IN OUR PARISH.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 18, 5 March 1915, Page 5 (Supplement)

IN OUR PARISH.

THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN.

From the "Scotsman".

It was the old clerk, whose services and devotion to our parish I have previously written, who gave the biblical name to the little village that lies near the "boundary of the great city that is steadily creeping towards us, and ever threatening to engulf us. Its own name is singularly pleasant to the ear and redolent of running waters, but it is unnecessary to burden the memory with it. Thought it is now many years ago, I remember, as if it were yesterday, the first time 1 heard the word on the old clerk's lips. I was sitting warming myself by the fire in the ticket-collector's office.' The ticket-collector was ostensi- , bly waiting to collect tickets, but as everybody in our parish has a season ticket, that part of his'duty is almost r a sinecure. Thus it happens that the • ticket-collector has leisure, just before the ! .Jns pass through, to give his frier 1- the fruits of his researches in the realms of philosophy. That particular clay he was speaking of the changes he had seen. "I was brought up," said he, closing his argument, "on the Shorter Catechism and porridge. I dinna haud any longer by the Catechism, but I haven't lost my faith in porridge." It was then that the clink of coppers was heard on the sill ticket window. In the aperture was framed the face of the clerk, with the trimmed grey beard and the small twinkling eyes. He held three pennies deftly in } his thumbless hand." "Return, Sodom, , said he. The ticket-collector pushed back his cap, stretched out his right hand as if he were beginning to speak, then thought better of it. Out of his case, without a word, he produced a return ticket for Sodom, clinked it in his machine, and passed it through the window. The old clerk received it with a grim chuckle. Away below the bridge there came a rumble. "Train, said the ticket-collector, closing the aperture i with a snap, and making for the door. I And I have never forgotten the hoarse voice of the old clerk with an acid edge | to it as he clinked his three coppers, j saying, "Return, Sodom."

It is an amazing thing how within the circuit of the same parish, removed by one mile from another, there can live together two eras so remote from each other in the order of huhxyi development, as the world of the red-roofed houses on the slopes of the hills, and the .village at their base where the <r Rorge.w orn by the little river through the travail of immemorial centuries, debouches on the great central plain that runs across Scotland. Every morning the dwellers on the slopes are borne by the railway on a great span of arches over the little village, and they look down on the roofs of the houses. On the slopes there lies the worlfl in which the fringes of life are embroidered —a world where men and women talk of books, pictures, and plays. It is a world of hyphenated names. But in all the village there is not so much as one hyphenated name. It is a refuse-heap of humanity. Manv diverse races are crowded in it. The city father; clean out slums with out providing first for the sTum-dwel-lers, and. swept before the broom of socalled social reformers, homeless men and women have drifted to the village, and there reconstituted their slum. From the glens in the north broken Highlanders, driven out to make room for"sheep, have drifted hither to work in the quarries, and the speech of their children's children still bears the trace of their ancient language pure and clean over the sea Irishmen have come to map the harvest fields of the Lothians. and they have been deposited by the tide in the village. Stray Poles have come hither and straggling Czechs; a man from Connomara neighbours a shaggy giant from Lewis; and a dour s>oue°-cutter from Aberdeen is door by door with an Italian who sells what looks like a deadly mixture from a hand-cart. Here you can see humanity in its primitive state, before it began to adorn the fringes of life, and make for itself sanctuaries of privacy. Between the slopes and the base of the hill there yawns an invisible chasm. Centuries separate them. Thus it comes taht the slope dweller passes on the top of the arches, scanning his newspaper, without so much as seeing the huddle 01 houses which constitute the village. It is only a week ago tnat, like the • oi.l c'erk I too!; out a return ticket for She 'Cities-of the Plain." (For the oM clerk had a two-fold formula. When lie was goin" to one village he said, I Return Sodom," but when he meant " n"oto the quarries beside the village be -aid "Return Cities of the Pain. ' JSs to visit an old soldier that I thus descended into the plains. He lived in that rookery known as the -bar"ck,"_a rabbit-warren infested by inanv strange odours. He used to come no the slopes and do odd jobs, tidying lip gardens, and he loved to talk 01 "unhappy far-off things And battles long ago," in a language which I also could speak Sol fri to know him. And as I sat bv hi-; bed I heard a moan from the adjoin'n" room. It began in a low cry. •md then rose into a wail that seemed ,'hergcd with all the voices of humanity. The old man sat up in bed trembling. Tbi .-v of woe now changed into a ~;„„;,: other voices swelled it It was the act of n moment to open the door, ~"«] in th> dim landing find the door of S other room. I opened t and there T W three children huddled before a „./fe which contained nothing but ash- ,?! On an iron bed, stretched on straw, , '. n woman sunk m sleep. . . . A ootid air was laden with the fumes of „1,.„W . There was no food. . . . broken chair, a stool - two, and a i; ; t \ woman liroujr.it con! 1 fnn.l and the wailing was silenced. v'l r explained it all. The woZ, iernowin the I ': • | n the villas. They mod each ■'} ' " r nr new* Thev are depress- "' , M ;, n „ Puritan -the old =ol'y ~:-,. '. ■„, his bed, his campaigning ,u °' "' | j,,, spr. 1 - in;, of an under- '•;, | "; Hii ;.. ! nr t. Tl wrr: onlv poor nu- ' '••'',.... . overtaken bv thick dark*,,nTl , . ;.„..,. trying to open a wm- ''"'"' j'"! . ~".; the r.-'dm of sunshine. . • (l "'i i'i . t me out into the roadway and