WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 15, Issue 40, 10 November 1921, Page 4

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

Parr was at a premium after his speech iu the Hous© last evening discounting Mr. Wilford’s attacks on the Government’s credit.Retrenchment of members’ salaries is not so necessary to the welfare of the country as that value should be given for the money paid. That a Winter can sometimes produce quite a lot of heat is the latest educational discovery. The chairman of the Victoria College Council seems surprised at Mr. Parr suggesting that the council should find out whether a man is a Communist before appointing him to lecture on Maori mythology. The rule at Victoria College is that it does not matter whether you liave the measles or not. unless you are going to teach in the physiology class. The very worst that has been said about the Washington conference comes from the "Maoriland Worker.”—"We prefer the Workers’ International, ’ it eays. The Socialist organ is quite clear as to exactly what is needed to make the world better. Dictation from a "Brigands’ Cave” of diplomats is not its idea of world guidance and order. What this old world needs is "the fraternal effort of the peoples to utilise the beneficent forces of Nature in the pursuit of abundant life/' I don't know just what this means, not being a skilled economist myself—unless it is a reference to the go-slow policy.

That Longfellow’s "spreading chestnut, tree” and village blacksmith’s shop were in America and not in Britain is the contention of a correspondent who writes in reference to my remarks on the subject last Saturday. I must confess I had never looked it up, but merely told the tale as it was told to me in Dunchurch, in Warwickshire, where they sell you picture postcards of the local blacksmith’s shop with the statement that it is the original one of the poem. Also I know for a fact that a moving picture company enacted a picture there founded on the verses. Longfellow made visits to England, and l the tradition seems to fit in so far ns dates are concerned. However, in E. S. Robertson s "Life of Longfellow,” written in 1837, it is stated: "The village smithy stood in Brattle Street, Cambridge [Massachusetts]. There 1 came a time when the chestnut tree that shaded it was cut down, and then, the children of the place put their pence together and had a chair made for the poet from wood.” My correspondent points out that Longfellow wrote some lines on tn« subject, entitled “From My Armchair and this certainly seems to clinch the matter. A claim to be the original blacksmith was once made in an Americaii newspaper by H. F Moore of Medford, Massachusetts, but as he was only 12 years old when the poem was written, and had no daughter singing in the village choir at that time, his case fell to the ground. Many New Zealanders in camp at Sling weie led to believe that the smithy at Amesbury nearby was the original. It would be interesting to know what was the ongin of the Dunchurch tradition. The Guy Fawkes house and' “Annie Laurie stories told there are authentic, and there is doubtless some sort of basis for the othert.

It is a hundred years ago this month since Te Rauparaha brought the Ngatitoa tribe down from Kawhia and seized the country around Otaki and Kapiti. At least, that is the date given m the back of the "Official Year Books though the histories do not all seem to agree on the month. Te Rauparaha at that time would be quite an elderly man of fifty or so, and it seems to have been a big wrench for the tribo to leave thein beloved Kawhia, judging from tne poems of lamentation they hauuea down. Ib was all over, muskets. Some years before Te Rauparaha came down on a general man-slaying expedition vrith Tamati Waka Nene and explored the south of the island. They came right down to Whanganui-a-tara, or Wellington Harbour, and tnen went round in their canoes to the Wairarapa and carried' fire and slaughter as far as lorongahau. An old Maori, whose narrative is preserved in one of Mr. S. 1 ercy Smith’s books, lays it down that Port Nicholson is the right eye and Wairarapa Lake the left eye of the fish of Maui, the Maori name for the North Island. Also the Steeples Rocks at the Heads are old Maoris who were having a tangi and were turned to stone. Anyway, while the expedition was down here Te Bauparaha saw a white man's n P off the coast, and heard that othera came through the Strait. White mens ships meant muskets, and muskets meant the power to rule all the other tribes, and Kaniti was a stronghold hard to beat. So it followed that lie brought the Ngatitoas down—it is supposed that there were about 1500 souls in the migration—and for twenty-years he was the terror of both sides of tho Strait until he lost mana after his arrest at Ponrua and imprisonment at Auckland.

According to the Licensed Trade, ths consumers of beer and spirits are the heaviest payers of "voluntary taxation’’ in the Dominion.—lt was quite time that somebody pointed out that we do not take our glass of beer or spirits because we like it, but solely with the patriotic desire to tax ourselves for the benefit of the State. In the same way investors on the totalisator have no other object than to help the Finance Minister by voluntarily taxing themselves. If Mr. Isitt and some of his friends could only be made to realise these things life would move along more smootly for quite a lot of us.

Mention of tho offer of Bellevue Gardens, Lower Hutt, at auction is a reminder of what an historic spot those gardens are. It. was tho head gardener of Sir William’ Molesworth's estate at Pencarrow, Cornwall, who laid out the gardens originally for Mr. Ludlam, and Mr. Ludlam, who made a hobby of planting them with taro plants and trees from all parts of the world, also acquired fame, if I recollect aright, as the first importer of the now popular Romney Marsh sheep into New Zealand. To-day the gardens are shorn of ona attraction in the loss of the old-fashioned hostelry associated with many pleasant recollections in the minds of Welhngtonians who are not so young as they used to be, and can recall the days when Bellevue was McNab’s Gardens, and the resort on Sunday afternoons of a dozen brakes, landaus, and other vehicles, including the dog-carts in which the dashing voung bucks of the day took their lady” friends abroad on Sunday afternoons.

WHICH? “Young blood is warm, and Spring has come, And—Love, your eyes are spanking. Soul sings to sou), for wo have found What others still are seeking." But Middle Age calls back to Youth: “’Tis foolish fancy merely. Come, sit in calm reflection here, And weigh the balance clearly. “Trust not tho pulses’ fevered glow, Nor sigh nor love-birds’ twitter: Those are but. tricks to wreak And bring us rue most bitter.” And then Old Ago says, gliding in: "List not to prudence only. But when Love comas, dare all to win— Or be for ever lonely.”