AN OLD, OLD TREE.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 583, 11 August 1909, Page 8

AN OLD, OLD TREE.

SOME THOUGHTS. ON A CITY ■ CLEARING. . Where Brittain's Pharmacy stood in Manners Street a-fortnight ago is'now .clear ■space.. Clear, save for a old tree, still heavily foliaged, of which anon, The cleared space in tho middle of the dense pack of city buildings, gazing .blank-eyed 011 .to one of our busiest and narrowest thoroughfares,; is illuminating. It throws a'broad light. 011 the nature, of open spaces and wide streets, and one feels like congratulating the little patch of-.'old "eaith', bestrewn with bits of; rotting timber and broken bottles, on being permit-ted-o'neeinbre ito feel, the kiss-of tho sun. It also gives us the opportunity to congratulate ourselves on our proposal to widen Herbert Street as- a relief, to Manners. It will' riot be done. Money is scarce, and . tho rates are high, blit there is reward even in a good, intention though it never be more. ;The clearing I- .What a different kind to that made"by the plodding pioneers of."-18-10, whilst glancing over their shoulders ever .and anon, lii the belief, the Maoris might be merely Red Indians in disguise! Only the old tree .'remains to remind'one of what 1 was. It is.-not .an original—the pionee-fs, were : inftrtistic and believed not . in originals. 1 Art and culture follows the factory stacks,' and wo .are beginning'to plant the waste spacos again. -.',' ' ■' ''• ' A settler paused, in pasbing the clearing yesterdays-one whose name' has been associated with .earliest Wellington—and with a rather pathetic moisture in.his eye told that his first job as' a boy 'concerned' the' site. That was in 1864 —4fl'years 'ajjo. It was a ohemist's shop then —"tapu" evidently to any business save that of the pharmacist. Then the tree stood in, a fair garden at the rear of the drug store of the.lato C. D. Barraud, panaged by Mr. Hayward. Owen,' and across the narrow way on the corner now given over toi'tho Chinaman, stood "the butcher's shop of the late Charles Luxford. Alack", for tho ' 'lates'' 'of tl/ose - early ■ burly days!. . '

Hay ward Owen 'subsequently took over tho business from Mr. .Barraud, and a little later sold out to a Mr. Foster, (another wight of the. pestle and mortar)'..' Mr. , Foster ,was riding in the Ngahauranga. Gorge one fell day, and in, collision with the .buggy. <?f Dr..Taylor injured his leg, so badly'.that it had to bo amputated;. He. survived the operation, but succumbed to blood poisoning.": The/trustees in his. estate, Ebenesser Baker and ' Arthur Rowden, disposed' of tlie.' business "to Mr. R Pritchard; of Nelson, in 1874, and. two years later Mr. -Brittairi secured! the 1 business -and the tree, still innocent of the blue axe-edge, but now soon to bo bitten.by it.,'.