"ENGLAND, HOME, AND BEAUTY."

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 18, Issue 1095, 16 August 1871, Page 2

"ENGLAND, HOME, AND BEAUTY."

Some little time since an account of the appearance and prospects of Tookey's claim at the Thames was published in Victoria and New Zealand, professing to be written by a wholly disinterested party and quite in a disinterested way. The account was. written in such a glowingly poetic style and with such abnormal and ecstatic enthusiasm that it reminded some of the cognoscenti about Ballarat, who are ever on the ready to take advantage of anything good of the auction-room stratagem of providing red herrings and beer. From this they began to smell a rat, and on pressing the manager of Tookey's claim, Ballarat, who has a considerable interest in the New Zealand claim of the same name, he confessed to being the author of the description of his New Zealand property. The thinj was done with such impudence and adroitness that we give our readers a specimen of the letter which this extremely modest mail, in his unofficial capacity, addressed to himself in his official capacity of manager of the mine. Ke says: —"Fancy if you can, having your attention drawn to a small aperture on one side of a main drive, accompanied by the announcement that from it .£172,000 sterling was taken in a few days, and after advancing a few feet to find the run going out on the other side where a somewhat similar amount of blocking had been done, with a return of .£218,000 sterling for a fortnight. If you can fancy this and believe it true, you may realise, as I did, an indescribable feeling of delight bounding from the innermost recess of your heart, and heaving through your bosom, then bursting with emotion at the conviction that in Tookey's you may yet redeem the toil of years, and luxuriate in affluence after having passed but little beyond the meridian of life. Long before this mine is worked out present appearances amply justify the belief that the least of its shareholders will in substance possess a golden crown. I then introduce myself to the Caledonian mine. I can defy the most careful, prejudiced, or the least animated nature to investigate the workings of this claim without feeling impressed by something grand, glorious, and sublime. It is yielding its treasure with a lavishness that knows no limit, and creates in the beholder a fire that pervades and virifies his whole being j the solidity of the mass of gold causes it to, appear gigantic, cumbrous, and appalling, rather than harmonious and beautiful. It is a

Colossus in treasure; and in this Cyclopean workshop imagination conceives the possibility of the gnome's presence, who, in calm and silent majesty, radiant with smiles, and standing erect, with her right arm pointing towards Tookey's," &c« He concludes by emphatically, but ungrammatically assuring his "personal friends and associates that 'England, home, and beauty,' is looming in the dis> tance, and that the corporation will undoubtedly possess a mine of untold wealth and unparalleled splendor." After all this, the only question is, how much " A Shareholder " will take for his Tookeys ?