LITTLE PEDDLINGTON.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 273, 15 May 1912, Page 4

LITTLE PEDDLINGTON.

.'Recently the Waimate AVitness, pubSished at Manaia, launched out into a haughty and dignified protest against anybody else being allowed to look at the moon, or count the stars, or bathe their feet in the 'briny ocean, these luxuries being reserved by an all-wise Deity for the sole .delectation of the Witness. A gentle fit of hysteria, marked by a superabundance of wellscattered adjectives, resulted in the production of the following delightful commentary, which we cheerfully reprint:— The wild cat scheme of tramway connection between New Plymouth and this district was not mentioned during the discussion on railway matters at Wednesday's .meeting of the County Council. It is regarded merely as a poor kind of joke. The fact is, 'New Plymouth can never have any interests in common with this district. Also it is the chronically sick town of Taranaki. Like the late lamented Micawber, it is always "waiting for something to' turn up." It lived for years on visions of an iron sand boom, and now it has a couple of mineral squirts that cough up intermittently a little liquid of disputable identity, and a mud and boulder hole on which a large amount of good money has been fruitlessly spent, and which ail the wealth of the country could not make a tenth-rate harbor of. As a port it can .never be of any use to the producers of Southern Taranaki. Stratford, Eltham and, Hawera have grown and attained positions' of solid prosperity. The other place is merely Dog Town, and when the line is completed from Stj-atford. to the Main Trunk its last hope disappears, and it can then at any moment put up the shutters and make away with itself in its alleged harbor. Probably, if the Waimate Witness were to swallow some of' the product of the mineral squirts that "cough up intermittently a little liquid of disputable identity," it would cease to suffer from indigestion of ideas, but as its vigorous protest against the very existence of New Plymouth was probably prompted by. a desire .to benefit the whole of the community its very summary sentence of our tiny hamlet and the little pool of water that we call a harbor must be accepted with, a good grace. We have recognised that New Plymouth and Wellington and London and Timbuctoo and the South Pole are only suburbs of Manaia, and that it is. the business of the-Waimate Witness to warn the Czar of Russia that lie must not get cold feet, and to instruct Dick Arost how to feather -his sculls, but we did hope that our own little delinquencies and shortcomings would have escaped the argus eyes of this Thunderer of Little Peddlington.