WAIKATO NOTES.

King Country Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 241, 12 March 1910, Page 5

WAIKATO NOTES.

< Hamilton, Friday night. One of the plagues of Eygpt has fallen over this fair city. .At present we are tormented by a'perfect invasion of crickets. Now, "creepy things with wings" I can't abide, as an old lady friend of mine would say. As |T I wrote one more venturesome than % the rest of his kind shows a sad disposition to explore the depthsdark and unfathomable —of my ink-pot. He i 3 an inquisitive cricket and like all inquisitive people will come to a bad end—always excepting, of course, your own confidential correspondent. Th«re, I knew it. He has fallen into the inky-way. Come out you creepy —. Well it is a comfort to have a big foot at times. Now about these crickets. They are very general in Waikato, and have taken "to destroying potatoes in the ground with vigor. French beans are receiving due attention, white raddish, early carrots and turnips are forming the neucleus of fine meals daily. What good the pests are is locked up with the Inscrutable. Evidently they are very much misunderstood. They are showing what harm they are in exceellent fashion, and as that takes all one's attention at the present junc&ire there seems really no need to look the other side of the question. The world is" made up. of particles. Just how many particles are necessary to the planet we call earth we can never tell. We could dispense with the cricket, of course. Then there is the common drunk, the idier, the thief, the liar, the . But I fear I am moralising. Let me think. I believe I mentioned the thief. Over at Hamilton East a few days ago, a man was eased of something like fifty pounds sterling, and he does'nt know how he lost it. It appears that he went to sleep. Quite a permissable thing to do this hot weather, and when he woke he was minus his wherewithal. The local papers state that the police have the matter in hand, but to me it seems too much to ask even our astute constables to discover a roll of notes that may have been lost, stolen or strayed. No, the brands are our usual Hamilton ones. Some of the ale thickens in the hot weather, I believe. That is, I have been told so. A very sad accident has happened at a place named Waotu, some miles from Putaruru. It appear that the body of a newly born infant was found in the scrub in a paddock adjacent to a farm house. Enquiries have elicited the fact that the mother is an unfor- 1 tunate servant girl who had the evidence of her shame and only confessed some time afterwards. An inquest has been held and the verdict reads that the infant came to its death through omission of the mother, without lawful excuse, to perform and observe her legal duty to her child at its birth. This is very painful, very sad and very distressing. Being an average man ail my sympathies go out to the unfortunate girl. To err, we are told, is human. We are all human sometime or other. "' The hospital board elections passed off as such elections usually do r without a contest. The scheme of the Minister is an entirely experimental one and whether it is for the better or for the worse of hospital management is for the fates and the future to decide. For my part I caxe not a scrap whether there be four or forty members of the board. Few of them know anything about its management. 1 say this generally, without referring to any particular hospital. I only know that there is a hospital and when we are sick most of us are taken there, and there we live or die. If we live we are supposed to pay fees. Most of us havn't the money and so we don't pay. It would be that in my case. I have no money for sickness. If the State refuse to treat me for nothing then it is a very hard sort of State, and I must die. I really have no option. I have neither option nor money. Tt is a hard world. But the Government is a parental one. There is some comfort in that. , The Premier passed through Waikato a few days ago and said nice things about our industry and • our progress. . He quoted figures —I do so love these departmental figures—and told us that the sett]er3 were to have many facilities in the shape of telephones, postal conveniences and money saving devices. Amongst the latter is to be an experiment in New Zealand, with which the Waikato is to provide the aye or nay. The settlers in the remoter parts are to be provided with money, boxes in which to deposit their savings. The key, though, is to be kept-in the nearest post office savings bank. This is introducing thrift with a vengence. The farmer takes the money box to the bank and the official opens it and credits the proprietor of the box with the amount. Then if he be ah unwise proprietor he may immediately draw the savings and • look upon the wine or the whisky or the ginger ale, whichever is his particular poison. This is an accommodat- • ing country. And after all there is left us Kitchener, who has presented his report and made pur military enthusiasts glad. t)ur Lordship trusts that political influence wil not be allowed to transgress upon the military defence scheme. Let.me cry "Hear, hear," with a loud voice, the while I stick my tongue in my cheek and sneer in my sleeve. Ah Kitchener you know us not. Political influence indeed! Unheard of! But all the same I agree with the heir of Khartonm. We want not the lollie-pop officer, or the carpet warrior. What we want is the muscle and brawn of our land, unhampered of the fetish of Defence Council or the mock heroics of the Knyvett case. We require the Boys Who Are Prepared, and send the rest to Hoy-po-loy, or some adjacent country. There are the makings of good soldiers in our country districts; there are those gold braided baggy trousered individuals who are called officers. Let us have the one but spare us the other. I speak as one who ' h J as' had some experience on the field, us have an enemy, but spare us the /Miguity ahd'the degradtion of such a o(pmake in the grass as political influence.