went over the top and crawled carefully down inside the wide stack, aided by a rope he attached to the topmost brick.
The chimney fortunately was not smoking, so he lit a cigarette in the shelter of its interior and listened from the dark side of the register grate.
The inner circle were assembled within the room. His space was cramped and try how he would he could not get his eye to the crack left in the lid of the grate by a previous tenant.
But he heard a voice, evidently that of the leader, and this voice thrilled him by its extraordinary timbre.
And now he caught the words: “This push has fallen in over Lauder.”
“Do you think so?“’ came a sycophantic voice and a hoarse murmer of consternation from the others.
“I'm sure so!” replied the Chief. “It's too cold here, light the fire, someone!” he continued.
Impskill realised his own peril at the words, put out his cigarette, and commenced to reclimb the inside of the chimney.
He knew now that no fall had caused Lauder's death. If the push had fallen in over Lauder, how could they have pushed him in?
But now the first smoke from the newly kindled fire reached him. His clutch on the rope faltered, his toe missed the next brick, and with a reverberating crash he fell down, feet foremost into the blazing grate.
There was a wild outcry and scramble in the room, and as Impskill struck the mounting flame he lost consciousness, as a terror-stricken voice cried: “Look out you mugs—here's Impskill Lloyd!”
(To be continued.)
“Among the new pleasures of life, that of switching off the wireless can never be under-rated.” This deftly phrased jest is perpetrated by one of the most famous of English essayists, E. V. Lucas, and I have come across its blood relations in several forms in the obiter dicta of other eminent writers. When I read this type of remark, I am always reminded of a saying of the famous American philosopher, Dooley. He said one day to his friend Hennessey, “You know, Hinnissey, when I read by the papers that modern youth is decaydent, and that modern times is more corrupt than the ould wans, and that democracy is a failure, there is one thing that makes me feel aisy.” “And phwat is that?” said Hennessey. “That it is Not so,” said Dooley.
The only thing wrong, therefore, with the witticism of Mr. E. V. Lucas about the radio is that it is Not so. The pleasure that can never be under-rated is that of switching On the wireless. It is true of the long suburban street in which I live at anyrate, for if I travel its winding length early in the morning, there is only one silent member in its multitude of houses.
When the scientific ingenuity of modern man makes possible an invention fraught with the immense potentialities of the cinema or the radio, the impact of the invader upon the castles of privilege, tradition and established usage, is so terrific that reception by the community takes as many forms as there are kinds of private opinions. Discussion and criticism, defence and attack, grow in violence and bitterness, and claims and counter-charges are made with an enthusiasm which has no limit.
A little clear thinking (a pastime that has never been popular since the dawn of time), and a little calm consideration will reveal the interesting fact that radio has elected to go its own way, and that it has taken a route which is often a complete surprise to both defenders and attackers. This article is intended to be an examination of some little-known aspects of the new entertainment form, and some attempt to foretell its future. I also would like to deal with the array of faulty criticism which is so often directed at the radio, and, by implication, at those who are responsible for the programmes.
I have, as it were, been present at the birth of both the cinema and the radio, and I watched as well, the swift rise and slow descent of the intermediate device, the gramophone. In each case, the early apostles of both gave deep voice to excited assertions and prophecies which were far too overleaping. With transatlantic fervour the cinema chieftains predicted the end of the legitimate stage, and when the sound films arrived, the end of the concert platform, the opera and the revue. Similarly the wireless captains foresaw the end of the press, the platform and the concert chamber.
These thrilling forecasts naturally aroused a host of fears, and an army of antagonists. But Old Father Time and the human being known as the “man in the street” have, in practice, a salutary method of dealing with this type of controversy. None of the farreaching results has arrived. Both forms of entertainment have slowly but surely settled into their places, entered into the warp and woof of the communal fabric, and can now be surveyed with some calm, and with some certitude as to which way they are heading. My first proposition is that the radio is the mightiest engine so far discovered for the defence of basic democratic rights, one of which is the right to self education and personal aesthetic decisions as opposed to dogmatism and authority. To quote from the widely read Edmond Holmes: “The struggle for freedom is in its essence, a struggle against the deadening pressure of dogmatism, a struggle for the right to live one's own life, to grow along the lines of one's own being.” The radio has taken its place already as an advance guard commander of the forces fighting this long campaign. Let us consider some of the reasons.
It is certain that when the major sillinesses of our social system are remedied, that every home will possess a wireless set. Already, the radio, as the most highly specialised form of one sense entertainment, has the largest public ever assembled since the first harp recitals of David. Its capacity for good is therefore greater than all other forms of time spending put together. It has some distinctive and integral difficulties, for its appeal is to the ear alone. Now the aural sense is the easiest of all in it's operation. We can close our eyes if we do not like a face or a view. We cannot furl our ears. Consequently, listening is almost an automatic sense process which brings an accompanying danger. A book requires some mental effort to read. The words that lie on the printed page require imagination and certain brain processes, before conversion into emotion, mental images or thought. The stage play is slightly easier. Here the transmutation is assisted by the spoken word, the gesture of the actor, the scenery or the settings. It still demands some attention, some degree of concentration and rationalisation. In the case of the lecture, the orchestral concert and so on, these are helped by the living personality of the performing artists, and by another consideration. Those who are listening to an orator, or to music
This instance supplies an example of the difficulty facing the radio entrepreneur, the problem of first arresting, and then maintaining attention. That it has been partly solved is a tribute first to the fertility of resource of the providers of the entertainment, but most of all to the power of this form of amusement over the public's tastes. Now, as the appeal of the radio is to the ear alone, and the greatest degree of aural enjoyment is produced by music, we can take it as obviously certain that the basis of the radio pyramid is music. All other uses are subsidiary, even if the new instrument does contain all the range of uses of human speech.
The appreciation of music is a subject infinitely crowded with points for mischief in discussion and acrimony in the conflict of opinion. Consider the case of “classical” or “good” music. I confess at once to being a lover of “good” music. I am a trained musician, brought up in a musical household, and acquiring therefore a fund of exact knowledge about music. It is often forgotten that music in its modern form is less than five hundred years old, and that it is an art form of mathematical precision and basic laws. These apply to the work of the song writer on New York's “Tin Pan Alley” as well as to the writings of Delius. The forms of musical expression, however, are changing all the time, as is the case with all arts which give pleasure to the senses.
You can tell at once the value of the pronouncements of any musical critic by the breadth of his tastes. I heard a lady of very “arty” pretensions, ask Kreisler why he had included “Blue Skies” in his programme, and the great violinist said, “Because it is a most beautiful melody.” The greatest of all musical critics, W. J. Turner, said that Irving Berlin had a gift of melody comparable with Schubert, and I remember in a long critique of his of an ultra modern work by Stravinsky, in which he laments the dearth of melody, he finished by saying, “Now I've just heard ‘Valencia’ and ‘Valencia’ is a darned good tune.”
The source of a vast amount of wariness and suspicion where classical music is considered is dogmatism. As soon as the voice of authority speaks as to what is to be rated as good, or as bad, music, the average citizen is in rebellion. The extent of his rebellion is the measure of his civic health. There is also the complication that the standards of “good’ music have become the playthings of the social spectacle. One of the best things in young Vanderbilt's impish “Farewell to Fifth Avenue” is the revelation of the real motives behind the American aristocracy's support of the New York Metropolitan Grand Opera House. Nor is America the only country in which grand opera is as much a medium for the display of diamonds and gowns, as for any critical enjoyment of the best in musical artistry. Yet many of these folk are capable of smiling in a superior way when someone admits to liking “Mellow ‘Cello” or “Lucky Star.”
On the other hand, snap criticisms are often levelled at classical music. It is accused of complexity and lack of tunefulness. The slow movement in the Brahms Concerto for Violin and Piano is as simple and rich with the honey of melody as the most haunting of popular waltz tunes. I have seen a programme manager rifling Tschai-kowsky for melody strips and musical effects to decorate a revue, and hundreds of song hits have been pillaged from our great composers, notably Beethoven, Handel, Schubert, and Brahms. Cinemagoers are familiar with “The Tune Detective,” which is devoted to the task of uncovering the lineage of all the latest hits, and is
However, this splendid fact emerges. The radio has brought to millions the truth about “good” or classical music. The terrors have evaporated through hearing after hearing; but best of all it has enabled listeners to make their own private decision. I quote from Holmes again: “And the higher the faculties, the more essential it is that we ourselves should exercise them if they are to make any growth.” Of course in every sphere of human endeavour there must be leadership, but it must have solid grounds. In the case of music, the voice of authority can be disregarded if it proceeds from anyone who cannot at least handle one instrument with reasonable competence. No one would accept the judgment on a game as authoritative of one who had never kicked a Rugby ball. This is not to be confused with the right to enjoy music, for in the instance quoted there are thousands of New Zealand girls who enjoy a North v. South Island match.
But I remember encountering in Sydney a formidable figure in the realms of one art who was pontifically enunciating the verdict that Handel was a lesser musician than Beethoven, and I found as a result of a brace of questions that he did not even know the order of the movements in the Ninth Symphony. It was like a man solemnly awarding Newton, Leibnitz or Diaphantus their places in the mathematics ladder who could not himself do a quadratic equation. This is one of the foundations of the world view of the highbrow, that useful word which, according to St. John Ervine, represents the American capacity for rejuvenating the best of Anglo Saxon speech. The interior chuckle in the word highbrow comes from the shrewd public observation on certain pretensions, and it is derived from the common habit of folk who have distinguished themselves in one art, arrogating to themselves the right to appraise and set valuations in all avenues of art endeavour. It is possible for a first rank poet to be a musician, and for a painter to be a good essayist. Samuel Butler was a typical modern version of the “Admirable Crichton,” and there are hundreds of other instances. But authority as to standards of any medium of aesthetic enjoyment can only proceed from practical knowledge of that particular art, and no other method.
In any case, the shores of history are littered with the wrecks of governments who beached themselves in trying to regulate the amusements of their people. From well meaning republic to enlightened despotisms, they could interfere with every phase of their citizens' lives until they started on a regimen of recreation. The present unpleasantness in Spain would be over in a week or two if one side would dare to advocate the abolition of the bull ring.
The radio, through the immensity of its scope, through its infinite variety of appeal, and through the sheer width and immensity of volume of its cascade of sound, forbids any infringement of the liberty of the listener. It reaches the man who flippantly claims that “Bach had only two tunes, the one fast and the other slow, and I think the last one is the first played slowly.” It conspires to suddenly awaken some chance and casual listener to the beauty of the tune of “Caro Nome” from Rigoletto. If the latter had been called “The Hunchback of Mantua” or if “Pique Dame” were better known as “The Queen of Spades,” I think some of the caution about listening to their melodies would disappear. The foreign language difficulty is a genuine one and the lifting of supercilious eyebrows or the recommendation to study will not cure it. The astute advertising stations in U.S.A. who liberally use Grand Opera recognise this.
At any rate the radio is operating to cure us all of quarrelling about the “high” and “low” of entertainment or of aesthetic valuations. I had a very hoity toity musician cornered the other day, and made him hearken to Clapham and Dwyer. He has become a fan of that delicious couple and I have all the feelings of a successful missionary.
Viscount Harberton, in his clever exposures of pomposities and pretences in conventional authority, claimed that a lad who could tell a Ford from a Bentley by its engine sound as it passed a distant street intersection, was exercising just as valuable a gift of aesthetic discrimination as the experts who took months to decide whether a picture was a genuine Tintoretto or not. This is a delicious over-statement, but it does dispose of the lofty oracle who wants to tell us that there is some mystic difference in quality between the Invocation in “Iolanthe” and “Trema in cor te lessi” from “Aida.”
I have not touched upon the other capacities of the radio; its magic gift of the short wave which brings a Moscow girl advocate and a rich Berlin voice into our sitting rooms to plead their opposing doctrines; its power of news dissemination from the New Zealand Cup winner to the prospects for to-morrow's yachting. These will work in their own inevitable way to the only form of human progress which is real—the widening of the area of human brotherhood. I am concerned in this story only with the highest manifestation of this one sense medium, the art of music. Radio comes to us as the latest and greatest gift of human scientific wizardry, bringing with it the further benison of the right to self-development. The very splendour of its profuseness, the very fact of its refusal to be dragooned or regulated, its capacity for universality, its exuberance of supply, and its wealth of resources, all conspire to make it the friend of liberal democracy.
So we will translate Mr. E. V. Lucas back to fact. “Among the new pleasures of life, that of switching On the radio can never be over-rated.”
