THE TRAVELLER AND THE BELLS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1019, 19 October 1882, Page 3

THE TRAVELLER AND THE BELLS.

An amusing story comes to us from a Hotel not a hundred miles from the Octagon, says a Duncdin paper. It appears that a wealthy invalid tourist, who had been fairly driven out of (jhristcharch—in which he had proposed remaining some months— by the incessant, discordant jangling of the Cathedral bells, arrived iu Dunedin by the express, and proceeded

I to take his ease "t. i'is inn. He was just i settling down to a comfortable dinner, and congratulating himself on his escape from campanologied torture, when from the Town Hall clock the quarter was | chimed. At the first note he turned i pale, at the second the knife and fork I dropued from his nerveless grasp, at the third he seized the astonished waiter by the throat and shook him like a rat, at the same time making brief but pungent quotations from various Pagan writers. Then the momentary chiming ceased, and the outraged traveller paused, breathlessly. Sil'snce was restored, the waiter was released, mutual explanations followed, and a few minutes afterwards he might have been seen treating- himself at the bar to a drink for which he tendered iiave a sov., at the same time confiding to the barmaid, in strict confidence, that 'he (the tourist) wus a rum'un, but a reg'lar brick.' All this has its intensely ludicrous side, but also its serious one. We have heard of dying people tortured in their last moments by the fearful din of the bells, of houses rendered uninhabitable, and of business seriously interfered with. If the good people of the City of the Plains could realise the immense injury done to their interest, if onlyjby driving travellers out of the place, they would take steps to stop the nuisance. If a mandamus cannot be obtained there are other ways which if illegal, are at aU events effective —a sledge-hammer, for example.