English Ideas About the Colonies.

Feilding Star, Volume XIX, Issue 117, 15 November 1897, Page 3

English Ideas About the Colonies.

"II is surprising bow yery little the great mass of people in England care abont the colonies. It ia true that they appeared to be much struck by the loyalty displayed and by the class of troops we were able to Bend for the Jubilee, bat in a general way those who haye no business with the colonies know yery little and are not much interested in oar doing*. I was rather amused one day on being introduced to a large farmer. He looked me in the face and ■aid • Bat you are not a foreigner.' I replied, ' Do you think New Zealanders are foreigners?' He said 'Well, no; bat you don't look any darker tban an Englishman.' This pats me in mind of another almost similar little example of what English people know of tno cole Dials. An ex-New Zealander invited my wife and myself to dinner at one of the fashionable restaurants. I may hers remark that much better dinners are to be had at the fashionable restaurants tban at the very best hotels in London. Well, oar party was a small on* of nine. I took in to dinner a lady, the wife of an officer in one of the Household regiments, and I noticed she looked somewhat curiously at me for some minute* after my being introduced to h«r as a New Zealander. When seated I talked first on one subject and then on another, hoping to interest her, bat only getting monosyllables in reply for some time. Then she looked me fair in the face and said, ' But you are not a colonial?' I laughed and said I certainly was, and that I had lived in the colonies practically all my life. She then remarked, ' But you dress and speak like one of us!' The fact is a good many people in England arc still firmly impressed with tbe idea that the colonials are more at home when dressed in a flannel shirt and a cabbagn tree hat tban in a white shirt and dress coat. —Canterbury Press correspondent.