THE WEEK.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume X, Issue 161, 3 July 1875, Page 2

THE WEEK.

"When news is scarce in Nelson it always seems to me that the weeks revolve much more quickly, and that the Saturdays are of more frequent occurrence than when there is something stirring, and passing events afford some foundations upon which to build up a weekly letter. I think it was in Punch that I saw many years ago an engraving representing a young fellow complaining of ennui, and grumbling that the time passed so slowly. A man of the world waa giving him a receipt for greasing the wheels of time—" Put your name to a bill, my dear fellow, for a sum that you know you will be unable to pay, and see how fast three months may be made to pass by." I have put my name to a series of bills binding me to supply to the printers a column of matter ever Saturday, and I can assure my readers that I find the intervening seven days travel at an exceedingly swift pace. If I could only renew my bills I fancy that I should be supremely happy, but this is out of the question, and every Saturday morning I have, metaphorically speaking, to experience the sensation of being clutched by the throat by an implacable creditor, who shouts in my ear " Pay me that thou owest." And pay I must. I sometimes wonder, and I am sure many others must do the same, where all the people come from when anything happens in Nelson to cause a gathering.' Our town certainly is a large and straggling one for the population it contains, but, even allowing for this, one who is accustomed to being much in the streets on. ordinary days and notices how very few persons are to be seen about cannot but feel surprised at witnessing such a crowd as was collected on Sunday last. Many of them assembled to show their respect to the poor young fellow who had been suddenly called away, others attended for the purpose of seeing what was to be seen, but, no matter what was the cause of their congregating together, there remained the fact that between three and four thousand people, being at least three»fifths of what the census returns tell us is the population of the whole town, were assembled within a very small area. And a Nelson crowd is worth seeing. Small it may be compared with the numbers that could be brought together in the more important towns of the colony, but a better dressed or more comfortable and contented looking lot of people it would be difficult even for the most fertile imagination to picture. I wish the resources of the province, of which so much has been said, and in which we all believe, could, although like our population, hidden away at ordinary times, be brought to light upon some special occasion. I think they would astonish us just as much as such gatherings as that to which I have referred surprise visitors to Nelson, whose ideas of the extent of our population are based upon what is to be seen in Trafalgar or Bridge street on ordinary week days. Some day, perhaps, such a revelation will be made. How many of us, I wonder, will live to see it. In the Evening Mail last night there were published the names of the members of the new Central Board of Education, and I should like to know whether any one who has read them can honestly say that he would prefer to see substituted for them the Provincial Executive, no matter of whom it might consist. Setting aside the fact that they have been elected by the Local Committees for a special purpose, j do not the names of the individuals who constitute the Board give to the public | greater confidence that the educational interests of the province will be better attended to than if they were phced in the hands of— take the present Executive for instance — Messrs O'Conor, Pitt, Rout, and Edwards? Ido not wish to say anything derogatory of this body of gentlemen, or of any one of them, but because they are in office, for the reason that the Provincial Council considers them to be the best fitted for looking after the expenditure of General Government funds upon road-making in the Buller Valley, planting settlers in the Karamea, or the other business of the province, is it to be supposed that they would form a better Board for the superintendence of matters educational than those to whem this work has been entrusted by the ratepayers through their elected Local Committees? And yet such a change was proposed in the Council by Mr Ivess, who, however, was probably acting merely as a puppet, and, as a Greymouth paper described it, throwing the pellets prepared by the Provincial Secretary. I sincerely hope, in the interests of education, that we shall never see the day when the entire control of our admirable system is placed, in the hands of a Provincial Executive. However dull we may be just now, I imagine from the rumors that reach my ears that lively times are in store for us when the next general election comes round, as it will in the course of a few months. Fights, it is said, there will be for the town — I beg pardon — City seats; a fight for the Suburbs ; a fighfe for the "Waimea ; Motueka is said to be troubled and dissatisfied ; Golden Bay, I don't know much about beyond my own private opinion that it might be better and more influentially repre, seated ; Buller Valley — well, Mr o 'Conor's star is in the ascendant just now, bu.t perhaps it maybe on the wane before that time. However, candidates on the whole promise to be plentiful, so that the electors will be called upon to use their own judgment, canvassers to be o« the alert, editors of newspapers

to become combative, reporters to prepare for bard work, everybody, in fact, to pass through a stage of electioneering madness, and then comes the ballot, when probably all the best laid schemes and most (seemingly) accurate calculations will be found useless and unreliable. Hurrah for the fun of the elections ; I hope we shall be able to say, Hurrah for the results. Telegraph wires and cables are being laid, or are going to be laid, in all directions, steam communication on the coasts of New Zealand is rapidly increasing, fast sailing ships arrive on our shores from England generally within three months from their date of sailing, and altogether time and space are beginning to become matters scarcely worthy of consideration, but ia one respect I notice that we do not make much improvement in Nelson. I refer to the class of vessels that favor us with a visit from London. Sometimes we get a fast ship, bat it is only seldom, and there are now lying in our harbor two of these sluggish conveyances that have occu- j , pied, I forget the exact time, bat say a ; hundred and ever so many days in reaching their destination. We certainly don't go ahead very last in Nelson, but we have advanced a little within the last quarter of a century, except in the matter of direct communication with England, and in that we don't seem to improve much. But, perhaps, better times are coming. F.