ANOTHER MEAN THING FROM TARANAKI.

Observer, Volume 6, Issue 141, 26 May 1883, Page 147

ANOTHER MEAN THING FROM TARANAKI.

A correspondent -writes : — " Some twelve months ago the body of John King was found on the beach at the mouth of the Henui Eiver, and an inquest held in due course. When the hospital steward and the sergeant of police were putting the corpse in the coffin, previous to interment, it was found that owing to the body having swollen it would not go in the coffin, so an overcoat found on the body was taken off, the above mentioned gentlemen philosophically concluding that as poor King was in all probability gone to a place where overcoats are not needed, it was not a matter of necessity that the coat should be buried with the body, so it was thrown on the rubbish heap to be burned. Now, a certain poor old man,rejoieing in the name of Mick, was in the habit of visiting the hospital to receive any little thing from the kindhearted stewards-p erquisites. During one of his visits he spied this old coat lying on the duot-heap, and having obtained permission from the steward to take it away, he bore the prize homeward. The coat was in a very dilapidated state — as it was proved at the inquest the body had been in the water several days — and, in addition to being very filthy, was rent it twain from top to bottom. Now, Mick's wife, being a very industrious, hard-work-ing woman, saw at a glance that out of the dirty article brought home by her husband she could make a coat to keep him warm during the winter. So she took it, and scrubbed it and gathered out the filth thereof, and put new buttons on it, eet., and she looked forward to it lasting Mick for some time — but not for Joe. The poor old fellow wore the coat down town one day, when, at the corner of a street, he was pounced upon by a burly gentleman in the auctioneering line, and asked " Where he got that coat from ?" Mick, fearing and trembling, told him The gentleman of Falstaffian proportions said, " I thought so ; off witli it. That coat was bought of me by King eighteen months ago, and was not. paid for." Poor old Mick gave up the coat without a inurmcr, and steered for home a sadder and coatless man. This act of vandalism was committed by a gentleman, whose Christian name is Joseph, and hailing from a place to fcho north of New Plymouth, where the inhabitants are for the most part divided into two classes— those who have waxed fat through their roguery, and those who, through their misery, are attenuated and skeleton-like. History does not repeat itself in this ease, for poor Joseph now wears the dead man's coat himself, which is black; while poor old Mick rambles about in a coat (from many patches) of many colours. «t»