Doreen May has taken to masculine trousers heartily for summer wear. Auckland especially rejoices in the frequent glad spectacle of a long-trousered girl who vainly imagines she is looking quite boyish. The fact that long pants accentuate her femininity never occurs to her. Kohimarama beach, of which I had too brief a view as we went through, was one of the brightest spots in the land with its bathing girls in shorts so short as to be invisible and its parade girls in blue or yellow or red longs so long as to trip them up, and liberal of cloth everywhere but in the rear, where they dimpled tightly, bless their pretty hearts.
Those are the rainbow-like pleasure pants; there are feminine trousers of the workmanlike cut, to be taken seriously. We saw them on the hayfield a good deal this season. The family and the neighbours busy on the field and at the stack often included a young woman in the garb of her menfolk, and she was as capable a hand as any of them.
But the Maori girl in trousers is the most charming picture of them all. She likes them as bright as a picture-book cover, and she unconsciously achieves some astonishing colour schemes. There is a gloriously rebellious head of black hair above a scarlet blouse, and there is a pair of bright blue trousers and a pair of sturdy brown feet. Hinemoa shows off her attire better than her pakeha sister for there is no foolish slimming down with her. She wears her natural figure and she fills her blouse and trousers passing well. Moreover, she is not so self-conscious as the pakeha town girl in tall pants. She goes with an air and a swing that are not assumed but are the natural heritage of a dancing race.
Some pictures on our North Island midsummer rovings:
In Rotorua we saw girls wearing figured cretonne trousers, pleasingly well-fitting about the hips, topped by bright red or yellow blouses and here and there a sports jacket.
In another Maori kainga a middle-aged dame on horseback was selling blackberries from a big basket. She wore long dungaree trousers, very suitable for horseback, and she wore over that a short frilly skirt of organdie which reached to her knees.
But Putaruru, on Saturday night, gave us the most colourful and perfectly delightful item of all. The scene was the footway in the main street; there two girls, merry young parties of sixteen or seventeen, were putting on trousers which they had just bought in one of the shops. They could have got into them in the store, perhaps, but they were more at home outside. They struggled in and tucked in their blouses. One girl had picked scarlet trousers, the other blue. They admired themselves in the shop-window; then they strode off perfectly happy, and, I dare say, perfectly indifferent to what dear old grannie would say when they reached the kainga. But grannie with the tattooed chin would probably try on those strides herself at first opportunity.
Our pioneer records at first or secondhand, are scant enough. Hence it was a pleasure to come upon such a book as “New Zealand Memories,” by Brenda Guthrie, a grand-daughter of the man whose experiences she describes.
Ebenezeer Hay was ordered by his doctor to take a long sea-voyage for his health's sake, and with his brave young wife he came to New Zealand by the Bengal Merchant. The sailors on the Bengal Merchant were in the habit of secreting, for barter with the natives, muskets, tobacco, beads, red blankets or powder. Though the Captain was a bully of the first water, each voyage lost him one of his crew, for the attractions of the Maori maidens proved too strong.
It was a life to ruin any sailor, for to the Maoris he was merely a trafficker who, by his knowledge of English, could obtain for them by barter the wares they coveted. They feasted with the sellers and they feasted with purchasers and most of them ended as sullen, sodden wrecks. They had not the long, hard fight with the sea that the whalers had, to cleanse them. With the coming of the settlers their usefulness ceased and they became disreputable hangers on of both camps.
There are little fragments that will be seized on by the New Zealand novelists of the future. Take this: “Dr. Logan told them of another chief called Te Rauparaha, a small, slightly built Maori, with six fingers on each hand, quiet in speech and action, but capable of the most horrible atrocities when roused. Although his name meant ‘Convolvulus Leaf,’ in spite of such a soft sounding epithet, he won as many victories by cunning as his opponent, Hongi, won by war.”
The book gives an account of Maori customs, among them this description of the feast at a tangi or Maori wake: “Bags of fat eels from the rivers, endless baskets of sweet potatoes, dozens of choice pigs, and birds from the forests, nets full of fish from the sea, piles of fern-root, and the greatest delicacy of all—decayed shark kept till it smelt.”
It tells the story of New Zealand's marvels, of the “tuatara,” the oldest reptile. “He is a sluggish fellow about twenty inches long, of the lizard family, with strong jaws and three eyes. He lives in holes and is very fond of raw meat when he can get it.” It discusses the strangeness of the kiwi and the kuaka, but does not mention the short tailed bat, one of the seven wonders of the world.
The ships Aurora, Ariel, and Duke of Roxburgh were lying behind Matiu or Soames Island and the Bengal Merchant dropped anchor beside them. “The sons of Epuni, two fine stalwart youths, in silky mats with huia feathers in their hair, dined with the captain, and the other sailors were much diverted when the two young Maoris carried away with them all that they had been unable to eat, but, Dr. Logan explained to the former that this was a native custom, it being considered by them most disrespectful to one's host to leave any food behind.” They were displaying an ancient courtesy.
The Hays landed at Pito-one (End of the Sand). In that awful fog and rain their poor worldly possessions were scattered on the beach, but “with the aid of an old sail, some canvas, blocks of wood, and a spar or two, the men of the party and a few willing Maoris fashioned a shelter of sorts by making the upturned boat habitable. So with a boat for a roof and sand for a floor, a sail for walls and canvas for a door, my grandparents and party spent their first night ashore.” Verily they deserved the stately home they owned at the end in the South. This is a description of their first hut and its making: “They placed a chimney—on a supplejack framework—of stone and clay at each end, and for windows they used some of my grand-mother's precious calico from the big box. An earthen floor beaten down hard and slabs of timber for doors completed this small hut which was to be their home for two or three years. Across the chimney, halfway up, an iron bar was built in, from which was suspended the kettles, three-legged’ pots, and camp-oven which later was the bane of a young house-wife's life.”
Their friends also had a house built on the pattern of a whaler's house with a framework of Kareau or supplejack plastered with a thick coating of clay inside and out. The Hays finally migrated to the South, but not before they had seen horse races on Petone beach.
“Mr. Jerningham Wakefield, as Clerk of the Course, looked resplendent in velvet cap, breeches, and pink coat, while one of the Petone ladies caused quite a sensation in my grand-mother's flowered silk gown.”
One reader at least was sorry when the scene shifted from Wellington, so vivid and simple was the picturization of the early days in the present capital. The Hay family prospered in the South. Their new house in the Pigeon Bay Valley was made of wood put together with dowels. They had no nails. The natives were at first hostile, but, realizing later the benevolence of the newcomers, became friendly.
For a treat Ebenezeer Hay would row his young family in a whaleboat to Port Levy, a strenuous pull of ten or twelve hours for the four or five rowers. Their visitors included such diverse personages as Sir George Grey and “Bloody Jack,” the old chief, Tuwhaike, who borrowed Hay's gold watch to wear while interviewing the Governor. It was a lucky loan, for Tuwhaike had great influence with his own people and his friendship was worth cultivating.
Then the first batch of settlers came to Canterbury Plains. “Clinging to each other so as not to be blown away from the top of the Bridle Path, they gazed disconsolately upon miles of waving tussock and flax, stretching in flat desolation to the snowy Alps in the far distance…. Immaculately dressed and gingerly picking their way among boulders, they must have presented a picture very much like those young surveyors who, caused so much merriment at Port Nicholson.” These were the men who made “The Plains.”
This is a book that is meat both for novelist and historian. To such memoirs we will owe much in the years to come.
* * *
Davies, the tramp poet, wrote: “A rainbow and a cuckoo, Lord, May never come together again”—
And perhaps never again, or not once in a thousand journeys, might I see this: the Remarkables standing out of the mist, Mount Earnslaw with white runnels of November snow streaking its dark face, beneath them Lake Wakatipu still and silvery: and over all, flung down from the peaks to lose its scarf-end in the lake waters, emerald and rose of a fully-fledged rainbow.
It's my own special good-luck sign, the bow in the clouds; so I knew, as soon as it shone into sight, that I would love little Queenstown, the place which nestles at the side of Lake Wakatipu, looking through trees into a grey water of which the inhabitants say proudly, “Average depth 1,500 feet, many places bottomless.” Queenstown has no trams, a once-a-week picture show, a tiny newspaper, and such an imposing collection of snow-peaks and lake-heads that its clustering houses, marching down from gentle hills into a valley beneath its famous Gardens, look perfectly pleased with themselves. They have reason. The townlet itself is attractive, built mostly in that old cottage style which you find only in the South Island: solid walls of stone, in the wilder parts walls of clay, fastened together securely as a martin's nest, and low, stout-bodied chimneys crouching above. There is a little stone church with a lych gate and great green trees almost touching its windows. But in the early evening (which was when the service ‘bus pulled into Queenstown)—two things predominate: the soft, dim rustle of trees in the Gardens, the slapping and shining of the water.
It was lilac-time: a thin clear drizzle of purple and white in all the gardens, and the last bees, belated revellers, persuading themselves that another little drink wouldn't do them any harm. At the accommodation house (there are several in Queenstown, all good) everybody talked cheerfully of mountain adventures past, present and to come, even the young honeymoon couple whose baby car had been blown off the road as they crossed the Crown Range. Supposing you have a son of between eighteen and twenty-two, one of the young blades who thinks he can do things with the internal economy of a motor car, and consequently gives the traffic police more to think about on his nights out than is right and fitting: one way of curing the youth might be to send him (and car), down to some of the roads in this region—Crown and Cardrona Ranges, or “Skippers,” which even when taken by service car has a little way of making its passengers hair rise slowly on end. The gorges coming through “Central” are terrific, just the homeopathic dose to cure most flippant speedsters.
In Queenstown the first thing they ask you is, “Have you seen our Gardens? And the Memorial?” After that, you are told that the Duke of Gloucester visited Queenstown, walked down to the Memorial, and admired the bowling greens. The Duke had the right of it. I don't think that any city in New Zealand, certainly no other little town, can boast Gardens lovelier or better laid out than Queens town's. Who was the arboreally-minded genius responsible, I have no idea, but he knew trees and used them. Of course, the Gardens have the advantage of keeping pace, step by step, with their beautiful lake: round the very brink, flanked by rows of dusky green-tipped larch trees, wanders a grass road, miles long, and always, glinting through the branches, you can see the lake. First a little fountain flings at you its delicate diffused scent-spray of white waters, then you cross a rustic bridge and hear many bullfrogs saying their prayers from the lily-pads: and if you watch (like me), you can also see them, and observe their neat buff waistcoats going up and down with emotion. You pass a kiosk where clematis throws white starry masses, enormous flowers, over a fence, and come at last to the Captain Scott memorial, one of the most dignified imaginable, for it is nothing but a great granite boulder, a mastodon of a rock, and on it, in marble, the five white stars of the Southern Cross. Beneath, marble lettering gives the words of Captain Scott's last message, and an epitaph:—
“They rest in the great white silence of Antarctica, amid the scenes of their triumphs … wrapped in the winding-sheet of the eternal snows.”
If you first saw that huge boulder, much too huge to be moved by man or a score of men, with darkness making the lake and the snowy peaks beyond rather indefinite, twilight sifting down thick and diffuse as
I heard, further down south, that an American had made a suggestion that by lowering the level of Lake Wakatipu a thousand feet, gold-mining interests might be best served: and that this course would certainly be taken, did Lake Wakatipu reside in “Gaard's Own.” In the heat of the moment, I replied that I would rather see the entire American nation, man, woman and child, subside a thousand feet into You-know-where, than see a hair of Lake Wakatipu's head perturbed. The protest may be over-vigorous, but, with all due respect to the gold standard, any proposal to interfere with the lake is immoral, blasphemous and indecent. If Lake Wakatipu desires to make any changes, these will be accomplished in its own good time, a million years or so: it is extraordinary how this feeling of immutability has reached out and covered the people who live in the little lakeshore town. I met many who had been for fifty years and more just where they are to-day: living the same life, doing the same things, and wanting nothing else. From the verandah of a cottage in one street, an old lady with blue eyes and a rusty black dress said good-morning. She had lived in her house for nearly sixty years, but was thinking now of moving, because her next door neighbour and very best friend, who had come to Queenstown in the same year, had just died. In her youth, her husband had been a goldminer, up near Cromwell: and those were wild days, when the diggers who made any sort of strike sent their womenfolk to the safety of town. But even Queens-town was then far from being the placid little place of to-day, and as Madame of the black gown explained, it wasn't every woman there who was of the homely sort, like her dear neighbour. By the lake-edge, in sunshine, sat an old Chinese with a tuft of white beard, his eyes wrinkled up in the near-blindness of great age. So long as anyone in Queenstown could remember, he had looked like that. He, too, had a tradition reaching back to the days of gold, and until his eyesight failed, he was a regular attendant at one little Queenstown church, where a Chinese bible and prayer-book were specially procured for him. Now he dreams in the sunshine.
