SATURDAY NIGHT.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 1, 26 September 1907, Page 13

SATURDAY NIGHT.

WEEK-END IN WELLINGTON. ITS WHIMS AND HUMOURS. . Saturday niulit in the crowded town, Pleasure aud pain goiug up and down; Murmuring low on the ear there beat Echoes unceasing of voico and feet. So sings ono of our own poets, who, mayhap, was inspired by a Saturday Night in the Empire city. Wellington has as many moods as a woman; beautiful sometimes, cold and forbidding at others, but never drab or insipid. On golden, red-lipped days, when the sun has kissed the hills and is dancing in the dimpled sea, it is fresh aud comely as a sweetheart of seventeen. In its fits of fury, when lashed by wind and Gtorm, there is something majestic in its splendid, elemental strength. But tho weekend living drama, in the surging, throbbing streets, has a breathing interest and a human charm distinct and ever-fascinating. There aro crowds during tho weok, and in tho daytime, but tho atmosphoro is different and colder. Wellington is a hustling, hard-working city, driven relentlessly by a grim, unbending taskmaster of Toil. It is in a hurry. There is no dawdling along " tho primroso path of dalliance"; it has no time to cultivato social flower-plots by tho waysido during business hours. Tho stamp of strenuousness is branded on tho keen, set faces that flit past you in the street, and the sensitive stranger, like Shelley's plant, droops in sunless isolation amongst tho tenso, unregarding crowd. Ho feels mentally bruised, and tho callous, unseeing Staro stabs his self-concoit. Ho is a trivial, unconsidered bit of jetsam in the surging tido of - self-centred humanity.

But on Saturday Night when the lamps are lit ,1 kindly glow kindles in the, atmosphere. Some generous spirit has waved a beneficent wand over tho motley multitude, and tho angles and asperities have disappeared like snow before the sun. There is a touch of genial fellowship that makes the whole world kin. Demos has flung asido his tools and is! glad to forgot them. It is a time of Take-it-Easv. Tho tugid, unheeding tide gives place to a placid, swelling stream 'that purrs with pleasure. Metaphorically i:i some cases, literally in others, the toilers have filled " the cup that clears To-day of past regrets and future fears.". And .To-morrow? " Why, To-morrow I may bo myself, with yesterday's seven thousand years." .

Evan | the soulless trams , seem swayed .-'-iy the same softening spirit. Tho vicious, unrelenting haste has gone; they pick out a subtluod, meditative passage through the thronged and echoing streets. A babel of many tongues mingles with tho music of merry laughter and tho tramp of countless feet beats out a rolling refrain. Life in all its types and phases is spread out in a picturcsquo panorama.

Withered afro with its load of care, Come in this.tumult of life to.share; Childhood triad in it 3 radiance brief Happiest-hearted, or bowed with Brief, licet, alike as the start! look down V, r cek by week in the crowded town.

Horc 13 a man pushing a perambulator cloivn tlio midiiln of "Willis Street. And not faltcringly, with the di.llrlcnt stops of blushing consciousness, but aggressively, with a sv,-agger of self-satisfaction. Tlio baby anil tho market bag in the pram, the little woman tripping alongside, are his, and plainly lie is proud of bc-ing the man-in-possession. Nicelylaundered young with cigarettes and ready-r.iado cynicism, in their mouths, giggle at the domestic picture, and,bandy comic-paper badinage. They are spending their . Saturday Night and their few sparo shillings like free, unfettered, gay young dogs, and the Domesticated Person fills them with contemptuous pity. But the thoughtful onlooker smiies pityingly at thenf. He is glimpsing into tlio future, and sees the inevitable transformation—sees each with his own particular, pram and a passenger with a bottlo that is a stranger to three-stars.

By and by tho tide of humanity begins to ebb.. Leisurely at first, then more rapidly and with concerted purposo after ten has tolled and shutters liavo gone up and shop lights out. But the city is not ready to be tuckcd into bed yet. It has to feed first—a certain scction of its malo element, at any rate. The Saturday Night supper is an institution; quito distinct from any other meal. It is mostly Fish —strange how a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of Fish after ho has sauntered down tho amber-tinted pathway of the vine! It is . not a . prim, ceremonial feast. A spirit of moist levity prosides over the tables. Flippant quips and flavoured jests fly around. Occasionally, other things fiv around too. Onco in his unregenerate daj-s the writer was smitten full in the face with a hot, fat flounder. It was a subtle stroke of humour that set tho plates a-dancing in Bacchanalian gloc. AVcllington goes to bed comparatively early. Soon after midnight tho streets aro muto and empty, save for an occasional belated wayfarer, homeward lurching his uncertain way. Then conies a strange and soothing calm in the shadowed city. Tho poppied warmth of sleep has smoothed its tired limbs, and " the .gaudy, blabbing and remorseful day is crept into tho bosom of the sea."