NOTES FROM LYTTELTON.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 830, 20 February 1877, Page 3

NOTES FROM LYTTELTON.

The idea of a bank was always in my earlier days associated with thoughts of strength and security, and though failures, and the tents and shanties called branch banks, that are seen in a digging township, have considerably modified my ideas, I still adhere to the notion that in settled centres of population banks should have a substantial appearance. .Now no one can deny that our banks are magnificent edifices, one of them particularly being of such magnifioent architectural proportions as to strike the beholder with awe. It is built of wood, and at least three people can stand abreast in front of its grand counter, and there is just room behind for the two clerks and the messenger, though it's rather a tight fit, and if one of the guardian dog3wcrc called in, 1 do not think he could manage to squeeze into a place without some one went out. One hears every now and then that not contented with this palatial edifice, the bank intends to erect another on their section next to Mr Hawkins. It is rumored plans and estimates have been prepared, but such a long time has elapsed without any active steps being taken, that one begins to wonder when the first stone will be laid. It is to be hoped that the old shanty will not be removed, but that it will stand as a monument, so that in years to come Ave can point it out to our children saying, "In that hovel all the Lyttelton business of the groat bank was once conducted."

The return match with the Suunyside team is to be played next Thursday, and I hear that thore is every prospect of a good muster and a merry day. " Portonian" means to be there, and to give a good account of all that is said and done.

I have heard of a terrible larceny which hag been committed, and by which one of our moat prominent citizens, in fact a councillor, has been a severe sufferer, and I hope that the offenders will speedily be brought to justice. From what I can learn the gentleman loser who resides round the bay, and like the ancient Israelites knows knows how to bake clay, took a couple of cheeses down the town for sale. He left one, but was beguiled by a friend into the Canterbury bar, where as usual, his impassioned eloquence drew together a crowd of burgesses. Kounded period after rounded period gushed from his voluminous month, and most of his hearers were transfixed; but there was a snake in the grass. One man was there who heedless of eloquence or probity listened not to the golden words of the eage, but by slow degrees edged nearer to where iz, a cc/ainon bag reposed on the counter the coveted cheese. Did fae ligUtowg stride Uiui ? No.

Did a whirlwind carry him down the sewer with the beer drainings ? No. On to his guilty work the villain sped. His mother was not there to remonstrate with him, and perhaps if she had been she would not, and so unchecked he seized a moment when the head of the orator dropped on his breast with emotion, and boned the cheese. A great poet has said "None are all evil," and even this heartless villain must have had some compunction, for he did not] leave our distinguished fellow townsmen altogether destitute, but put his remorse, in the shape of a big stone, into the bag from which he had abstracted the cheese, and then proceeded on his guilty way. Pity him, for think of the agonies his guilty soul must have endured ! Phoebus during the whole of this tragic event had not ceased to urge his horses on their wild career, and their heads were now fast approaching the horizon, and the brilliancy of the pots hanging on the bar grew less and less as his rays gradually lessened. Thoughts of home crossed the breasts of the orator, and seizing the bag in which he fancied the cheese was located he determined to take it to its destination before making his evening devotions at the shrine of his Lares and Penates. Little dreamt he as he trudged cheerfully to the wharf what a foul deed had been done, and he hummed a beautiful melody as he proceeded : the goal was reached at last, and the weary wanderer after expatiating at length on the merits of the article to be vended opened the bag and disclosed—a stone. A mighty convulsion shook the sage's frame, but he repressed it. Tremble villain! for he, the resistless sleuth-hound of Lyttelton, is on thy track! Kememberest thou not how erstwhile he persevered, seemingly against all hope, in his endeavour to gain a scat in that mighty assembly Avhere the destinies of Lyttelton are swayed, and how, in the end, he won; and think, oh trembling villain, that the sole aim of that great intellect is to capture thee. No repose shall be thine at bed or board till thou disgorgest thine illgotten gains at the feet of the man thou hast wronged. The worst of it is that the names of a great poet, our mo3t popular fuel, a celebrated prison, and a Welsh king are mixed up in the affair.

The poor little Halcyon has gone to the bottom at last. True child of Orpheus, the music of the dollars she has made still clinks lovingly in the ears of her former owners. Many kind recollections of the pietty little steamer have we Portonians. It was on the Halcyon that we went for that picnic when Tom first whispered his love vows to Mary; and how many of us first knew the delightful sensation of being sea-sick on board that pretty little craft, when the great waves were rolling in, and the passage to Pigeon Bay was indeed a stormy one ? Many and many a halcyon day has been passed on board her. May she rest tranquilly.

The Rainbow Lodge of Good Templars gave their annual festival on Thursday last, and much impressed me with a statement of what had been done. I know myself that many who are now living tolerably comfortable were once in a terrible state of degradation through drinking, and " desperate diseases require desperate remedies." The principle of Good remplarism—substituting other amusements for the use of stimulants—is a good one, and we are happy to hear that the Rainbows intend giving monthly entertainments. If they are only the means of making some of the Portonians I know become total abstainers, they will not have been established in vain. I like a glass of beer, and object to more than six letters after my name ; but I recognise the fact that there are certain portions of our community unable to drink at all without making beasts of themselves, and as when in this brutalised state they are a curse to themselves and also to those innocent creatures who are dependent on them, let them become Good Templars by all means, even at the sacrifice of wearing hideous decorations, being a W. 0. G. or a W. A. G., as the case may be, and having to go through I don't know what frightful ordeals. I don't know about other places, but Good Templarism has done a lot of good in Port, and I wi3h it success, though not universal empire. PORTONIAN.