Next thing in fish-stories to the crowding tame trout of Fairy Springs, Rotorua, might be the tame perch of Lake Wakatipu, who come alongside the jetty to be nourished by small boys and girls with large crusts of bread. You can see their foot-long grey bodies flashing in the transparent water, and mark that a very heavy fine would lie waiting for the opportunist who dangled a fishing-line before the innocents' blunt noses. A notice says, “Now you're here, enjoy yourself,” and an old man rents out dinghies. The conceited craft of the lake are, of course, the launches—a mail-steamer for the full traverse to the lake—head, and the little boats for chugging about to places like Bob's Cove and Elfin Bay, where red deer come down and look at you with surprise, if not with admiration, through their greenwood trees.
I was warned against it: people at the boarding—house said that (a) if done at all, it should be done with a 2 a.m. start, (b) that womenfolk who undertook it thereafter remained in bed for a week. But the Sunday afternoon was gloriously fine, and there wasn't, as it happened, either a launch trip or a drive, November being too early for “the season”—so, with one stout-hearted but rash companion, I set out for Ben Lomond. Old Ben isn't a shining monarch like Mount Cecil or Mount Earnslaw, but nevertheless it's a bona fide mountain, over 5,000 feet, and channelled with snowdrifts among the dark and solemn rock-faces which crown its height.
Great bushes of sweet-scented briar and metagauri—thorny “Wild Irishman,” which is supposed to be poisonous at one time of the year: tussock slopes, easy and springy to climb, and then the first of the mountain birch forest. Its little leaves, molten red-gold, like the coinage of a great king who sits in the hills, drop by the million, and are trodden into the dark, soft soil. The trees grow close together, thrusting out in cliffs of strong, stubborn trunks and roots. Away from the ravines, they have been destroyed, and only very slowly win back their hold, lacking the warmth and shade that their own forest gave them. But there are still splendid fragments you cross, climbing Old Ben; and through them you can hear the singing talk of thin mountain cascades, rattling down, white and lace-like, a hundred feet or so at a leap.
The mountain flowers begin about the place where you first feel tired: probably not halfway up. They grow low, with fleshy leaves, and no colour but the grey of their foliage, the pure,
The little hut looked like something particularly desirable out of “The Pilgrim's Progress.” To get there, we squelched with giant strides across a white drift, opened the door, crying “Tea!“—only to find that the old, hospitable custom of the mountains, which leaves tea and a billy-can for weary climbers, had fallen into deseutude on Ben Lomond. The little hut was dark, dismal and dirty. There was a fire-place and an ancient black pot which might have done for a billy. No tea, no manner of comfort. And one impertinent wench had written in the visitors' book, “Climb is child's play.” In silence and with grim determination, we scrunched on……
Over the other side of the mountain, one looks out on something worth the climb, even worth the climb down again (which is a very different story). Except for the scar where the Moonlight gold-diggings were worked in the old days, there is no sign of man's handiwork—nothing but the golden mountain light moving swiftly across the hills, turning to terra-cotta, mingling with the shadows of clouds that pass over some of the once richest country in the world. It is still rich, with such a wild, lonely beauty that it seems strange no man should live there: but in all the valleys and along the ranges, you won't see as much as a solitary prospector's smoke. Only gold and sunset colours, and straight above, with a frown on its surly rock-face, the geometric black and white of Ben Lomond's summit.
Of the return trip I say nothing: except, perhaps, an echo of the gipsy's warning, “Don't, or you'll regret it.” And yet—I think the sight of the lonely hills subsequently cancels out the calamitous state of stumbling down an impossible, elusive track in the darkness, and lying down under tussocks to escape, for a moment, the swooping devil of a wind which, having grilled one all the afternoon, turns icy cold the moment the sun vanishes. At one moment we saw, drifting about in the shadows, three large pumpkin coloured spots of light: and thought, with horrid conviction, “Oh Lor',—a search-party.” But so it was not: the lights later turned out to have been occasioned by a local fire-bug with an odd passion for making bonfires up on the mountains, and punctually at 12.30 a.m., dinnerless and aching in every bone, I crawled into the accommodation house, which, to the last guest or dog, lay wrapped in dreamless slumber.
The Paradise trip used to be another sort of nightmare in the old coaching days. You find the record of it in such names as “Devil's Creek,” “Hell's Gates,” and other landmarks passed along the roads. Evidently crossing wild, white water, in snowtimes, appealed neither to horses nor to those they carried. By mail-steamer, and service car, the trip nowadays is of almost monotonous safety. Our little steamer took us over Lake Wakatipu, into little bays of plumy peacock-blue, softly foliaged with native bush, and at last to Glenorchy, which stands at the head of the Lake, complete with accommodation house. After this, you drive through birchforest, and Paradise earns its name.
Once every few years, a period that seems strangely irregular, like the flowering of the cactus, the birchwoods flower. I know one old resident of the far South who saw this happen just once in her years there—and I, by sheer good luck, struck it on the one day's journey. There are three main varieties of native birch tree, white, black and red. The flower is a tiny red crest, so that when all the trees blossom, you drive through a blaze of little red candles, sprouting out of the sombre leafage. The driver sprang out and brought back a piece; like most New Zealand wood-flowers,
Paradise is one of those places to which I am going to retire when I grow either old or affluent. There are several, all quite different, except that they are all little and very quiet. On the other side of the woods it stands, with snow-mountains glittering in the background, and green knolls rounding off into further birch forest. The accommodation house here has a wild and lovely old English garden—a tangle garden, with bright brooches of colour pinned on a dishevelled shawl patterned in columbines, snapdragon, late snowdrops, primroses, marigolds, early and slipshod old roses. Bees were entranced with pink lupin, and honeysuckle and flowering creepers fell in heavy masses over arches. In the dining room, the heads of Paradise stags looked down upon us with awful solemnity, like Victorian archdeacons. But it was a place, not to see for a day, but to know for years and years: the lady of the garden was another of those South Islanders who have fallen into the continuity demanded by hill and forest. For over fifty years she had been making her garden……
And there was another, on the way home. The ‘bus stopped especially to make the call, and as soon as he saw visitors, the old man—his name was Mr. Haines — came hastening up through the exotics and beautiful flowering shrubs of the garden he has cultivated since he was a boy. People drop in at his house for three things— to visit the old man himself, to admire his wonderful garden, and to inspect the curios. For here we are in the country of Greenstone and Moas. Not far behind the hills slides Greenstone River. On his own property, Mr. Haines has picked up scores of greenstone specimens, some worked and polished by the Maoris, others in the rough state, but quickly responsive to polishing. And bits of moa-bone flank these curiosities, over which the lady from India was in a state of great excitement, for she had hunted New Zealand high and low for souvenirs, and could find nothing except poi-pois and imitation tikis, which didn't appeal.
It was aboard a Lyttelton-Wellington boat. A cheery-looking old chap —the picture of health, was enjoying his after-breakfast pipe on deck when accosted by a fellow-passenger. “Do you know, my good Sir, that every ounce of tobacco you smoke shortens your life by a year?” “Great Scot! Then I ought to have been dead and buried long ago!” “You may laugh, my friend, but tobacco will get you, sooner or later!” “Well, let's hope it will be later,” said the jolly old boy, “But I'm not worrying! Next to no nicotine in my baccy! It's practically harmless.” “What tobacco may that be, pray!” sneered the crank. “Cut Plug No. 10. Try a fill?” Offer declined with a shudder. But there's no harm in “toasted” and for a really comfortable and thoroughly enjoyable smoke it's equal isn't manufactured. The five (and only genuine) toasted brands. Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead), Cavendish, Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold, are everywhere on sale—a convincing proof of their widespread popularity!
New Zealanders should thank their gods daily, after reading the cable news, for the happy fortune of life in such a land as this. We are blessed in beauty of landscape, in soil and climate and water and wood; we are blessed in the mighty protective arm that blue ocean has placed around us, and in the distance and comparative isolation that once was counted a disadvantage. The horrors of modern warfare that surpass in ghastly massacre all the wars of earlier times cannot touch us here. We are spared climatic terrors' that afflict Continental lands such as America and the heart of Australia; we have no “dust bowl,” and no nightmare of drowned cities; no areas depopulated by offended Nature's punishment for the mistreatment of her land.
Our visitors from overseas express delight at the vivid green and the luxuriant grass and the glory of trees that New Zealand shows. Some of them have remarked on the excellence and the cheapness of the food they were served. The freshness of everything, the freedom, the healthiness of the New Zealand life, the inviting character of the country for home-seekers, is the theme of many.
We are only too well aware, of course, that everything in this New Zealand garden is not lovely. Many parts of the land are already suffering seriously from the greed and the ignorance of those who deforested the country and who are still wiping out the forests that should be kept inviolate. If grass grows luxuriantly so do all kinds of noxious weeds. I have seen hundreds of farms when travelling through the richest parts of the country as well as some of the wildest, this summer, and I am inclined to agree, after those days on and around the dairy farms and sheep stations with a man who suggested to me that ragwort is New Zealand's national flower. As for health, our hospitals are overcrowded, and epidemics baffle the doctors. There are people who complain that everything is too dear, and that it is difficult to make farming pay.
And yet, weighing up everything, and giving the grumblers full play, the conclusion of the whole matter is vastly in New Zealand's favour. The intelligent visitor from overseas sees the picture in its true perspective; his knowledge of other countries and other peoples enables him to strike an accurate balance. We have had many people who came here originally for sport, and who have become permanent settlers. An American ex-naval officer, who is a writer, lately announced his intention of making his home here; he had found “the most beautiful place in the world.” He might well have added, the most peaceful land, and the most agreeable climate. We may miss a lot, because we are not in the whirl of hectic metropolitan life. But there are the compensations, which perhaps are not valued as they should be by New Zealanders, because they are the commonplaces of our daily life.
The hydro-electric light and power stations, scientific triumphs of recent times in the Dominion, have transformed life for country and smalltown dwellers. The far-out farm has its electric power cooking and lighting. The light services especially have enormously enhanced the pleasure of a country life—or rather, perhaps, ameliorated the loneliness and gloom, if you like to put it that way. What a contrast, the country village of the past and the brisk little town it has become to-day. Once upon a time, we would pass through a township, as we rode home to the farm late at night, and see but one solitary light, the kerosene lantern that the law required every publichouse-keeper to keep burning over his front door from dark to daylight. No street lights, no guiding light but the stars, or haply a jolly round moon. Night entertainments which called the country dweller were usually fixed for a night of full moon.
Now, travelling swiftly and easily along remote roads, you are never far from the bright lights. The one-time one-pub, settlement flashes at you suddenly as you emerge from the hills or the bush—a constellation in the valley below, a golden glitter against the black of the country night. There are all-night signs, the smart hotel has its eyes on you, so, too, has the police station.
There are lights, too, in many a roadside homestead; there is the sound of music in the air, for the radio is a necessary of existence far back. The other evening we happened to pull up at a farmhouse on a lonely hilltop near the Waikato River, where it flows through the rugged Waotu country. We heard clock chimes—eight o'clock. “Why, it's the old Wellington Post Office clock,” said the girl friend. The farm family had tuned in on 2YA.
In New Zealand soil—on the brow of picturesque Marsland Hill, New Plymouth, overlooking the “Garden of New Zealand,” lies buried the noble friend of a poet whose fame grows with the years. Charles Armitage Brown was a friend in need to John Keats, and to Brown all lovers of literature owe an immeasurable debt, for it was due solely to Brown that some of the best of Keats' glorious poetry was rescued from the crumpled “waste paper” stage. New facts have been brought to light concerning the great friendship of these two men. Descendants of Brown are living in New Plymouth and from them have been gathered some fresh facts here recorded.
Was the name of John Keats written in water? His critics would think otherwise, and Keats himself would be gratified could they but know to what heights his fame has risen in the minds of the living. A new book is to be published in England in the near future by Mr. Buxton Foreman dealing with memories of Keats and this is the second Mr. Foreman has written on the subject. Included in the volume will be further information relating to the association of Keats and his best friend, Charles Armitage Brown, whose grave is upon the side of Marsland Hill in New Plymouth. Brown was the means of rescuing from oblivion for immortality some of the best work that the poet produced. The source of some of this additional knowledge was from letters written by Brown to Keats and others from this corner of the world which, during recent years, has yielded quite a rich array of relics and facts about the two men.
