FOXTON.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5050, 31 May 1877, Page 3

FOXTON.

(from OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) We are now getting compensation for the very dry summer and autumn we had. Since the first of the month up to the present there have fallen 6'13 inches of rain. A friend who strives at times to be facetious remarked, when wading along the principal thoroughfare, that he could now understand why people delighted in calling it the Main-street, the main having evidently burst somewhere, and caused the flood.

Our Choral Society gave an extra concert on the 23rd, but the rain would persist in coming down and keeping an audience away. The members determined, however, not to be done, and went through the whole programme in a very creditable manner. This society is the first (so I am informed) that has managed to live through the first year here. There have hitherto been snob differences of opinion among the ladies (malicious old bachelors say it is only jealousy) that almost anything that was started soon suffered shipwreck. Our little society has escaped the like misfortune, and if all goes well it will during the last week of next month give the closing concert for the year. The Queen’s Birthday was celebrated by a public ball in “our ball.” For years Foxton had not a building suitable for holding public or social meetings in, save the schoolroom, which, greatly to the inconvenience of the teacher, was often made use of for that purpose. A wretched streamlet dribbling through the town crosses the principal street, necessitating a bridge. This bridge divides the town into equal parts, the inhabitants of which do not pull well together. About two years ago the hall question was being agitated about, but nothing came of it, those on one side of the bridge mistrusting the designs of the dwellers on the other aide. At length Mr. Whyte, the proprietor of Whyte’s Hotel, a public-spirited man, with commendable foresight, settled the question of where the hall should be, by offering a very good site almost in the middle of the town. The sole condition attached to the gift was, that the hall must be kept open as a public hall for five years, at which date the site should be conveyed to the proprietors ot the building. A company was at once formed, the shares were fixed at £l, Mr. Thynne was employed to design a suitable building, and the result has been that we have now a hall second to none on the coast. It differs materially from some public erections in possessing very excellent acoustic qualit-’es. Indeed the fault at present is that they are too good, but this will be altered when we can afford to put up a proscenium. As an act of courtesy to the public at large the shareholders gave the hall free of charge to the ball committee, who certainly deserve credit for the manner in which everything was carried out. As Messrs, Cemino and Gray furnished the music, it would be superfluous for me to comment upon it. Host Why to was the caterer for the supper, which was equal to anything our mutual friend I’.L. could have given us. There was only one drawback—the rain ; it would rain, and it did know how to rain that night. This made the attendance rather thin, I noticed one or two Wellingtonians there, who seemed rather astonished at what Foxton had done, both as regards the hall and the ball too. The steamers running so regularly between here and Wellington, there is no excuse now for any theatrical troupe passing us by. Local politics are at a standstill just now.