DESECRATION OF GRAVEYARDS.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 3, Issue 238, 29 October 1878, Page 2

DESECRATION OF GRAVEYARDS.

To the Editor of the Alcaroa Mail.

Dear Mr Editor,—Be not alarmed when we tell you we are ghosts, harmless ghosts of the past. When in the flesh, now many years ago, we lived in a place they called Akaroa. We were in those days noted for our utter indifference and laziness as regarded the future. Asleep half the day, we scarcelj' ever did anything the remaining half. We must ask you to excuse our communication to you, and to believe that, though residents of the tombs, we will not weary you with the " doleful " talk which frequently annoys us there. We have never taken much trouble to enquire whether our companions were " cut off untimely in their sins '•' or not. But you should know that we have, in this spirit world of ours, a system of intercommunion which perhaps is peculiar to us; it partakes of a species of snore, "varying from the mild sniff to the stentorian snort," and in one of these stages we have occasionally the means of comprehending some of the strange things passing around us iv the world we have left

Quite lately, attending a meeting of fellow spirits, in which there was much strong language ; osed as to ;the > wasted past, we were suddenly wrought up to a pitch of excitement, and at lengtfrfcecame conscious of things going on outside our small tenements. We were, aroused by unusual sounds, and presently- heard serious words between some of the denizens of the world ■ you so boastfully presume to occupy, and the quarrel, or rather the high word:-! used, fearfully disturbed our comfort. Peering out. we discovered two man, one fellow noted for the length of his legs and the shortness of his body, done up in a muiller and jacket; the other portly, gouty, and grey. Both were working upon our ghostly estate, and we learned that they were actually upon the point of erecting , what you call a " fence " across our property ; in fact, they said we had become unlawfully possessed of it, and were in the act of positively excluding some of us from our home, and turning us absolutely into the streets. Now, this is no joke, and we have become seriously alarmed. We listened as quietly as goblins can be supposed to do at the conversation relating to this monstrous abuse of our long vested rights, but you may rely upon it, that if you, our children, are so stupidly supine, so beastly sleepy as to stand this sort of tiling there will be a row in " ghostdoin" which you won't much like.

These fellows said, as far as our most accomplished interpreter could make out, that some very wonderful fellow had recently discovered that all your reserves in our once boasted " Akaroa " are placed wrongly ; that Mr A. and Mr 8., both of whom are among our part}', but absent on a surveying tour, were fools, and didn't know what they were about; that Davy, who is also in his uncle Jones' locker, -Has also unequal to his work, and was as big a donkey as his predecessors, and this one most accomplished genius who has been partly trained in a school known down here

as the "Thomtonian" is the only genius of the age to put you right. If this thing goes on, and you , quietly put up with it, without an effort to protect our remains from rude and sacreligious interference, we shall be •compelled to call a public meeting to consider the subject, and we promise to make it warm for some of you. I need not not add that your sleepiness is to us most unbearable, and that if you don't take warning you will soon drop into the same condition as ourselves. Yours, &c, P. G-., in the flesh, J.T., F. C, And many others.