Brown it was who could have revealed the most and the best concerning Keats and his life and work in the few, sad latter years of Keats' sojourn in England. Brown did commence to write a memoir of his friend, but was troubled by the loss of Keats and also by the turn of events in his own affairs. The culminating point was Brown's decision to use the remmants of his fortune to establish his only son, Charles Brown, as a civil engineer in the New Plymouth of 1840, which then, was scarcely in the blue print stage. Brown handed his memoir to Richard Monckton Milne, afterwards Lord Houghton, who wrote the Life and Letters of John Keats.
We know that to Keats, Brown was best friend; that Keats lived with Brown when Keats otherwise would have been exiled in utter misery; that but for Brown a number of pieces of glorious poetry never would have been added to the store of universal literature; that it fell to Brown, after Keats died at Rome, to raise a monument on the grave inscribed as Keats had requested “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.” What is there known about Brown and through Brown about Keats? Descendants of Brown are living in New Plymouth and besides having given every assistance to biographers of Keats they yielded up much of interest to the Keats Museum at Hampstead in the old house in which Keats and Brown lived during 1818, 1819 and early 1820.
Mrs. Jessie Brown (nee Brown) and Miss Lucy Brown of New Plymouth are children of Major Charles Keats Brown, who was a son of Charles Armitage Brown and whose name is written in the affairs of Taranaki Province in its early days when Major Brown was Superintendent of the Province. To converse with Mrs. Jessie Brown and hear her story of her grandfather, and to meet Miss Lucy Brown who strikingly resembles the bust of Keats' friend was a pleasant experience, for both have kept in touch with descendants of Charles Armitage Brown's English friends, including those of Leigh Hunt, and biographers of Keats. Through the efforts of Brown's grandchildren, Mrs. Jessie Brown, and Miss Brown, New Plymouth, Mrs. Gordon Osborne and Mr. W. A. Brown, Auckland, a portrait of Keats, a bust of Brown and other interesting relics have been placed in the Keats Museum.
It was the nobility of Keats that has made him immortal and more revered as time flies, although it was so long ago as 23rd February, 1821, and he but 25 years of age at the time of his death. It was nobility on the part of Brown that marked the friendship. Again, it was nobility that led to Brown, late in his life, changing his venue and coming to New Zealand. He had backed a promissory note for a friend, had to meet it unexpectedly and depleted his small means to such an extent that he chose the new country to provide his son opportunity.
One well may imagine that Keats wrote letters to Fanny Brawne and lines of some of his later work upon a little rosewood table standing in a corner of the drawing room of Mrs. Jessie Brown.
“My grandfather was something of an epicure,” said Mrs. Brown proffering for my inspection a book filled in Brown's minute hand with recipes. Possibly Keats, Fanny Brawne and Hampstead associates tasted wine such as I tasted—wine made from Brown's formulae!
It seemed that Brown had not died, when a merry, twinkle-eyed lady, Mrs. Lucy Brown, informed me that she was a grand-daughter of Keats' friend and
that years ago she had visited England and the old Hampstead haunts and met descendants of Leigh Hunt, Charles Dilke and others mentioned in Keats' biography.
“Charles Armitage Brown backed a bill for a friend and was obliged to meet it,” said Mrs. Brown, recalling what she knew. “He was born at Lambeth about 1786 and while still in his ‘teens went to St. Petersburg to manage a fur business. He returned to London after several years of vain speculation. When Henry Brown, brother of Charles Armitage Brown, died, unmarried, he left his money to his brother and that enabled him to live at ease and pursue his literary tastes. I imagine that he may have bought an annuity for himself, because I do not think my father ever had any money except what he earned.
“After Keats' death, he lived for many years in Italy where he was associated with Landor, Shelley, Byron, Leigh Hunt, Trelawney and Trollope.
“My father was educated by Armitage Brown later in Italy and lived nearly all the time there before he came to New Zealand in the Amelia Thompson, landing at New Plymouth when he was seventeen—a young man with curly hair, a top hat and quite a mature air. My grandfather met Lord Houghton, or Richard Monckton Milne, at the villa of Landor, in Florence, about 1834, when Lord Houghton learned my grandfather had prepared a memoir of Keats ready for publication. My grandfather attempted to publish this memoir, but had not been successful when, just before 1840, quite by accident I believe, he attended a meeting in London of the New Zealand Company, pertaining to colonisation. He took shares in the project amalgamated with the New Plymouth Company. During the next few weeks Armitage Brown was obliged to meet his friend's debt and was placed in the position of a man impoverished financially late in life. He decided to go to New Zealand and spend his last days and the remnants of his fortune there, hoping to establish his only child in the settlement as a civil engineer.
“That course was adopted. My father came on first, alone, and my grandfather followed in the Oriental. Father and son took up residence on the brow of the hill overlooking the Te Henui River, at the Mouth, near where my sister lives. There is now a short street near the old home site named after my father. The memoir of Keats' letters and data had been handed to Lord Houghton, who eventually (1840) published the life and letters of Keats.
“Things were very primitive, of course, in New Plymouth in 1840. Marsland Hill was merely a Maori Pa. There was a very primitive church on the present site of St. Mary's. It was added to from time to time until it has reached its present dimensions. My grandfather lived in New Plymouth for only about 8 months before he died as the result of a fit of apoplexy. He was a fiery man, I suppose, since he was red-headed! He was buried on the slopes of Marsland Hill, just above the
Church and overlooking the sea. A slab of stone, procured from the beach, was placed over the grave.”
When Marsland Hill was made a military barracks in the troublous ‘sixties earth was thrown down the side, and the grave was forgotten during the ten years of Maori contention. A century after Keats’ death, at the direction of Brown's relatives, in Taranaki and Auckland, successful search was made for the site in March, 1921.
Mrs. Gordon Osborne and Mr. William A. Brown of Auckland are grandchildren of Armitage Brown, through Major Brown's second marriage. They, together with Mrs. Jessie and Miss Lucy Brown, acted in concert in gathering relics bearing association with Keats. Among the items returned to their former place in Brown's Hampstead house—purchased for the nation through American generosity ten years ago—were a photograph of the bust of Brown that had been in the New Plymouth Museum, and some Hogarth prints that had hung on the walls of the old house.
A few relics are still in possession of Mrs. Jessie Brown. An exquisitely painted scene on a piece of ivory has been made into a trinket box. The colours have kept their freshness remarkably well. The work was done by Brown, and consists of three figures of the 18th century—a country maid carrying a basket, and two youths—all chubby and red-cheeked. Mrs. Brown recalled that her grandfather had pursued his painting after Keats' death.
There are many who think that some memorial and a literary record should be made of the man who prospered the poet and insisted that stray verses were recorded.
Since the days of the historic “Race to Scotland,” fast passenger train running between London and Scottish centres has always been a feature of the train services. Two railways to-day are concerned in these services —the London, Midland & Scottish, and the London & North Eastern, operating respectively over the West and East Coast routes. Last month we recorded the early introduction of a new six-hour timing on the L. & N.E. line between London (King's Cross) and Edinburgh. Now, the L.M. & S. have stepped into the limelight in connection with experiments for speeding-up the London — Glasgow schedules.
With a view to ascertaining the potentialities of standard steam locomotives and carriages in long-distance, high-speed working, the L. M. & S. have been conducting special tests. In one London-Glasgow run, there was established a new world's record for sustained high speed with steam traction. The distance from Euston Station London, to Glasgow Central Station is 401½ miles, and this was covered in 5 hours 53 minutes an average overall speed of 68.2 m.p.h. On the return journey, 5 hours 44 minutes were occupied, an average speed of over 70 m.p.h. The load behind the “Princess Elizabeth” locomotive on the outward trip was 225 tons, and on the return 255 tons. These figures are all the more remarkable when one bears in mind the exceedingly difficult nature of certain stretches of the track, notably the Shap Fell and Beattock climbs (916 ft. and 1,014 ft. above sea level respectively). Ere long we may look for a regular daily timing of six or six-and-a-half hours for the daily run of the “Royal Scot,” or some light-weight counterpart of this famous train, between Euston and Glasgow.
The make-up of crack trains like the “Royal Scot,” the “Flying Scotsman,” the “Cornish Riviera Express,” and so on, invariably includes the very latest design of refreshment car. To realise the part played by train catering in attracting the traveller to rail, let us quote a few facts relating to the dining car section of one typical system—the L. & N.E. Railway. On this line some 224 restaurant and 51 buffet cars are operated. To this number, vehicles are being added this year as follows: Eleven restaurant cars, fifteen buffet cars, and two combined restaurant buffet cars. During 1936, the restaurant and buffet cars controlled by the King's Cross authorities served no fewer than 2,741,000 meals, an average of 10,000 meals per car. In each kitchen—never more than 6 ft. 6 in. wide, and 18 ft. long—in addition to cooking and preparing meals, there are stored 1,147 pieces of china, 350 tablecloths and serviettes, 160 glasses, and 1,081 pieces of cutlery. Both electricity and gas are employed in the kitchen cars of the Home lines. Some of the finest kitchens of the all-electric type are found on the “Flying Scotsman.”
Many new vehicles have in recent times been introduced on the Home group lines for handling postal mails. This is a most important business, demanding the closest co-operation between the railways and the postal authorities. The special mail cars employed in Britain consist of mobile sorting units and stowage cars. In some instances, complete trains of postal vehicles are run. In others, one or more mail cars are attached to the ordinary passenger trains. The normal length of the sorting carriages is 60 ft. Along one side of the car are arranged the sorting tables and racks. On the opposite side there is fixed the apparatus for receiving and delivering mail-bags while travelling at high speed. The heaviest travelling post offices are what are known as the Up and Down Specials on the L. M. & S. The Up Special leaves Aberdeen at 3.25 p.m. daily, and arrives at Euston Station, London, at 3.55 a.m. The Down Special leaves Euston at 8.30 p.m., and arrives Aberdeen 7.52 a.m. These two trains handle, annually, 105,000,000 pieces of mail. In the case of the Down Special, 700 bags of mail are received daily from 230 offices for opening and sorting on
Education is the key to advancement in the railway world, as in most walks in life. A new departure in railway education is the establishment by the L.M. & S. Railway at Derby of Britain's first railway staff college for the training of selected staff in all grades. The college, now in course of construction, will be residential in character, accommodating 50 employees for periods of training varying from a fortnight upwards. The new training is primarily for the inculcation of the best ideas known on railways in this country and throughout the world, and is intended to bring out the quality of leadership to a marked degree. The fundamental idea is that the men shall be trained at a boarding staff college, rather than at what might be termed a day college, so that they can work and play together, a practice which will tend to break down and “departmental” outlook which may exist. The presence in the immediate neighbourhood of the college of the company's locomotive works, car shops, marshalling yards, control offices, etc., will enable students training at the college to become acquainted with actual workings by practical demonstration. In brief, the company state, the essence of the scheme is that the best practices and the best traditions of the older experienced men shall be imparted to the younger members of the staff for their benefit during the remainder of their railway service.
Of the many engineering wonders of the Home railways, few exceed in interest the Severn Tunnel, the jubilee of the opening of which has just been celebrated by the Great Western Company. This is the longest subaqueous tunnel in the world. It is 4 miles, 624 yards long, and 2¼ miles of the tunnel actually lie beneath the River Severn estuary, in which neighbourhood the tides are the highest in Europe. The tunnel carries the Great Western main-line between London and South Wales, and also handles a heavy traffic between northern points and the West Country. The work of construction was begun in 1873, and completed in December, 1886. The total cost was nearly two million pounds. At its greatest width, the tunnel measures 26 ft., and its height to roof at centre is 20 ft. In the work of construction there were employed 3,628 men, and approximately 76½ million bricks were put into the structure. The engineers were Sir John Hawkshaw and Charles Richardson, and the contractor Thomas A. Walker. A large and expensive pumping plant is constantly at work keeping the tunnel dry, from ten to thirty million gallons of percolating water being raised daily. The maintenance of the tunnel lining is effected by forcing, from time to time, liquid cement, under pressure, behind the brickwork. Replacing an old steam ferry service, the Severn Tunnel shortened the journey between Bristol and Cardiff by 1½ hours.
The Home railways play a very important part as dock-owners, and it is interesting to note that the most important passenger port in Britain is Southampton, where the docks are the property of the Southern Railway. Actually, the leading passenger ports of the country, in order of importance, are Southampton, London, Liverpool and Glasgow. Twelve years ago, Southampton and Liverpool enjoyed approximately equal shares of the passenger business, sharing two-thirds of the whole traffic between them. Now, the number of passengers using Southampton is roughly twice as many as those entering or leaving the country via Liverpool. Passenger traffic to and from the continent is almost entirely passed through railway-owned ports. Dover, Folkestone, Southampton, Newhaven and Wey-mouth, handle about two-thirds of the total movement.
