THE ARRIVAL.

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2329, 10 December 1914, Page 4

THE ARRIVAL.

IMPRKSSIONS ON THE MAMARI. What a queer and altogether interesting unity of sights and sounds is pre-j sented on the deok of a passenger''" 6teamer newly arrived from the Old Country. .There, among the motley array of men, women, and children, come, to start life, in a new world, are those who are boisterously glad to have reached port, some are solemn-faced as, they eearuli the waiting crowds for a, familiar face, orUho friendly wave of' a pocket handkerchief, no matter how dubious the,colour; others hunt diligently for their luggage on the deck,, and explore their-papers for shore ad-: dresses. There, are even those who are wistful-faced at having to part from the ship—tho last link with the Old Land—on which they have probably enjoyed themselves more heartily and) healthily than over before in their lives,' and perhaps haye formed companionships, the snapping of which hurts the, heart within them sorely. I Babel of dialects . .. people, pushing and scrambling for a _ lean-over , place at the bulwark . . . friends from l , shore tripping over, the sprawling 1 baggage ... . telegraph boys calling out' for folk too excited to recognise, the colonial pronunciation of their names. '. . . "And you'll write, won't; 'e?" "Aye, aye, girlie, that 'a will;"* . . . Stewarde struggling with miles o& ba"s and boxes ... an injured engineer, shakos left-handed with a xrOO E, ° f ' merry Ressotti-haired girls. .'. . ' Goodbye, my lad, maybo A , 11 see tnee agen." . . . "Aye, thatHhee wull—l be coomin , back t , teal" ~ -' And bo the thousand and one littlescenes that go to make up the anir mated drama embodied in the arrival of a big Home steamer are enacted all' ■ unconsciously. It is the parting of the, ways for many good friends, the etepV ping-stone to fortune for, soma) a\. spring-board of life to all adventurers,/ and the alteration of the focus of the; 'mind to thosp who have'been confined; to tho grim, grey, crowded cities ofij industrial England. )