PICTURE of "SLEEPY HOLLOW,” BY ONE OF THE SLEEPERS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 22, 24 June 1871, Page 16

PICTURE of "SLEEPY HOLLOW,” BY ONE OF THE SLEEPERS.

The following is extracted verbatim from a Nelson paper : “To form a correct opinion of the number of youths who so abound in the Waimea, that district should be visited on a Sunday. Dawdling about the church doors, idly lolling about on the fences, and occasionally hanging about a publichouse, are to be seen scores of fine, strong, young men, the story of whose life might be summed up in half a dozen words, for it is the same thing over and over again. They go through the week’s work without interest, without ambition, without a desire to become anything better than they are ; numbers of them are working on their fathers’ farms, and on the Saturday perhaps receive a few shillings, which are soon spent. Sunday is a day for idling and gossiping, and, after that, once more begins the week’s work, which at its close will find them no better off than they were at its commencement. Do these young men ever consider how far more satisfactory, far more useful, far. more honorable lives they might spend if they would do as their fathers have done before them ? We doubt it very much. The force of habit has with them become so strong that they are perfectly contented to go through this week as they spent the last, this year as they wasted the last one. They were born in the Waimea, and they have always lived in the Waimea, and, if ever they look forward at all, it is with a vague idea that somehow they will always continue to exist—for it is nothing more—in the Waimea. All the associations of their uneventful lives are connected with the locality in which they were born and bred, and the wrench that is required to sever the ties by which they are unconsciously bound is quite equal to that which their parents experienced in tearing themselves away from the home country to come to New Zealand, but there is this difference, namely, that the absolute necessity for such a wrench does not exist here. Plenty to eat, and plenty to drink can always be obtained, and an occasional day’s work on the road or on a neigbor’s farm will at any time put a few shillings in the pocket wherewith to obtain clothing. “ This is but a sorry picture that we have drawn of our agricultural distiicts, but it is, we believe, a truthful one. Let us, however, be thoroughly understood. We by no means intend to cast a slur upon the old settlers in the Waimeas and other districts around the town. Many, yes, the large majority of them, are steady, industrious, hard-working men and women, wlio by their own untiring energy have raised themselves to a position of comfort and independence of which they may be proud. Young men, too, offshoots from the parent stock, have settled down in the vicinity of their old homes, and are doing their best to emulate their parents’ early success, nor is there anything wanting in those youths to whom we have alluded, who have just attained to manhood, but a more ambitious spirit. We may, and no doubt shall, be accused of using hard words in speaking of them as we have done. We admit that we have been plain-spoken, but it has been in the hope that they may thus be roused from the torpid, lethargic, state into which they have sunk. They have all the bone and muscle, and all the spirit of their fathers, but the latter is lying dormant aud wants waking in order to induce them to turn the former to beneficial account.”