The late Rua Kenana, or Ruatapu-nui, the spiritual leader of many hundreds of people of the Urewera and related tribes was one of those strongly individual characters who give a touch of dramatic colour to a commonplace world. He was an uncommonly keen-witted man, a shrewd judge of his fellowmen, and an actor of high degree. But it must not be concluded hastily that he was a charlatan, like so many other faith-healers and popular preachers of many lands. He posed grandly, he startled the common folk, but it was all part of a purpose. He was first of all a patriotic champion of Maori racial independence, like Te Whiti of Taranaki. When I first made Rua's acquaintance, nearly thirty years ago, I was disposed to regard him as a rather cunning fellow who traded on the people's superstitious veneration and readiness to follow a theatrical figure with a mysterious and adventurous background. But his later history induced me to revise that mental attitude. I came to like the longhaired prophet for his courage, his strong clan feeling—aroha ki te iwi— and his admirable spirit of rebellion against the conventions.
When Te Kooti died at Wainui, on the shore of Ohiwa Harbour, in 1893, a certain prophecy that he had uttered shortly before his end was circulated throughout the Ringatu or Wairua Tapu communities. I heard it from a Maori of his flock five years afterwards. The dying leader announced that in twice seven years a man would arise in the mountains of the Urewera country who would succeed him as the spiritual head of the people. “We shall await his coming,” said my travelling mate, as we rode along the mountain track from Ruatahuna to Te Whaiti. He was a man of the Urewera, and he had implicit faith that the prophecy would be fulfilled. And it so befell that in 1907 we heard that a new prophet had come to light at Maungapohatu, and Rua Kenana was his name. Thus was Te Kooti's forecast verified—just twice seven years had passed.
I had a certain sympathy for him when he came into conflict with the law and had his son and one of his tribesmen shot dead. He was the product of his wonderful and lawless environment, the grim old holy mountain that had watched over him from his birth, and the dim and gloomy highlands of his warrior fathers. Indeed, he grew in a fighting spirit from his earliest days, for his people, led by Te Kooti, were at war with the Government when he was born. His father Kenana (Canaan) was killed in the engagement at Makaretu, inland from Gisborne, at the end of 1868; and Rua was born shortly afterwards.
Against all this strange posing and religious theatricals of Rua's heyday in his mountain home, and his over-generous plurality of wives, must be set his good work after his tussle with the Law, and his imprisonment. He was an unofficial recruiting agent for the Government, and a gentle hint from him sent many a young stalwart to the camps. He urged his people to become farmers, and he set the example of industry himself on his land at Matahi, in the Waimana Valley, where he died.
With the passing of years and the accretion of mana and tradition about the prophet, there grew a certain respectful fear of Ruatapu among his Urewera people, especially among those who lived up in the mountains. Highlands foster strange beliefs and faith in the occult. He was credited with the uncanny power of makulu; in local belief he could cause the death of anyone who offended him, simply by wishing or praying one to death.
His name was a terror to naughty children at Maungapohatu. “I'll tell Rua” was a threat that enforced better behaviour.
When Rua went into Maungapohatu for the summer months—he spent the winter in the warmer climate at Matahi, down in the Waimana Valley —the quiet mountain settlement took on an air of stir and industry. Rua saw to it that everyone was usefully employed, and cleanliness was one of his commandments. Everyone must wash, and must keep the home clean. Frequent bathing in the creek was a pleasure of the people in the warm outer lands; it was not always so congenial in the valleys among the lofty ranges, where the rivers came rushing in cold as ice from the mountain canyons.
Rua the much-married was kind to his wives, but he deprived them of one of the principal joys of feminine life. He did all the family shopping himself, on his periodical visits to town—Taneatua, Whakatane and elsewhere—and the ladies (varying in number from seven to ten) patiently awaited his return. Rua knew best. He selected the clothes and hats, and brought them home for distribution. Then the wives and children gathered in the front of his house, and Rua, sitting on the verandah, with the air of a benevolent patriarch, handed out the contents of the packages from the town. A gown for Rangi, a chemise for Patu, a piece of print for Polly or Betty, to make up into a dress, a fine felt hat or red blouse for another, something for everyone, including the children of all sorts and sizes.
Rua was prolific in his prophecies, but some of them were very bad shots. He hit the mark now and again with predictions that confirmed the popular belief that he was a man to whom divine revelations came. The popular belief in his own supernatural character was sadly impaired when he did not rise again, as had been prophesied, three days after his death.
(Perpetrated and Illustrated by Ken Alexander.)
Life would fall flat with a moan like a punctured pie were it denuded of the little odd ordeals that punctuate the earnest exigencies of existence.
The little annoyances that confound complacency are the spice in life, the condiments in consciousness and the buzz in being. They are cautionary concepts, peripatetic pin-pricks, designed by Destiny to keep existence on the jump and the heart a'hopping.
No human being is content in contentment for any length of time. He imagines that he could be perfectly happy being perfectly happy. But he is wrong. It would make him miserable. Hence the trifles that trip, the rifts in the loot, the little things that discount.
Such trifling tribulations are various and variegated. What is one man's pleasure is another man's poison. What is benediction to Brown is a jinx to Jones. What gingers up George irritates Irwin. Plantaganet's pleasure is odium to Oswald; and so on.
We know of a man who revels in having his hair cut. The barber's fibbling fingers bring benediction to his brain. The sibilant scissors lull his bean to beautitude. While the lambent lock falls fluttering to the floor heart and head grow lighter. The ecclesiastic eloquence of his tonsorial nibs, whispering the inspired low-down on the fifth race, is muted music to his ear. His soul is somnolently sublimated and he realises that he would be a better man if his hair grew quicker.
On the other head we know of a man who shuns the shears as sedulously as Samson should have done. The barber's titillate touch is like beetles on his bean. His cranium crawls, his scalp creeps up and down the back of his neck, and the voice of the barber is like an east wind moaning round a morgue. To him, barbery is barbarous. And yet, no doubt, he gets a morbid kick out of imagining that the barber might make a clean sweep of his hair with a single stroke round about the collar stud. The imagined menace in the barber's eye as he fondles the forelock probably gives a spice to life that many men with less imagination have travelled thousands of leagues to find, The man is fortunate who can extract from the innocent ecstacies of a barber a thrill that lesser men must seek among the head-hunting Knoblifters of Darkest Delusia.
We say nothing—or next to nothing —about the breath-taking thrills of the old-fashioned shave or barberous necking party. Since the safety chinchopper reduced shaving to a matter of removing the face from the whiskers rather than the whiskers from the face, shaving has lost much of the exciting uncertainty that was its chief feature in the old bubble-blowing and rubber-necking days of yore. In the days when we lent our face to the barber we knew what it was to live dangerously; especially if he was one of those barbers who regarded a face in much the same light as Helen of Troy who, as you know, used hers to launch a thousand ships. He gave to the removal of the humble whisker a sublime significance equal to the wreck of the schooner Hesperus, the mutiny on the Bounty and the charge of the Light Brigade, combined with an explosion in a soap factory.
We speak now of those rugged cut-and-thrust, slap - and - slosh bristle-bruisers of the old school whose old school tie was the “Jolly Roger” and the battle cry “while there's life there's soap.”
Having back-heeled you into the whiskorial chair they gave your face a derogatory look and dived for the “makins.” They sloshed into the soap-soup and made for you like a white-washer intent on completing a sixty-hour job in a forty-hour week.
“Nice day,” they would bark and, when you opened your mouth to confirm the perjury—slosh!—you were scuppered to the tonsils. They treated your face like a gate, slamming it back and forth until your neck felt like a cork-screw. Then they shored up your chin and smacked your Adam's apple as though they hated fruit. Next they got at you with their bare hands and made a scrubbing-board of your face. They man-handled your nose, pulled out your upper lip and let it go back with a “woosh,” and left you blowing like a soaped geyser while they took the edge off the cutlery. Only barbers with an inferiority complex used sharp razors. A sharp razor tended to give the victim the false impression that he was a better man than the barber. They wanged their steel up and down the leather until it sang “I'll pull you through, sonny boy,” in “A” blunt. Then they stood over you and waved their hardware as though selecting a suitably vital spot for a quick take-off.
“Looks like dirty weather,” they prophesied while they stretched your ear until it looked like a book-mark, and skidded round it with the cut-and-come-again.
When the barber gave you back your face, except the bits that he had taken a dislike to, you felt fit for anything. You had tasted cold steel —and hot soap—and were a better man for it.
One of the major ordeals of manhood is fatherhood. It is a poignant truism of life that you can't achieve fatherhood without becoming a father. The young father must pass through the fires of fatherhood before he can claim the glorious privilege of boring his friends to beers with accounts of the extraordinary qualities of his offspring.
His new status having been achieved and confirmed by the evidence, which reminds him of a sadly wrinkled chilli with a hooter in its chest, he staggers into the highways and byways to broadcast the news. The power of the Press is all right for disseminating such minor tidings as wars, earthquakes and the rights and wrongs of nations, but for the greater things of life it is appallingly inadequate. At least, that is what you, as a new-fledged father, feel. So you set out to blazen abroad, in person, news of your unique and peculiar prowess.
“It's a boy,” you simper. Friends do their darndest to look glad that it is a boy. By the time they have drunk to its success, to its childhood, to its boyhood, to its manhood and its old age they really do look glad. Some of them seem willing to drink it into its grave but it dawns on you that perhaps you are doing your child a wrong by allowing its future to be practically pickled in alcohol. So you turn your face to the nest. Wobbily winging your way you meet a father whose paternal record would look like a page out of the Year Book—a man who has been practically dogged by fatherhood. He receives your tidings in the manner of a hero of a hundred campaigns learning of a minor skirmish.
“So now I'm a father,” you babble. He looks at you more in sorrow than in alcohol. He squeezes your arm as one who says, “Brother, we all have our burdens, our sorrows and our trials; but we must be strong.” Then he brightens and says, “There is one thing to be thankful for, you can never be a mother.”
Fatherhood is one of the ordeals that have put man where he is— wherever he is. No man can really claim to be a man until he has experienced the contemptuous affection of a growing family. No man can be really great until he accepts the cold fact that his paternal authority—the only thing he really could claim as his own—is slowly slipping from him.
There are other ordeals such as house-hunting, dentist-dodging, bill-paying and connubial conciliation—all painful but useful—but of these later.
Ordeals, poor deals, and raw deals, they keep man from growing so contented that he has time to grow discontented.
Whilst the great train busied herself, with the wisdom of an athlete, in examination and test for her long wrestle with the muscular miles ahead, I watched with the melancholy pleasure of the solitary unattended traveller, the faces of those who had come, like composites of past pleasures, to burn their incense before the departure of their friends. By advice, anxiety and jest, each revealed the particular and peculiar trait which had endeared them to the departing, and obtained for them the honour of fusing their friendly values in farewell.
There was one fortunate man before whom glowed on the canvas of Night, Love nudged by Literature and Sport treading on the toes of both, beseeching him not to draw out too finely in his imagination the short glitter that might hang from the aery web of his fishing line, along those streams where willows like the ghosts of patient anglers dream and tremble to the tug of scaly jaws. That dark man in the dramatic cloak had mysterious Business to shake his hand and eye him like a neatly turned account. “If I were you,” he advised, “I should revert to the old arrangement and concentrate on prospects in and around D … ! The main thing is for you to go for your life and sell as many as you can before you go down South.” “Yes, I believe business will be better down there. Besides I always seem to feel brighter down South,” replied the dark romantic with vigour; but his entire frame seemed to grow soft and sleepy with the thought of all the ripe tinted beauty which that ardent point of the compass encourages. In the South I could not see that man in search of prospects. I could not see him going for his life or for anyone else's life. But I could see him being slowly metamorphosed into that body having organisation, but possessing neither sensation or voluntary motion, which we term “a vegetable.” And I could see him twined about a grape vine like a dryad, devouring this book which he held impatient to open, like a great but steadily diminishing sandwich, until the frost cocked its ears and began to smell around his heels for tender places.
Behind me sat two of the most beautiful people in the universe. They shook confetti from their hats and coat collars and were so transparent that I put them to my eye like a lorgnette and through them beheld an insignificant and envious world. The gloom of the dark corners was lightened by patriarchal beards which would, toward midnight, slope like spring avalanches on to their wearers' breasts; and, in the middle of the compartment, the widely travelled conversed in low calm tones, amused, I believe, to find that they had arrived at imperturbability so much earlier than the rest. For it would be hours yet before the excited emotional chatter of the younger travellers subsided into tones as calm, tired and matured as their own. “Wait!” their glances seemed to say. “Midnight … and miles!”
