PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1880. GETTING ON.

Patea Mail, 28 October 1880, Page 2

PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1880. GETTING ON.

Buggies are becoming a prominent article of local luxury. In a district like this, every substantial settler feels a proper pride in running a family buggy—except just a few whoso pride is stinginess. The fine weather of next summer will bring on to the roads a number of new carriages in their first season, spic-and-span new, all brilliant in the bloom of fresh paint, indicating tliat this part of the West Coast is “ going ahead.” The increase in buggies has been remarkable. Each new “ vanity on wheels ” excites the envy of half a dozen neighbors to speculate in wheels likewise. “ Awheel,” it’s all good for trade. No prosperous Briton likes to be behind his neighbors : and so wo shall have a cavalcade of buggies on the district roads in summer, and family parties will be coming to ;i town” for a gala day—the ladies’ shopping gala. A few years ago this Patoa district was in the outer wilds of civilisation, the unsettled frontier; a region of rich promise, but risky to live in. Now wc are a settled people, with farms and homesteads in prosperous abundance ; most ot them freeholds clear of mortgage, carrying heavy live-stock that can fatten right through the, winter. Some of our farmers are setting up as landed gentry, leasing their hind at a rental, and living like old-country lords on the profit thereof. They will he emblazoning their buggies with family crests ; and it will soon be difficult to prove they did not come in with the Normans. Tom, Dick, and Harry have had their day on this coast. Tom has been made a baronet; Dick is a Lieutenant-Colonel; and Harry has blossomed into an Esquire and J.P. They don't manage these things better in France, not theyYour colonial who has been a digger, and then a drover, and later a publican, and latterly a settler, and lastly a lord of many acres and a J. P., sitting in judgment on other men’s sins—thats the colonial “ gentleman,” the aristocrat who came in with the Conqueror, the West Coast Nabob. He has studied and mastered the gospel of getting onHe is the head of a new branch of the old family. He still hob-nobs with those companions of his youth, the diggers and drovers, but their ways arc no longer his ways. His ambition is to fo.-ud a family, to be a member of the new squatocracy. If he can't be an Earl or a Duke, he is at least an Esquire and a J. P, to boot. He might, he says, he an M.H.R., but that’s common and shady ; and the least ho can accept in the way of colonial honors is an appointment on a Royal' Commission, or ho might consent to be a colonial peer with the title of M.L.C.