The Good Old Days

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 84, 5 January 1893, Page 2

The Good Old Days

We were told by the Inangahua Times that over a thoasand people were presenfc at the Lake Brunner regatta, and,that the weather was all that could be desired. We wonder how many of these people remembered that the bones of poor Charlton Howitt and young Dobson lie at the bottom of that dark water, or the rush to Kangaroo Gully on the lake, which tobS place some time in the last of the sixties. It was a "duffer" rush, so . there were many angry men about. They madwa little trouble and smashed a few things, but no bones were broken (".Mores the pity," some of the victims would say to this day) although some poor fellows " lost the number of their mess" on their way back to Grey mouth, -when coming through a kahikatea swamp on the banks of the Arnold, which was in flood at the time. It was about Christmas time- too*, and the guests at Andy Wilson's, -6n the Twelve Mile, eat their dinners comfortably sitting up to their waists in waiter. Those were great days entirely, and the men were full-sized and able. How many of them are alive now? Their, s was the pride of splendid manhood. They lived without fear, and any sorrow they, had was never so great but a good square meal would remove it. Lord, how hnngry everybody was in those days ! . .Often there was more money than meat, and a butcher who had a bullock to kill was a man to be respected. Now there is a railway running where these men were " monarchs of all they surveyed" ; there are school boards, and we do actually believe that a ranger and a pound exist. Time may be the consumer of all things, but it also degrades things. Civilisation is a howling mistake. People say it rained on the West Coast in those times. Well, what if it did ? It showed no favor. If one man was wet, there were mighty few who could boast of being dry. There were giants in those days who would eat much of Cooey'a bacon and many of Sinclair's bams. They feared God and respected the Warden, and there was much health in them, for truly they were the pick of the world. Now their place knows them no more for eyer.