At the last moment a young husband and his beautiful wife were hurried into us by the fanfare of bells and whistles and All-aboards, and he, having ushered her into her seat, began to dispose of their luggage with those high flat palmed gestures reminiscent of putting the stone.
I sometimes feel that man is merely a tormented analogy between the flesh and spirit, or at best, is but the curious child of a serpent, ready to leap down the throat and into the energy of every sentient thing, from the horse with its back-turned lip delicately drinking to the right ear of a dog, full of delicious itch, being rubbed with joy along the grass. But myself, I never enter as thoroughly into any one of these masquerades of the spirit as I do into the soul of a man disposing of his luggage. He is at the one and same time (and consequently, so am I), the luggage with its smooth face fearful of a wiry scratch, the immense airy luggage rack and distrust of that rack and he is his wife's, or anyone else's apprenhensive head below. He is the protesting seams of his coat and he is a tottering limb bereft of the staff of equilibrium. Thank heaven when all is stowed away! I shoot my cuffs with him and drawing my coat together, begin to shame myself before the eyes of my wife with attentions to the false promises of early mastery held out by the window catch.
Meanwhile we were gliding sauvely from that Mecca of the wheel, the city. Her black escutcheon was emblazoned with golden cloves through which the train trod nobly, locomotive rampant. Having no literary sandwich to feed my eyes I began to beggar my neighbours privacy with polite glances. At his window the dark romantic man read deeply, occasionally glancing toward the mirror held by the flying night with a stare of covert love and despair at his own face. The confetti couple had sunk their voices to a well-like depth and their holy state forbade any hand touch the windlass. Time passed, and when the Procession of the Pillowy Potentates had intermingled with the passengers and its substance had deserted the pageant for heads of gold, black, brown and grey, all faces were turned to the wall, like the visages of sick kings, behind whom the courtly but malignant lights kept an even glow. (continued on p.47
.)
Did I sleep? I can't remember. Soon, the Lucifer-like rain fell from the sky in slow stealthy trails. On soft hands and knees crawling along the roof like some Persian Prince alighting from his wooden steed to come down into the blue midnight of the sleeping court and steal his star-ravished bride. Each stopping place was the ear of an awakening chamberlain, tensely listening to his dripping footsteps. Then, under us the wheels fled like deer, rose skyward like winged horses, crawled sinuously like a diamond spined serpent in the sea. Then again, it was exactly as though you were being carried on a pencil, which in Titian's hand was executing some mighty drawing. A great sweeping line flies unerringly from mind and hand. Ecco! Now some little detail here about a garment. Vabene! Now perhaps the pencil is in flight after a departing conception or shading in, with fine slow labour, the native damask of a face. All night long we are carried about the design, while in the warm dark we sleep or think or are aroused by the gentle voices of the considerate speaking to those whom they love. Toward morning when the stars shone with that last desperate brightness which augurs dawn, I looked out and saw thin black trees loaded like Hebridean fishing racks with the mesh of the mist in which struggled the thin shoals of light. And then came dawn, walking to the Emmaus of her zenith, with a tall cloud on either side. These, having bowed her farewell, stalked along the edge of the world, like two travellers who, not finding a bed in the tavern, had wandered with easy going minds into the yard to rest among the shrubs and the dew. When the sun, an early waiter came with their wine, they flushed with pleasure and stretching themselves out, talked with grand gestures of the East from whence they had come, and whilst they talked, their ship, with airy gallantry came into the tavern yard after them and bobbed in the rosy waves of their well-being. Nearby in the meadow, a cloudy scytheman curved his slow, bright hook, and into our tawny carriage the vigour of his life filtered awakening the sleepers.
I looked around. The dark romantic man gripped his book in lieu of a vine, but the young husband and wife still sat charmed in deep pathetic slumber. His fair head was bowed above her in a dream and on his breast her head lay like that dream. Toward the east she turned a face as golden as the daughter of Midas and her pure thin lids were warmed by the travellers and their ship and their fantastic voyagi. which would land them by midday in the narrow bay of a flower. But none of this she saw, for soon the travellas took sail, the scytheman faded ere his meadows died and the sun, bereft of his patrons, awoke her, as blazing fiercely he went about his diurnal duties in the tavern of the Earth.
“There are some things I can do without at a pinch,” he told the tobacconist, “but ‘baccy's not one of them. I clinched smoking once for a month. Thought I might be better without it. I wasn't. After all, there's not so many joys in life, so why cut out one of the best of the bunch? Smoking gives me more solid comfort and enjoyment than anything else, and as I smoke ‘toasted’ (Cut Plug No. 10), I reckon I'm on the safe side.” “Too right, you are!” agreed the tobacconist heartily, “there's no harm in toasted because there's no nicotine in it to signify. Toasting does the trick! Why are Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead), Cavendish and Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog) in almost everybody's pipe? While Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold are reckoned the finest cigarette tobaccos going! In a word, ‘toasted's’ first favourite with smokers everywhere, and every year sees a huge advance in the factory output.” “You can't keep a good man down,” laughed the other chap, “and you can't keep a good thing down either.”
(Continued from page 11
)
ayne's book “New Zealand Plants and Their Story.” An eminent Continental ecologist, well acquainted with the philosophic importance of Dr. Cockayne's labours, had said: “It is wonderful how Cockayne has interested the population of a new country in botany.”
Referring to this and other great books, Sir Arthur Hill writes that, “there was a strain of poetry in his nature which can be appreciated in his ‘New Zealand Plants and Their Story,’ and it was the poetry in him which lent wings to his imagination and gave depths to his insight.”
As to the depredations of acclimatised animals, Cockayne often sighed for the power to act on the advice Goebel gave him, “to get the fools hanged” before they could introduce such animals as wild goats which would cut up not only the alpine flora but even the forests, as they had in Greece. Alas! the mischief has already been done in many parts of the alpine and bush regions, and the fools have not been hanged. The country is paying for their folly and ignorance.
New Zealand's reputation as a country for excellent wild pig hunting is well known, as is also the Maori's skill as a hunter of these animals. The flesh of a young wild pig is delicious and the sport is exhilarating, hence the many excursions by both pakeha and Maori into the pig country.
While both the white man and the Maori employ the modern weapons for hunting the pigs, there are still some natives who cling to the old hunting method of a knife and dogs. A well-known Maori pig hunter on the east coast of the North Island is famed for his skill as a pig sticker. He scorns the rifle and relies solely on his dogs and his ability and agility to slip in and deliver the fatal knife thrust. While hunting in the Urewera country not long ago his dogs bailed up a huge boar, and at the opportune time the Maori darted in and fatally knifed the animal. Imagine his surprise when on examining the carcase he discovered deeply embedded in the thick skin near the left-hand front leg about three inches of a knife blade. His surprise was all the greater when on closely examining the blade, which was of an unusual type, he recognised it as belonging to a knife which he had used on a pig several years before and which had snapped off when the pig wheeled just at the knife thrust and escaped.
Further interest is lent to the incident by the fact that when the hunter first tackled the pig years before it was then over 150 miles away from where it was finally killed.—“Wells.”
Already Douglas Stewart may be acclaimed as one of New Zealand's finest poets. I do not think he has reached his thirties, yet his name is listed in Australia as a singer well worthy of notice. Now he has collected the best of his verse. Chastely printed and bound by Messrs. Whitcombe and Tombs, it is published under the title of “Green Lions.” The prodigality of gifts showered by Nature on this land has found a beautiful echo in the heart of this poet, and he has sung of our land as few have done before him. “Stewart's silvery tenor,” as one Australian critic has it. Let me quote one verse only from “Prelude and Gold in Taranaki”:—
We did not know in those clear stone-cool dewtimes
When the last light in swathes of pale-green silk
Softly enfolded all this lovely land, And the grey cows with spicy scent of milk
Drawled from the stream at the brown boy's command,
That we were one with all the delicate birds,
And cautious hares, and slow milk-heavy herds.
* * *
Do you remember “Mac” the secondhand bookseller who hung out his sign in several streets in Wellington over a decade ago — D. W. MacClure, the tall, the lean book fossiker? I met him in Auckland recently, still selling old books, and seemingly taller and leaner than ever. He told me how he found a pound note the other day in an old book he had marked for sale at one shilling. It was a very old bank note issued by the Bank of Glasgow in 1876. The trouble is that “Mac” cannot cash the ancient piece of paper, for the issuing bank closed its doors in 1890, being taken over by the London and Counties Bank. However, “Mac” hopes to sell the pound note eventually as a collector's item.
I have received from the recently formed Australian Limited Editions Society a copy of their finely printed prospectus. The Hon. John Lane Mullins is president of the new organisation, leading artists and writers form the council, and Mr. Benjamin N. Fryer is secretary. The first book listed for publication is “A narrative of the Voyage to Botany Bay,” which was first published in 1879 and ran to three editions. Adrian Feint, who has designed many fine bookplates, and Perce Green (a former New Zealander) will be responsible for the illustrations and the format.
* * *
Here are a few interesting facts about the All Nations prize winning novel, “The Street of the Fishing Cat,” reviewed elsewhere in this issue. The book won the first £4,000 prize, being selected from over 7,000 entries. It has been published in eleven languages in fifteen countries. The total first printing was a quarter of a million copies. Why, a struggling writer could hardly hope to even dream of such a public.
* * *
Once every year or so a fellow with a reckless, careless smile on his face looks into my office and sells me just another booklet of verse he has written. His name is Shirley S. Morrison, and he has sold his way through New Zealand with his poems, and where the inspiration for verse, or a printer's support, is lacking he will sell anything from patent collapsible chairs to blackboard wipers. His verse is dashed off in carefree, singing style, but now and then you may happen on a line that lingers. This happy wanderer has now produced another booklet “Rendezvous and Other Verses.” He was a soldier in the Great War. Listen to one verse:
Though I am old my heart is young, The guns that smashed my world for me
Have brought me deeper songs unsung, Awaken greater liberty.
* * *
“The Street of the Fishing Cat,” by Jolanda Foldes (Angus & Robertson, Sydney) is the winning novel of the All-Nations Prize Competition. The story is so different. There is pure art in the telling. It is so simple, and yet so powerful. Just the story of a Hungarian family, Mr. and Mrs. Barabas and their three children whom the aftermath of war has driven to settle in Paris in The Street of The Fishing Cat. Here they meet other refugees—a Russian banker fleeing from the success of Communism, a Spanish anarchist, an exiled Greek and other driftwood swirled away by the whirlpool of war from the countries of their birth. It is a brave story written with no ulterior motive of creed or politics. We feel that the author has a story in her heart, and we hear her heart throb as she tells it.
* * *
“Forty Fathoms Deep,” by Ion L. Idriess (Angus & Robertson, Sydney) is one of the most interesting books
* * *
“Australia Through The Windscreen,” by William Hatfield (Angus & Robertson, Sydney) tells the story of the reliability test of a small English car on a tour through Australia. Hatfield, whom I remember gratefully for his fine novel “Sheepmates,” his “Desert Saga” and “River Crossing.” again displays in his latest book his keen sense of observation, his analytical brain and his great capacity for interesting the average reader. A writer of this calibre naturally does more than merely describe the changing scene from his windscreen. There is always a tale to tell and critical comments to make of national and individual interest. Hatfield is great company in his gallant little English car.
* * *
“The Yellow Robed Wago,” by Marion Roberts (Eldon Press, London; Whitcombe & Tombs, Ltd., New Zealand agents), is a tale of mystery, love and international intrigue, with the scene in Burmah. There is a sinister suggestion that the operations of a mysterious White Abbot are not being devoted solely to the furtherance of Buddism, but rather to stirring up disaffection among the Burmese people. The small secret expedition sent to probe the mystery meet with hair-raising adventures. A good thriller.
* * *
“Wilderness Orphan,” by Dorothy Cottrell (Angus & Robertson, Sydney) is one of the most artistic and interesting stories of its kind yet produced in Australia. It tells the story of Chut, the Kangaroo, from the moment he crawls from the pouch of his dead mother to his final days of freedom in the great Australian outbacks. His contact with the kindness and then the cruelty of human nature is related with all the art of a Jack London. A book you will love to read—and keep.
* * *
The first Century Book of Humour was such a great success that a second volume was inevitable. This was recently published by Hutchinson's (London). It is illustrated by “Fougasse,” contains fifty-two stories by forty-eight authors and comprises over a thousand pages. Most of the great humorists are represented—A. A. Milne, H. G. Wells, W. W. Jacobs, P. G. Wodehouse, Walter de la Mare, Somerset Maugham, Stacy Aumonier, Anthony Armstrong and many others. It is certainly a great collection. Worked out on a mathematical basis there must be a half a dozen laughs to the page which gives the reader 6,000 laughs for a few shillings, and you know the old story of what a King offered to anyone who would provide him with only one smile.
