Some Yarns about the Easter Encampment.

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 249, 24 April 1895, Page 2

Some Yarns about the Easter Encampment.

[By " Marksman," in the Wanganui Herald.] The Volunteers who attended the Feilding Camp will, no doubt, retain a lively recollection of Feilding and its surroundings, and one of our popular mounted corps, whose headquarters are north of Waitotara, will long remember the Temperance Association of Feilding. The joke is too good to be lost, and although the mounted men tried to keep it quiet it leaked out, the " Feet Army " being jubilant at the way in which the men were " had." A Naval corps had received a pressing invitation from the temperance people to an afternoon tea, but had to leave Feilding before the hour arrived, and passed the invitation on to the mounted corps, who were not anxious to attend, but thinking it would show a want of courtesy to their hosts, who evidently felt anxious to extend their hospitality to the flooded-out Volunteers, the officers and men turned up to a man^ The spread was not over-inviting, consisting chiefly of stale buns, sausage rolls, and weak tea, but acting on the old saying, " One must not look a gift horse in the mouth," they accepted the hospitality in a suitable manner. The captain, at the close, thanked the ladies and gentlemen for their kindness to strangers in a strange locality and was then about to retire, when the head man solemnly stood at the door and collected one shilling each from the unfortunate visitors, expressing his sorrow that the temperance people had lost heavily in preparing for the great demonstration on Easter Monday, which had turned out a failure in consequence o£ the rain. The gallant captain paid for all his men, smiling the while, but the gleam in his eye boded no good to the temperance cause. The local Volunteers, hearing of the way in which their comrades had been victimised, kindly sent a cheque to cover the amount, which, I need scarcely say, was returned, the gallant captain remarking, " Served me jolly well right ; if it had been £50 I should have known better."