JEREMIAH ORMSBY.

King Country Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 274, 6 July 1910, Page 5

JEREMIAH ORMSBY.

In Memory. (By W,8.) The ancientß of pagan Rome and Greece, unlike . those of our much trumpeted high Christian culture, made the annua] remembrance of their dead creed. I also, of that faith, would without shame perpetuate that cult, and publicly remember mine. And, what though my blood and his could claim no nearer tie than friend: he is my dead: beside me as I Write: Speaking as we spoke in life, and understood. For we held that in common which seeks To Do, And wheji this fourth of July, twelve months agorie, they told me he was dead, the loss was mine. I want to remember him just as I knew him: As man, as fellow citizen, as chum. Not a spineless verbose trimmer but JDber Of the Thing that lay to hand. And why? Because, his public life, despite the slanderous sneer of "half-caste!" with which the low-white frbg-souled scoffer sought to asperse his fame, when his co-townsman charged him with a trust, that charge, and trust, were to him mandates too sacred to be toyed with at his ease. As I review the twelve months past the humour tempts me to be critical: I would compare his activities with those of the pitiful effegial wait-a-bits, who, after hustling promises of this and that, suddenly pretend the this and that impossible! And that the conscienceless "long paddock" sneaks must be approached with tender trepidancies of the will; that, no matter how the citizens are taxed for works already done, said sneaks are quite within their rights to wantonly destroy those works, so long as their shiftless "taihoa" sleep be not disturbed ; that, means, a schoolboy might devise, to stop this waste, their white man's wits are impotent to strategise! View it as one will, the prospect is lamentable! But what will you? For of such are those, who, instead of Doing Things, are only competent to master trivialities, of which, I say, a schoolboy would be shamed to prate. And the epigram is justified: "The representatives of a people are a reflex of the folk who place them there!" Eheu!