BEDFORD STREET.

Patea Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 1020, 11 April 1883, Page 2

BEDFORD STREET.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —Verily we of Patea are a perverse and crooked people, and our ways are equally crooked as ourselves. What with the bickering in our Council, the falling off of our means, and our doings in the R.M. Court, re rate collecting, dog tax, etc., outsiders must look upon ns as anything but a happy family. Even the approaches to our city are as winding as it was possible to make them. Onr railway, when completed, will be a monument of engineering skill and triumph over difficulties, such as swamps and timber staging, and the train, after winding its devious yet graceful course, something after the fashion of the great sea serpent, will, it is to be hoped, deposit -Safely its living freight at our handsome station. Last, though not least, that magnificent piece of straight road, the offspring of a great mind, cannot be got over without three or four different grades; still leaving the last portion near the top of the hill as steep or steeper than before. Why this hollow. in front of Councillor Aitchison’s villa residence should have been formed, unless for the purpose of displaying the architectural beauties of the building «ndl;the out grounds, I am at a loss to understand ! It was not shortness of material, as hundreds of -loads have been carted away ; nor was it to save labour,, as the roadway has been ploughed np,lclayed, and ploughed up again to obtain the graceful swoop the road makes at this particular spot, and which the kerbing now fixed shows to advantage, Perhaps lam - premature'. and like certain people, should hot nee work until finished, and the present kerbing may only be fixed temporarily. Yet from appearance, I should opine it is intended to be permanent, more particularly as the clay in the guttering is again, ploughed up. While on the snbject of Bedford-street, allow me to ask has the old. Bank of New Zealand been taken for a sale room ? as I,,observe outside on the footpath an erection something like an auctioneer’s rostrum, certainly an addition faut no improvement. We can only hope some future council with a taste of phrenology. will remove the bumps and excrescences that abound but do not adorn this otherwise handsome street.—Yours, &c., ' i n,. ; ■ -• W. Patea,-April 9. - ’