Sentiment.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume XLV, Issue XLV, 27 July 1917, Page 3

Sentiment.

(By the Man in the Street). It i£ a long while since my last article appeared in print. It is not because there have been no subjects to Mm write about, but some of those who tfw * live in the limelight are apt to get restive under criticism. In a small community there is just a tendency for thoße who lead in our various social and business circles to form themselves into a mutual admiration society. I am tha giant in 'sporting circles, you the leader in business or social life, etc.', and we join bands and form a circle mutually admiring ourselves and each other until we begin to think we are just tbe fellows and take criticism with very bad grace. And of course as tbe public purse, strings are controlled by thase small factions, the editor keeps a fordid eye on the nimble sixpence rather than see the literary effusions of a talented mind grace his columns. In this connection I often wonder whether a criticism of mine of the evidence before the recent Mining Commission found its way into the waste paper basket, or if it were carel lessly pigeon-holed, or whether the • editor has put the copy away with bis most treasured relics. What made me emerge from the obscurity of the street corner again, was a paragraph in a recent copy of the Free Pre*s, of Balclutha, which says: "According to Magistrate Acheson there is no such thing as 'sentimental value' attaching to New Zealand farms and homesteads. When an objector to the Government valuation appeared before the Assessment Court, his solicitor mentioned tbe 'sentimental value.' "Rot!" scoffed his Worship, "that does not apply in New Zealand, where there are no properties that have been in one family for 300 or 400 years." To the objector, the magistrate queried "Have you got a castle or a cemetery ou the place?"

Reading these lines, one is led to ask what creates a sentimental value, and I am afraid Magistrate Acheson does not know what a true and genuine sentiment is. I am aura most farmers who have gone on to the land to make a home (I don't refer to the speculator) will agree with me. In New Zealand and every young country every selector must come to attach a true and noble sentiment to his property. He went on to the land a bowling wilderness, and looking over it after a .lapse of years he sees it cnanged into what is to-day. His was ( lhe mind that called everytirng upon it into existence. He put in every post, his bands planted every tree, the smiling grass paddocks and waving crops were sowed by him, his mind planned the homestead, and he assisted in its erection. Here he brought tne briae of his youth or the partner of his life in her young years and their young family. Together they toiled and brought up their family and fought their battles, and tasted alternately hope and fear, and perhaps faced the darK days of sorrow when the home was invaded by the destroyer and they were bereft of some of their loved ones. And after years of tail, in their declining years they know every stick and stone upon the place. Success •has crowned their efforts. Theirs were the magic hands that turned the desert into a smiling and valuable homestead. What does ail this mean? It means it is their life's wprk, and more, it- is the expression of their soul. Too old to go out and make another home, their whole being is centred round the old place. The long years of struggle with their thousand memories have cast a halo around it that no other place possesses. The spirit of Sir Walter Scott's famous lines in a measure attaches to it— Breathes there a man with soul so dead, Who never to himself has said:

This is my own, my native land. Which is the nobler sentiment, the one that clings around a castle banded down to a man; for the possession of which he has spent nothing, and per-, baps which hs visits on rare occasions, or the almost hallowed feeling with which a man'looks on the results of his life's labours? To say the former to my mind reveals a snobbish veneration for aristocracy. To such a mind the sacred associations of the other can never appeal. The man who steps into a billet made for him can never enter into the feelingß of the other. Possibly to him the man who owns a castle is someone to be venerated, the man whose toil helps to give him his £7OO a year is a soulless beast. Bat to the great majority of the world "every mother's goose is a *wan."

Bat farewell Balclutha. return to Naseby. In Naseby there is a castle over which the Maniototo Hospital and Charitable Aid Board exercise control. A tittle while ago the Board carried a /resolution that they would grant the resident old age pensioners 8s a month as pocket money, and so place them on a level with those in Dunedin institutions. Next meeting th»y rescinded the motion. Judging by the M.I.C. report for no particular reason. Possibly for the pleasure they find in building up hopes to destroy them again. I have a hazy recollection Of the chairman of the Charitable Aid Board at the time of the jubilee celebrations and oa other occasions delivering a magnificent panygeric on the virtues of the old pioneers. No honours could be too great for those whose toil and privations made the way easy for us who followed them. Yet a hard-hearted Charitable Aid Board does not thick the few under their control worthy of. a plug of tobacco a week or a shilling's worth of lollies to chew during the long hours of the days they spend doing nothing. I can hardly imagine after the glowing elogiums of the chairman at public meetings that be approves of this state of affairs. No doubt at the meeting at which the resolution was rescinded the torrents of his eloquence fell on the hard and stony hearts of bis fellow members. He could not melt their adamantine determination. Poor old. pioneer we elevate him on a pedestal once in a jubilee and ac-

claim him to the multitude, and then put them in a back corner for the rest of bis days, and give him a pauper's coffin at last. "Fire words butter no parsnips."