CORRESPONDENCE.

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume II, Issue 128, 22 November 1873, Page 3

CORRESPONDENCE.

Wk do not hold for opinions expressed by correspondents. e A PATHETIC INCIDENT. TO THB KUiTOH. Sis, —Strolling one evening in a meditative mood within the precincts of our graveyard, I was suddenly startled by a voice uttering a strain of lamentation that thrilled mo to the vary core. Speechless, 1 stood entranced, while, like the wail of some departed spirit breaking upon the solemn stillness of the night., I listened to “TH K HOOT fOCiUHOS OF A BOK9TIKO ’aBT, “Briends, O—p—t.—kins, countrymen, and customers, bear me for my cause, and give silence that you may hear, I came here to make money, net to lose if- Customers may forget their store* keepers, but, my friends, storekeepers cannot forget their customers. Your genial faces I may nut have seen perhaps for month*, or you may be weekly, daily visitors ; but as 1 leisurely turn over the leaves of my book of boobs my heart is swelled to bursting, my b.east to overflowing, and hi tallness ol spirit I stretch forth my hands and exclaim, * Come, my dear friends, oh come once more. And as each name appears indelibly inscribed on these pages, so each dear face leaps into recollection,and A long once more to see them* So come, my dear friends, come. I invite thee, I entreat of thee to come—come in mirth and joy, with thy happy faces beaming with anew delight j come with thy pockets filled with money, with thy purses swelled to bursting, and should the burden be too great, I, my dear friends, from pure love and affection, will relieve thee, 1 will take the load from off thy thigh, relieve the bursting purse and the overflowing pocket j and I will give unto thee a clean receipt, square thy account in my book of books, and no longer shall it remain on the page that is already filled against tb® day of reckoning, so that thy future may be begun on a clean ebeei. Thou bast eaten oi the fruits of the earth and hast been clothed with the fin© things of the world, and, my dear friends, my hearllelt wish is this j that may your enjoyment of these things be as full and perfect as min© will be on the day 1 hand thee thy clear acquittance. In fact, my dear friends, if it offend thee not, 1 will give t h«o a serious and solemn advice: let thy evil ways terminate, live no longer on the credit of tuy neighbours. Hob to pat too fine a point on it, -quash it, stop it, pay up, or, if you don’t, I’il Here the lament terminated in distant mutteringe, while a dark and mysterious form passed by me with clenctied hands, set teeth, and a knitted brow, whereon was legibly written the direful determination to go back to the store, “post up,’* and make out everybody’s account without warning or mercy. He was gone, and 1 retired gracefully, ruminating deeply upon the uncertainties of this our sublunary existence, the singular coincidence of the peculiar lightness of the load upon my thigh, and the universal state of impacuniosily prevailing among my pockets generally, arriving at the final conclusion that, in the words of our capital “ Buster," “ Pecuniary agencies have force To stimulate to speed the female horte.*’ Hotsfu®. Opotiki, November 19, 1873.