LITTLE AKALOA SCHOOL COMMITTEE.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume V, Issue 439, 5 October 1880, Page 2

LITTLE AKALOA SCHOOL COMMITTEE.

To the Editor.

Sir, —I notice in your issue of the 28th ultimo a request from Mr Barker to be allowed to reply to my letter of tho 21st ult. I think Mr Barker might in courtesy have adhered to his request and kept to the subject; as it is, he has favored (?) the public with a specimen of private animosity not often met with in respectable publications of your description. If you will allow me to analyse his letter, I will do so in as few words as I can command. Firstly, he asseverates that my former report of the School Committee meeting held on Sept. 6 is untruthful, and characterises the next account as worse. I consider the letter from the Chairman of the Committee a sufficient answer to the first assertion, and in the latter case I stated that the recriminations originating with Mr Barker precluded me from reporting the entire proceedings ; however, should I have tho honour (?) to report at any meeting where that gentleman may spout, in future I shall certainly let the public know what sort of speeches ho entertains the Little Akaloa School Committee witb.

To his false and calumnious charge of attempting to instruct tho School Committee in school business, I give him a most unqualified denial, and I will state that I was not aware of the two facts in question until they appeared in a recent issue of The Mail, in an enquiry signed "Resident"; and in my last letter I stated that his ideas of truth were very vague, a statement lam reluctantly compelled to withdraw, as I find by his flow of garrulous mendacity that he can have no idea whatever of! that virtue. He says I call him a liar and worse. I don't know what is worse than a liar, but it is certainly very strange that he should so deliberately fit tho cap on his own head, as the word docs not appear in my letter. As to sounding my own trumpet, I am perfectly willing to have my dee Is placed side by side with his both on land and sea, as I know that my character would bear as strict a scrutiny as his. His extraordinary attempt at facetionsness in alluding to mo as a bill-sticker is very remarkable as a masterpiece of genius on his part, and worthy this " annus mirabilis." The three gentlemen whom ho terms "pots" of mine must indeed be grateful to him for the epithet, and feel highly honored.

Mr Barker asks why I left one meeting when these three gentlemen left. My answer to this is that the meeting despito his interruptions was adjourned, and as I could not derivo sufficient entertainment in listening to Mr Barker I thought I was justified in retiring. The personal remarks about tho two gentlemen's statements I did not hear, and think Mr Barker's assertion arises from a flux of an unhealthy imagination. He asks if it is customary for.a reporter to interrupt tho business of a meeting. I say certainly not; and it was not until tho meeting had resolved itself into a public one through his continual interference (for he acknowledges that ho is not legally a committee-man according to his profound knowledge of the Education Act) that I answered a more forcible than polite remark addressed to me by him. As to minding my own business, and making mischief, I may say that the former I have ever and the latter have never done, and it is because Mr Barker has for some years been '■ maitre do cerernonie" and never met with opposition from the unsuspecting inhabitants, that he has failed in his calumnious attempt at answering a letter that is apparently far beyond his capabilities. I am, etc.,

11. V. CHICHESTER,

Little Akaloa. [This correspondence must now cease Ed. A.M.}