AN UNSELFISH CITIZEN.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1005, 21 December 1910, Page 4

AN UNSELFISH CITIZEN.

CHIDES 'THE CITY CORPORATION FOR EXCESSIVE FAVOURS. A correspondent writes: "May I, through your columns, express my thanks to the City Council for the generous opportunity it has afforded me to make myself thoroughly conversant with the shape and smell of its travelling tar-wagon, or pitchtank, or whatever it may be? It has now been located for two clays just outside my gate, in Harley Street, at the corner of Austin Street, and my family and my visitors, now that they have' got the hang of it, aro enthusiastic about it. If 1 may lie allowed .1 word of criticism, I would say that the bucket swinging on the spout is rather restless: it violates the harmony of tho outfit, or, as I may put it, tho concordance of smell, blackness, and immovability. Since they learned that the machine is a street-, tarring: contrivance, and not, as jr.me of them foolishly imagined, my new'motorcar, the neighbours are very pleased with the thing. With shovels and cans and old sacks tastefully arranged about it, the travelling vat is an ornament to tho place, and quite eclipses the inverted wheelbarrow opposite my back gate. Quite apart from the fact that, somebody may steal it some night, the - neighbours feel, with me, that jealousy may be aroused if we are given too long an enjoyment of this perambulating footpath-fixer. Will you, therefore, inform the council that the verdict is unanimous that the work is a genuine old master, and reflects great credit upon its author, but that it will look even better out of Harley Street than in it? Tho scent of the roses and lilies iu the garden we cultivate rather interfere with the smell of the circulating pitch-pourer, and that is not quite giving it a real chance. Although it is tremendously convenient to be able to tell people that to find my house they need only come south-east 'and follow the smell of tar, it would be selfish of me to cling to as pretty a thing as can be imagined at your garden gate."