* * *
“What of Australia's Future,” by Joseph Hamlet (A. & R., Sydney), sets me wondering, as a publishers' representative and also as a reviewer, how an Australian publisher can publish as a proposition (and A. & R. know their business) a cloth board book of over 200 pages retailing at 3/6. The author has written his book “As a close student of his country's affairs, an ardent patriot and a destructive critic but with constructive proposals.” The study of this book may alarm our friends over the Tasman and is not without interest (and shall we say alarm?) for we New Zealanders.
* * *
The P.E.N. has under consideration an ambitious scheme for the encouragement of literary effort in New Zealand.
New Zealand Best Poems for 1936 (edited by C. A. Marris) was acclaimed by the critics as the finest selection to date. The Sydney “Bulletin” gave it a half column or more of unstinted praise.
The Canterbury Public Library Journal is practically the only literary magazine we have in the Dominion. Quite an interesting publication.
Hector Bolitho has discovered that the country house he purchased recently on Saffron Walden was known as Boytons in the sixteenth century and has decided to restore the old name.
In the lambing season numbers of little lambs play around in my neighbour's paddocks.—“Happy little woollies. Many of them, however, are born to a greatness they never expect, or probably would wish for. They are destined to one day occupy a prominent place in the London markets in competition with their foreign brethren and receive the blue stamp of worldwide superiority. Every year, great quantities of wool, mutton and lamb are exported from New Zealand. Nearly one half of New Zealand's vast acreage is grass land, and of this about 16,000,000 acres are improved pasture and 15,000,000 acres grass and tussock country suitable for sheep rearing. Over 90 per cent, of the country's produce is pastoral and the sheep take pride of place.—A.J.
How is this for a speedy and efficient removal of furniture and household goods from the Waikato to Christchurch?
It was Tuesday when the Railway Department took charge of our things —all carefully packed with a minimum amount of fuss or bother, by skilled men. Arriving in Christchurch the following Saturday we succeeded in finding a suitable house the same day. On the Monday afternoon our furniture was unpacked and safely deposited in the new abode; so that within one week of leaving our home in the north, here were we ensconced in a modern bungalow not far from the beautiful Avon. What is more, not a single article had been damaged in transit—everything intact—china, mirrors, and even my supply of home-made jam!
To quote Mr. G. H. Mackley, General Manager, we experienced a household removal “with no bother at all to the householder.“—Waikite.”
* * *
Many brilliant ideas have occurred to persons travelling by train. For instance, the invention of Meccano—that universally popular toy—originated in a railway carriage. Mr. Frank Hornby was travelling from London to Birmingham to spend the Christmas holidays with a relative who had a young family. Whilst looking out of the window and wondering how he could amuse the little ones he saw a crane. He then had the idea of making a miniature replica out of strips of metal. The first lot of Meccano sets which he made were given to his friends for their children. The pleasure they brought inspired him to put them on the market. He chose the name Meccano because it is a word easy to pronounce by people of different nationalities.
All this happened thirty-five years ago. Mr. Hornby died recently at the age of 73. He was the managing director of the firm whose works in Liverpool employ over 2,000 hands in the manufacturing of Meccano sets, model engines and miniature railway equipment.—“Pohutu.”
* * *
There was a large gathering of Railway officials at the recent annual social of the Bluff Railway Staff, among those present being the Hon. T. F. Doyle, M.L.C., and prominent representatives of business, shipping, and other interests closely related to the Railway Services.
Mr. A. Ramage, of the local staff, occupied the chair and welcomed the guests. The toast, “The New Zealand Railways,” was proposed by Mr. E. A. Nichol. In the course of a very interesting speech upon the inception of the Bluff-Invercargill railway, Mr. Nichol referred to the early difficulties associated with the permanent way. “If the train,” he said, “which was composed of a small engine (named the Lady Barkley) and very small cars, stopped at certain places, there was a distinct subsidence, necessitating constant attention by the surfacemen. The first fare (return) on this line was 7/6. It did not attract the public, and was a loss to the then Government, which later leased the service to Messrs. S. Nichol (the speaker's father) and Shearer. This was in the late ‘sixties. The lessees, to increase the popularity of the service, reduced the fare and gave other inducements to encourage railway traffic. For instance, when passenger ships called at Bluff it was customary to give the captain a free pass to Invercargill; this meant that passengers had no fear of losing their passage whilst the skipper was enjoying the delights of Invercargill.”
An amusing incident related by Mr. Nichol referred to an excursion to Win ton when the train stalled on the wooden rails at Makarewa and the services of the passengers had to be requisitioned to get it going again. Mr. Nichol went on to mention that Mr. T. Arthur was persuaded to become stationmaster at Invercargill. He filled the position so successfully that the Provincial Government eventually made him Traffic Manager at Wellington. References by Mr. Nichol to early shunting activities on the Bluff Wharf by means of a bullock, caused hearty laughter. The speaker concluded his interesting speech with an expression of appreciation of present day facilities and unfailing courtesy of officials. —T.W.P.
If you have a smart skirt, trim and short, in velvet, or a lightweight woollen, by all means obtain a tunic to wear over it. If you are tall, the flaring tunic is your choice. Not owning a suitable skirt, I prefer to invest in a frock as the basis for my tunic. My frock will be black, a woollen with a crepe finish. Its skirt and waist will be slim; the sleeves fitting, except at the shoulder where they will puff slightly; the bodice will have a fullness, either gathered to a yoke or neatly pleated to the neckline and waist; the collar will be detachable, depending for colour on the accent I choose for my frock. I know that the belt will have large and eye-taking clasps, expensive-seeming. The frock unadorned will lie flat and unperceived under my tunic, ready for the time when the tunic fashion will be killed by its very popularity—or rather by the unsuitable people who wear it.
The peplum will not die so easily. The jacket flare and the frock frill continue to vie in attractiveness with the princess silhouette. The latter style, of course, is for the figure-perfect. Those of us who are not so sure of our lines will retain belts and the bodice fullness. With a good foundation garment we dare the hip-fitting gown.
To those who do not care to spend too much on a winter wardrobe, I suggest that frock materials be purchased as reasonably as possible, and that a little extra be spent on accessories—belt buckles, buttons, clips, collar and cuff sets. Regard the dress as a background. Make sure the colour is right, not too obtrusive, but definite, and build up your effect against this. Consider the varied schemes that could be built up against rust, silver grey, petrol blue, or the new brown.
With the increasing beauty of woollens and silks, and also of the synthetic fabrics, no woman need fear that by paying a reasonable amount per yard she is thereby branding her outfit as “cheap.”
Probably winter needs which require special planning are the coat, street frock, and afternoon frock. (House or office wear is more easily decided upon. Evening wear I will discuss at a later date.) To the woman with a small dress allowance I would suggest avoidance of outréA styles. In the coat, avoid extravagant cut or the too lavish use of fur. For the many-purpose coat I suggest tweed with the skirt slightly flared, belted or unbelted, and with a neat turn-down or wrap collar of, say, Persian lamb. Tweed does not crush, and is less affected by rough weather than the smoother-surfaced fabrics. The tall slim girl who never apes the fashionplates, but prefers comfort and sporting clothes, will have warmth and ease in a coat of camel-hair, or teddy-bear cloth. The short girl, or the larger woman, will avoid this type of fabric.
The square-shouldered tweed cape and the short coat of fur fabric are extras which will be considered only if purse and extent of social life advise them.
For the street frock, worn usually in our climate under a long or short coat or cape, I suggest an adherence to the principles enunciated for the black frock above. Make sure that frock and coat require the same accessories—bag, gloves, stockings, shoes. The hat, too, should be right for both.
A word about hats. To many people the new hats, peaked, slashed, tucked, twisted, are becoming—not all of them, but one or two carefully chosen. But please don't buy a style just because it's different and up to the minute. If it lends a new interest to your face, sweeps up or dips at a becoming angle, flattering your eyes and your profile, buy it. But if you can't find just the hat to do that, avoid an extravagant shape. Your friends would far rather see you in a slouch hat, reminiscent of the one you wore so successfully two seasons ago.
For an afternoon gown I suggest satin or velvet, made with elaborate upper sleeves, a draped neckline and a slim skirt flaring to the hem. Your own good taste will suggest the necessity or not of a plastron of flowers on the satin, and the need for leaving the richness of velvet unspoiled by ornament.
Let me just draw your attention to the beauty of the new paisley designs expressed in silk, satin or velvet. To me they suggest scarves, cravats, tunics, short evening coats.
I spied Helen strap-hanging in a five o'clock tram. By twisting my head over my shoulder and by Helen gaining a few inches when the conductor passed, we came within talking distance.
“How are you?”
“Oh, I'm quite well,” said Helen. “So's Peter. Mary is staying with us just now.”
A fat woman rose, and by dint of shoe-horn squeezings managed to reach the door. When we straphangers had resettled ourselves, Helen and I found ourselves at smiling distance again. I thought about Mary, Helen's young sister—a nice child. I hadn't seen her for some time. Helen had been away and I was never accustomed to visiting Helen's people
The tram slowed for Helen's stop.
“Come and see me, stranger. Saturday afternoon?” said Helen, as she pushed past.
I thought quickly and nodded. Helen stepped off.
Helen opened the door as I walked up the path on Saturday afternoon.
“Your border plants are doing well.”
“Yes. Peter's proud of them. We'll sit on the porch, shall we?”
We brought chairs and stretched ourselves lazily in the sun.
“Peter and Mary are out. He had to see a client, so Mary went, too, for the spin.”
“How is Mary? I've not seen her for a long time.”
“Oh, fairly well.”
“I suppose you don't see much of her. Always out and about, isn't she?”
“Well,” said Helen slowly. “Not now. That's why I induced her to come and stay with me for a while. She's not nearly so bright as she was. The boys at home were worrying her. You know what they are—‘Aw, Sis! Come on, don't be a dumb-bell.’ And Mary would go. The child's tired out.”
I didn't press the question of Mary. Later, when Peter and Mary returned, we went inside and had tea. Mary was certainly different—quiet, with a little faint smile, and thinner. Directly after tea she excused herself and went to her room.
Peter became very businesslike with the dishes. “Clear out you girls. I can manage the washing-up business.” We cleared.
I was worried about Mary, and said so to Helen. “She seems so depressed,” I summed it up. In that queer way women have, I was prepared for a little confidential talk when between us we would decide Mary's immediate and distant future. To my surprise, Helen laughed at me.
“You funny person. There's no need to worry. She's depressed, but then everyone becomes depressed at times. It's not like a trade depression, you know, when economists and politicians squabble about what is the right thing to do. Human depression, most kinds of it, is easily explained and easily cured. Why, even Mary, though she's feeling pretty miserable, knows what's wrong with her. She's simply overtired and she's adopting the best way to overcome it. As soon as she's feeling physically well again all sign of depression will vanish.
She's had a worrying time at the office—big adjustments in the plant owing to new legislation. She missed her summer holiday owing to mother's illness, and she has been trying to keep up the social side, too. I told her she'd have to rest, so she's doing it. She saw a doctor, who prescribed a tonic and special attention to the bowels. Constipation is one of the worst of modern ills, isn't it? She's staying with me to be away from the crowd. At home the boys wouldn't realize she needed rest. Things are easier at the office now, and she's getting her holidays in another fortnight. She has only been with me five days and she is less weary already. Come to see her after her holiday and Mary will be herself again.
She was. Five weeks later, back in the old home, with her brothers alternately imposing on and spoiling her, she was the bright, happy Mary of old —but I notice that she has dropped the Qrchestral Society for the winter and she isn't producing for her little drama group.
A wise girl, Mary. When she felt so depressed and miserable, dragging on from day to day with habitual tasks which were becoming obnoxious to her, she knew that her loss of spirits was due to a reduction in physical vigour. She could not, by an effort of will, overcome the “miseries,” but she did what she could to tackle the problem from the physical side. She adopted a sensible regimen of diet and rest and took her doctor's advice as regards medicines. Taking no pleasure in the company of her friends, she went to her sister Helen where she could be solitary if she wished. She was not ill enough to stay away from the office, but, getting her holidays when she did, she was able to recuperate more quickly.
Although this is not usually the time of the year when special emphasis is laid on the fact that children must be safeguarded against colds, the changeability of the weather now being experienced is sufficient reason for this aspect of the children's health to be taken into consideration.
