A West Coaster's Wail ♦

Feilding Star, 19 November 1891, Page 2

A West Coaster's Wail ♦

We notice from the Reefton Guardian that they have a Lawn Tennis Club in that locality. Memory swiftly flies back to the good old days in the " sixties," when if any man had said a tennis racket would find its way past the Twelve Mile (Aytoun), up the Grey river, he would have been " put in soak" for a day or two, and his place would know him no more. This is truly a progressive but deteriorating age. The long-handled shovel makes way for the lawn tennis racket, while the cheerful and intellectual game of " forty-fives " gives way to the gentle " Nap," when a polthogue over the eye leads to the R.M. Court instead o£ to a friendly battle royal, where all hands could join in the fun, when the " fighting brandy " has given way to the peaceable medicinal imbibation of the abstginer. The new generation which has arisen may call themselves civilised, and look back with trembling scorn on the men of the old days before them. Perhaps* they are right, but they >rere great times, and giants walked the earth with a miner's right in their pockets, who called no man master, who were the true aristocrats of the world, and who never paid less than a shilling for their drinks. " They would shake hands with a king upon his throne, and think it kindness to his majesty." Now they have sunk to be mere electors.