THE WEEK.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIV, Issue 117, 17 May 1879, Page 2

THE WEEK.

I have read a great deal of late about the Native meeting at Kopua without any vGry ardent desire being kindled in uiy breast to form one of the assemblage. I read how the kits of food were placed before the Colonial Ministers, and that on one occasion a great chief did the Native Minister the honor of dining with him, but I did not envy either Sir George Grey or Mr Sheehau. I read one correspondent's letter, in which the writer with evidfeut satisfaction related how he was invited by a leading chief, with a long, to-be-contiuued-in-our-uext sort of name, to sleep in his whare. He accepted the invitation, and was one of about a dozen who huddled together like little pigs on a cold night. I didn't feel one bit disappointed at not being (he correspondent, or one of his fioorfellows. I read another correspondent's statement, evidently made with a glow of honest pride, that Kewi bad actually iusisted upon exchanging hats with him. This, it seems, is accounted a superlative honor, and yet I did not long to be in the correspondent's boots or even in his newly acquired hat. None of these things have led to the slightest regret on my part that my absence from the great korero was unavoidable. But there was one little incident that I should dearly like to have witnessed. It was on that particular occasion when the Premier was busily engaged in plastering the butter on King Tawhiao, and soft-soaping his old governor Potatau, who has been dead and gone along time. Said Sir George:— "lf any man had come to me and said an evil word against Tawhiao I would not have listened to it, but would have ordered him out of my house." The King is do fool, and he knows the Premier of old, and I do honestly confess that it would have afforded me immense pleasure to see His Majesty's countenance at the precise moment when these words were uttered. Maori etiquette would not allow him by auy very perceptible facial distortion to show what thoughts were pass- j ing through his mind, but, if I mistake not, there would be a spasmodic movement of that eyelid which was nearest to his bosom friend and confidential adviser, Te Ngakau, to which I have no doubt that gentleman would reply in precisely the same style. That was a scene I do regret having missed, and if I only understood Maori I should also, I feel sure, have taken a deep iuterest in listening to what these two said to one another when they were smoking their pipes after they had dismissed friend Grey and felt at liberty to give full vent to their thoughts and license to their tongues. The Evening Poit, which is fully convinced that in the whole universe there is not another town like Wellington— and in the matter of vile smells, bad water, bankruptcies, and a broken down College, perhaps it is right— haa of late been sorely exercised because the people of Wellington were kept waiting for a few hours for their English letters, in order that the large number of colonists in Taranaki, Nelson, Westland, and Marlborough might not be deprived of theirs for the considerable time that they would have to wait if the steamer weut direct from ' Manukau to Port Nic, without delivering the mails at these places as it passed. These " little villages," your contemporary thinks, ought to be completely ignored rather ,than that Wellington should be exposed to even the most trifling inconvenience. Was it wise, oh Post, thus to endeavor to create ill-feeling between your magnificent kite-flying city and the " little villages " when at the time you wrote you knew that the representatives of these hamlets were likely to be asked to give you a few thousand pounds to keep alive that unfortunate institution known as the Wellington College? A beggar when he is going to ask alms does not open his pleadings by unnecessarily insulting those upon whose charity he is dependent for his daily bread. Cabby, upon appearing to answer to a summons for not obeying a certain wharf regulation the other day, thought that he played a trump card in asserting that he had seen a Justice of the Peace commit the very same offence with which he was charged, and he certainly did get some of the laugh on his side. This shows how careful men should be, when they are placed in high and honorable positions, aa to the example they set. Now that the great Good Templar, Mr Stout, the present Minister of Justice, has inaugurated a new regime, under which publicans who sell people liquor to make them drunk at night will be called upon to fine their customers next day for having put too much money into the pockets of those who are sitting in judgment upon them, this question of example and all that sort of thing is likely to become a little mixed and puzzling, and to cause some bother and trouble. A newspaper reporter going his weary rounds the other day in search of what of late has been most difficult to find, namely, a good local, fell iv with an old friend in the person of Farmer Spuds, who had just come over from Motueka. Greetings having been exchanged, the reporter in a despairing sort of way asked—" No news stirring over your side, I suppose ?" — "No news ! : ' replied Spuds, "No news, did you say ? By jingo there is though, and 1 wonder you have'nt heard it." Reporter, all smiles and looking lively enough now, pulled out his note book and pencil and told his friend to go ahead and let him hear all about it. " Why," said Spuds, " potatoes have gone up five shillings a ton, and I tell you that's the best bit of news we've had at Motueka for a long time." Reporter tried to smile and to look as though he could share the farmer's joy, but when I met him a minute or two afterwards his face was abnormally Jong he was groaning in spirit, and, confiding to me his troubles he said, "At the very least I thought I had got hold of a nice accident." 1\