AN EXPLANATION.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 55, 26 January 1877, Page 2

AN EXPLANATION.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE AKAROA MAIL. : g IR) —I would not-have troubled you again were it not tnat Finn, in his letter of Tuesday, seemed to insinuate that X did not pay proper respect to His Worship the Mayor, inasmuch as I .mentioned him along with a butcher's boy. I regret if any such idea has entered any one's mind. I entertain all respect for the powers that be, and my having coupled ', Mayors and bucher boys' together was simply owing to the fact that both happened to have come in for a castigatSin iri one paper,* and that also the paper in which .Mr. Elmslie was attacked. The circumstance struck me, and I made use of it; that is all. Finn says I don't object to tea ings. That entirely depends on the way in which they are conducted. I certainly don't object to, but highly approve of a church social gathering, where suitable and profitable addresses are given, and music in keeping is interspersed. Such have been all the tea meetings I have seen, lam happy to say. And I venture to add that they have shewn that it is not necessary to descend to frolic in order to make such gatherings pleasant. Some people seem to have an idea that unless an entertainment is secular with a mixture of the comic element in it, it is no entertainment at all. Be it so, but don't make these church social gatherings. The church has higher and better work to do than to cater for amusements to the public. " Let the dead bury their dead, but go thou and preach the Gospel." - I am not going to be controversial, and will not therefore take up again the matter of raising money for church purposes by fancy-fairs, balls, lotteries, and such like ** things. I should be tempted to say to any who" did not see the impropriety of this, what one replied to a person who" asked what Genius w»j.' "Sir, if you it, you would know what it is." ' - ; One word as to Finn's rich logic of which he boasts not a little. He begins his letter by saying that Mr. Elmslie had no right to criticise the fancy fair, and ends by saying that every body has a right to his opinion, and to express it. If Finn thinks Clergymen hobodjfes, I won't quarrel with him. V* Yours, &cj, \VM. DOUGLAS. P.S.—This correspondence must end v, here so far as I am concerned.