JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN JUNIOR.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 96, 15 October 1915, Page 3 (Supplement)

JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN JUNIOR.

POM ANTIC INCIDENT AT A CITY GUILD MEETING.

Mr. Austin Chamberlain took his little son Joseph to the Hall of the Ancient Company of the Cordwainers to witness the swearing-in of the Master, Colonel Sir Charles Wakefield, who is to be Lord Mayor of London next year. At the same time Mr. Chamberlain presented a piece of plate from himself and little Joseph to the company to commemorate the late Mr. Joseph Chamberlain's connection with the Guild. Making the presentation, Mr. Austen Chamberlain said: "It's the hope of my son and myself that you will accept from us a piece of plate in memory of his grandfather and my father, and of his connection with this company. My grandfather's great-gi and • father joined the company in 1739. From that date down to the present time there has never been a moment when at least one member of our family had not his name on the rolls of the company, and from 1766, when the lirst of them was elected to the court, up to the year 1874, when my grandfather died, only three years passed in which you will not find the name of Chamberlain included in the list oi members of the court itself. " I think so long and close a connection between any family and the company cannot not be common. It is a connect'on which my father valued, which I value, and which I hope in the days to come my son also will vain* and continue. We now ask your acceptance of this piece of plate in memory of the greatest of our name." The Master, Colonel Sir Charles Wakefield, in accepting the gi r t, t/iid the name of Chamberlain would lire us long as the Empire endured, and t!ie manner in which the gift was made gave the needed touch of the picturesque to the story. "That you should have brought your little boy adds to our pleasure,"- he said; "but it does more; it adds significance to an action in itself charged with significance. It will help to give him a glimpse—which may well last through his whole life —of the veneration in which we hold his grandfather. We in these companies have it brought home to us that we are but trustees for the future."