MINISTERIAL HUMOUR.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 838, 9 June 1910, Page 6

MINISTERIAL HUMOUR.

THE FOUR CITIES,

SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES.

(By TeiOEraiih.—Special Correspondent.! Auckland, Juno 8.

In replying to the toast of Parliament at the Chamber of Commerce dinner, the Attorney-General, Hon. Dr. Findlay, adopted a humorous vein. He said each of tho four cities of Dunedin, Christchurch, Wellington, and Auckland had their own special features both of situation and of people, but it often seemed that Du'nodin and Christchurch mado as it were one pair connected, by the harness of one main line, nud Wellington and Auckland another pair connected by tho harness of one main line, and in this team of i'onr Dunedin and Christchurch were tho shafters, Wellington and Auckland the leaders. (Hear, hear.) He was very fond of his birthplace, tho grand old city of Dunedin—(applause)—but ho recognised that her days as a leader of tho cities had passed. Her gait had steadied down. She and Christchurch jogged along together in the shafts doing much by their reliability to keep the coach steady. Their wild oats were all sown, or should he not say eaten? A good, reliable, quiet, staid old pair. (.Laughter.) So much he knew they would ly concede. (Hear, hear.) The two leaders, while they had much in common, had also much iu difference. Each sometimes wanted to go a different road; each thought her rights and claims ignored; both gave the inan on the box much concern; hut ho rather thought it was Auckland that was tho hardest mare to handle. (Laughter.) Sometimes when she got the bit iu her teeth and kicked over the traces il looked as if she would pull tho whole d d coach just exactly where she wanted to go. 1 (Roars of laughter.) Theu those two old shafters got back in tho, breeching u bit, and things settled down; but Auckland, notwithstanding occasional outbursts, was really a good-tem-pered animal—(laughter)—strong, sound, and with plenty of go in her, the daisy uf the team. (Applause.) Hei stride was free, but her wind was perhaps not quite so good as that of Wellington. (Laughter.) Above all, Auckland was high-spirited and high spirits boil at a low temperature. What scarcely warmed Dunedin put* Auckland into a perspiration of perfervid indignation, but then she cooled as rapidly as she got heated. High-spirited animals were mercurial and sensitive, not to say th,in-skinnod. This exposed Auckland rather unusually to local irritation. Just now she was annoyed by two sandflies closely related, called the situs academicus and the domus gubernatoris, both exceedingly irritating to a sensitive animal. (Laughter.) For this, he believed the Hon. Mr. Fowlds was mainly responsible. ■ (Laughter.) Then these two leaders, Auckland and Wellington, had a difference over not perhaps a seahorse but nu ocean mail, and this difference had caused a violent-eruption called the Gunsonites-Tewsleyosis—(laughter)—which had now happily passed its acute stage. (Applause.) Auckland being the'last,, loneliest, and loveliest felt the need of this more probably than her rival, but he would not pursue these local disorders. They were largely' due, like Auckland's occasional megrims, to a trying climate. (Laughter.) She was really sound in body, heart, and limb, although he confessed he had at times, when she got violent about her wrongs, been disposed to think that she suffered just a little from the staggers of a mismanaged imagination. (Laughter.)