The common cold is anything but a trifling ailment and must be considered. An immense amount of ill-health in later life can be traced directly to neglected colds in childhood. The delicate lining membrane of the nose becomes inflamed and infected by germs, and once this condition occurs, other colds and complications are likely to follow. Ear troubles frequently result owing to the spread of infection from the nose passages to the middle ear. Enlarged tonsils and adenoids are also encouraged.
Sciatica and lumbago ran in this family. Grandfather, father, and grandson suffered from both these agonising complaints. But the grandson found a way to end the family curse. His letter tells how he did it:—
“Up to 10 years ago, I suffered from sciatica and lumbago. In fact, one week, I had to be ‘ironed out’ every morning before I could go to my work. My grandfather and my father had sciatica and lumbago, so I suppose it was hereditary. Ten years ago, I started taking Kruschen Salts, and since then I have never had a suspicion of a pain. I never take anything else but my daily dose of Kruschen, year in and year out.“—G.R.L.
Sciatica and lumbago are commonly caused by too much uric acid in the body. And when these complaints run in a family, there is a hereditary tendency to make uric acid to excess. But, if you can keep down the excess of uric acid every day, it stands to reason that you will not have to suffer any more.
That is just what Kruschen does—it rids the blood of the excess of poisonous uric acid. If there are deposits— in the muscle sheaths, as in lumbago— or piercing the nerves, as in sciatica— or in the joints, as in rheumatism, Kruschen Salts dissolves them and assists Nature to pass them out of the body. And as they go, aches and pains go too!
That is not all—Kruschen Salts keeps your inside so regular, so free from stagnating waste matter, that no such body poisons as uric acid ever get the chance to accumulate again.
Kruschen Salts is obtainable at all Chemists and Stores at 2/6 per bottle
In all treatment of cuts and sores the chief thing to remember is asepsis, which means free from germs. With many home remedies this is not considered. In all cases of ordinary cuts or scratches it is advisable to apply an antiseptic immediately. Dilute tincture of iodine or methylated spirit will cleanse the wound of any germs that may be introduced. In the case of a cut made with a garden tool or in a stable or a similar place it is always necessary to visit a doctor, who will probably give an injection of antitetanic serum to guard against tetanus
In every home it is a good plan to keep a first-aid box. This box should contain: (1) A screw jar, or tin containing pieces of boiled rag. The tin or jar must be boiled to make it germ free. Then when the clean rags are put in, the jar must be put in the oven for half an hour or so. This makes the dressings germ-proof. (2) Roll of cotton wool. (3) Bandages. (4) An ordinary enamel basin. (5) A pair of scissors. (6) A pair of dressing forceps. Boil the basin, scissors and forceps, and do not put the hands into the sterile jar.
To renovate a black straw hat, brush off the dust, apply methylated spirits with a small brush and leave till dry.
To remove grease-spots from leather, apply the white of an egg to the spots and allow to dry in the sunshine.
To remove a spot of oil from a frock dab it with a small piece of bread dampened with petrol.
Broken china, glassware, woodwork, etc., may be easily and satisfactorily mended by mixing ordinary flour with vinegar into a firm paste and applying to parts to be mended. Allow to set before using.
To raise pile of velvet, hold the wrong side of the material over a jug or basin of boiling water. This will cause the pile to rise.
To retain the crispness of organdie dip it in methylated spirits after washing, dry as usual, and iron while damp. Organdie treated thus will retain colour and freshness for months.
If a scorched article is immediately put into boiling water and left for a while, the mark will fade out.
A mixture of washing-blue and breadcrumbs will remove stains from silver shoes.
Cut two squares of unbleached cotton each 36 inches square; sew around the edges, leaving an opening about 12 inches in one side. Turn and tie each corner firmly in a lug with string, and then proceed to stuff it. This must be done well and packed very tightly. Old rags cut up are very suitable. When stuffing is completed, sew up the opening. Cut another two thirty-six inch squares in moquette or shadowette; sew on three sides; pull over humpty; tie the lugs and sew up by hand.
Rub half lb. lard into one lb. plain flour and mix to a stiff paste with cold water. Roll out one-half of the pastry and line a plate. Cover with a layer of thin bacon rashers, then a layer of sliced onions, and lastly a layer of sliced tomatoes. Sprinkle with pepper and salt, cover with remaining pastry and bake in hot oven.
Note: It is a matter of opinion whether the bacon is fried and the onions partially cooked beforehand.
Scrub thoroughly and carefully bake as many large potatoes as required. When done break each potato open near the middle, make a hole with a spoon and insert a good lump of butter and a teaspoon of grated cheese well mixed with salt and pepper. Return to oven for a few minutes and serve very hot. Very good for cold day lunch or supper.
Take two cups of cold rice, two cups finely chopped meat, two eggs, two tablespoons butter, two tablespoons chopped parsley, half onion, salt and pepper. Fry onion in fat until brown, put in cold rice and meat and stir well. Remove from the fire, add eggs and seasoning, place in a dish and bake until brown. Turn out on a hot dish and pour tomato sauce over.
One cupful cooked potatoes, half cupful flour, three-quarters teaspoon baking powder, one egg, salt and pepper, finely-chopped parsley. Mash the potato, add the flour, baking powder, salt, pepper and parsley; then the well-beaten egg. Mix in well. Drop spoonfuls into boiling stew about thirty minutes before the stew is to be served.
Mince one lb. of beefsteak, mix with the meat pepper, salt, one cup breadcrumbs, one minced onion and bind with one egg. Form into a flat cake, put into a greased baking-tin with two cups water, one tablespoon sauce and one minced onion, and put a slice of bacon on top. Cover with buttered paper and bake in moderate oven for one hour. Garnish with tomato slices and parsley.
Afew years ago it was considered a very strange spectacle to see a woman riding a bicycle in Wellington—in fact, many “rubbernecks” narrowly escaped from being run down by motor-cars while gazing at the unusual sight. But those days are gone and, to-day, there are hundreds of the fair sex in Wellington who pedal the broad (and steep) highways. Is it the result of the fad which was sprung on the world by Hollywood stars, or is it a natural development of Atalanta in search of health and beauty? Another almost extinct form of exercise is also being resurrected in the Capital City. This is equestrianism. Residents of Newtown, a suburb of Wellington, have long since grown out of the habit of gazing around at the fair damsels as they passed on horseback. Some of the riders are obviously having their first lessons, but days later they may be seen rising and falling in time to the rhythmic trot, trot of their mounts.
Recently returned to Australia, the King's School Rugby team reported having had a memorable visit to England, where sixteen matches were played against English public schools. The scheme was an ambitious one— to take a school Rugby team on tour— but the success exceeded wildest anticipations. Of interest to New Zealanders was that the tourists lost only two matches—to Radley and Marlborough Colleges. Captain F. A. M. Webster, noted English athletic coach who assisted S. A. Lay in his preparation before winning the English javelin throwing championship, is associated with Bedford School, which drew 3-all, while one of the masters of Marlborough College is Wilfred Kalaugher, a New Zealand Rhodes scholar. In making a report on the tour, Mr. R. A. O. Martin, manager of the team, stated that English and Australian boys are almost identical physically and have the same outlook on sport—playing for the sake of the game.
Bad weather this summer—if it was really our summer—marred many sporting fixtures in New Zealand, but for real hard luck the palm must be handed to the New Zealand Life-Saving Championships, held at Lyall Bay. Elaborate arrangements had been made to give the public a treat long to be remembered. But the Old Man who controls the weather decided that it was time Wellington had a southerly storm. How it blew, and how it rained! But neither rain nor wind could keep the enthusiasts away, and a fine attendance of the public saw something extraordinary in water work. Australia was represented by a team of champions who monopolised the placings, but as they were not eligible to hold the titles, the first New Zealander to finish was awarded the title. One particularly popular win was that of Dick Pelham, former Rugby football representative with the Maori team in France and England. Pelham won the Individual Championship. He proved himself to be New Zealand's finest surfer. A veteran swimmer Pelham is yet a young man in years, and blessed with mercurial enthusiasm, his good nature has made him a popular figure in swimming baths and on football fields.
The ceremony of athletes taking the Olympic oath is becoming part of the proceedings at many national sports gatherings in New Zealand. With uplifted right arm one athlete mounts a dais and recites the oath: “We swear that we will take part in the Olympic Games in loyal competition, respecting the regulations which govern them and desirous of participating in them for the honour of our country and for the glory of sport.” Truly a fine vow to take, but it is a moot point if such an imposing oath should be permitted for any but the most important of international sporting gatherings—the Olympic Games.
Years ago New Zealand possessed some of the world's greatest walkers. Men of the calibre of Joe Scott, whose remarkable career was fully reviewed in the “Railways Magazine,” F. H. Creamer, “Dorrie” Leslie, Olympic Games starter, and Dave Wilson, all held world's records, some of which have not yet been broken. Walking suffered a bad lapse until recent years when a moderate revival took place. Without doubt the walking of G. S. Cabot, W. Lankey, A. Hill and I. Driscoll has done much to restore the heeland-toe sport to popular favour. Driscoll recently made an attempt on the world's record for two miles, but the weather conditions were against him, and he failed by a small margin. “Dorrie” Leslie was the judge, and could not speak too highly of Dris-coll's style. It is unfortunate that the sprint walk has been deleted from the Olympic programme, as Driscoll is definitely in world's class. Given competition against class men, Driscoll is capable of breaking 6 mins. 25 ⅘ secs, which is the world's record. The record was formerly held by F. H. Creamer, who walked 6 mins. 27 ⅖ secs, at Auckland in 1897. Dave Wilson led for the first half-mile, the lap times were 82 ⅕ secs, and 97 ⅘ secs. These
Creamer instead of Wilson figured in the record books. Creamer was entitled to the one mile record, but Wilson was the man who had made the 440 yards and 880 yards record. Stranger still, the error was not rectified in American record books until more than thirty years later, when a reprint from an Auckland paper of 1897 was forwarded to T. S. Andrews, publisher, who immediately corrected the error. One reason for the error going so long without correction is that there is no official recognition given the distances under one mile, although in earlier days such walks were common.
W. N. Carson, the Auckland scoring machine who batted his way into the New Zealand cricket team to tour England, comes from a family well-known in New Zealand. His mother is one of the Scoullars, of furniture fame. An elder brother, Arthur, went to Canada a few years ago and at Ontario took a prominent interest in the formation and encouragement of Rugby Union football. Associated with several other New Zealanders he had the satisfaction of seeing the game well on the road to gaining popular favour.
Ski-ing is rapidly becoming a sport well-patronised in New Zealand, but for the younger generation, lads and lassies not yet in their ‘teens, there is a substitute to be found almost outside the front door. Sledging down the hills in Wellington has been a most popular diversion this summer. The long grass on the slopes of the hills near the Ewart Home (Wellington) has been worn threadbare by the youngsters who count it for nothing to haul a heavy sledge to the top of a steep climb in order that they might have that exhilarating breathless slide down. How the patients at the Ewart Home must envy those youngsters as they watch them enjoy their young lives!
Considerable criticism has been meted out to the selectors of the New Zealand cricket team to tour England. It was anticipated and it duly arrived. When any team is chosen, for any sport, some good ones must be left behind, and selectors who prefer to ignore current form and chose a player possessed of the ability but “riding a tough luck trail” are not to be condemned.
When the “All Black” footballers of 1905 sailed they were considered a “very ordinary lot.” They returned as heroes and, to-day, are almost legendary figures. Footballers are gauged nowadays by the standard set by the men who were almost disowned when they left New Zealand on that memorable tour in 1905.
Printed by Ferguson & Osborn, Limited, Wellington. Whole sale Distributors: Messrs. Gordon and Gotch (Australasia) Limited, Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.
A trophy in memory of Cyril Flett is to be competed for by cyclists in New Zealand. Flett, who passed away a little more than twelve months ago, never won a New Zealand cycling championship, but in the days following the War he was one of the band of enthusiasts who firmly established amateur cycling in New Zealand. He competed in all the main centres and practically every small town, too. Many a subsequent champion received first instructions in track or road racing from Flett. The memorial trophy is being subscribed for by cyclists throughout New Zealand.
Our cover design this month was prepared from a painting by Mr. W. W. Stewart, of Auckland, and features New Zealand's first Royal train conveying the Duke of Edinburgh from Lyttelton to Christchurch, on the 23rd of April, 1869. The Duke and party (including H.E. the Governor) were met at Lyttelton by His Honour the Superintendent of Canterbury and members of the Provincial Council, the Royal train leaving Lyttelton at 11 a.m. and arriving at Christ church at 11.19 a.m. The train was drawn by No. 4 engine, tastefully decorated with flowers and evergreens, its driver being Mr. J. Dickenson.