MOTUEKA AFFAIRS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XI, Issue 234, 31 October 1876, Page 2

MOTUEKA AFFAIRS.

To thb Editor of the 'Evening Mail.' Sir—Surely your correspondent has drawn most amazingly, even "on his " powerful imagination," in his invention of news from Motueka. No wonder, if* his imagination leads him to make the comparison of our spring weather with the heat of that place " I don't care to mention." Surely he must have been looking through a: "sheet of brown paper" when he sat down to concoct such a « bit of neivs," so unfair and eVen: nntiue, about our Institute. It is no vain glory which induces me to state the fact that for a country library we have the credit of having selected a very choice and useful set of books, and it is not true that the library " consists of a heap of books in cupboards, on shelves, on the table, chucked together without the faintest attempt at order, arrangement, regularity, or care." As to a catalogue, we have not yet been in a position to afford printing one nor shall we, ever be if such an individual as your correspondent has any success when he does his best to prevent people joiding the Institute by so disparaging a picture of its present condition. If he ever has seen a heap of books without order, he might, by less force of imagination, have known that on the two evenings appointed for the exchange of hooks the returns are put aside until the librarian can more conveniently place them ia order, his whole time being occupied in supplying the eager wants of his visitors With regard to his being " snubbed severely" for "hinting that the minds of Motuekans could need any enlargement or improvement" I by his apparent want of success in estab- I hshmg a Reading Room, I will state the i reasons why people did not attend the two \ meetings spoken of in his correspondence. On the first occasion the evening Happened to be a very stormy one, and few-people cart, about turning out to get drenched... At the adjourned meeting the person' who convened it waited about five minutes and then left, thus giving no grace nor time for persons living at a distance. I can positively assert that from ten to twelve persons attended, but found the projector of tbe plan gone thus making punctuality tq a few.minutes ] T« test of any desire for a 9eadi «8 All the bosh about" revolutionary projects" '