Drugged and “ Trimmed.”

Hokitika Guardian, 1 June 1921, Page 3

Drugged and “ Trimmed.”

ENGLISH VISITOR’S EXPERIENCE IN SYDNEY.

A young Englishman coming out to New Zealand on a business commission had, in Sydney, an experience which, while it left him penniless, should stand him in good stead for the rest of his life, and warn him against trusting a plausable stranger. He broke bis journey at Sydney, where lie spent a week in seeing the sights of that city. On the evening when he was to sail to New Zealand he sent his “traps” down to the Union Company’s wharf, and, deciding to have supper, he invited the taxi-driver engaged to take him from the hotel to the wharf to join him. They were both having a good meal in a restaurant when a presentable and well-mannered young man—with a large diamond stud in his shirt-front —took a. table next to them, and ordered wine. He said the waiter brought him too large a bottle for his own consumption, and the “new chum” and the taxidriver readily responded to his invitation to have a drop. -The old dodge worked efficaciously, and the young Englishman and taxi-driver, according to their respective stories, were in deep oblivion for some hours after. The taxi-man discovered himself and his car at Dulwich Hill, and wondered how gp earth they got there; the “new chum” awakened to his senses and .a. terrible headache at Little Coogee, where he found that his greatest plight, as he pathetically described it in the soft drawl of Northern England to a reporter on Saturday, was that he “wasn’t even left with fourpenee tram fare to get back to the city, and he was denuded even of his fountain pen. ’ The “new chum” was worried, tired, hungry, and sleepy, but in five days’ wearisome wanderings lie found that although he “was a stranger and was taken in,” this is not done in Sydney in the Biblical sense. His clothes were too well tailored and his tale too simple to allow him to obtain rest and sustenance at the People’s Palace, and othci hostels also looked on him 1 askance.

“1 put a night in the gaol, but it was ver-ry uncongenial,” he reflectively drawled, “and 1 did not care for the company in the Domain, where I spent two nights. T spent the other two nights in walking the streets, and getting a bite from nightwatchmen.” After several applications, the Union Steam Ship Company lent a sympathetic ear to his tale of distress and gave him a berth on the Manuka for New Zealand, and so lie reached Christchurch, whore his credentials have been honoured, and he has been afforded the means to cable for a draft.

••You don’t seem any the worse for the little experience,” remarked the reporter. “Oh, no. Tt will do me good, but what annoys me is that the man in the restaurant knew all about my school, tdd nic who was the master ol it, and what it had done in sport. I won’t be caught like that again.” “Well, you shouldn’t be ‘bad’ so simply again. Did you make any enquiries at the restaurant? “Yes. and all they told me was that | and the taxi-man became helpless quite suddenly, and the big man with us helped us out. They said they had not seen him before.”