ALEXANDRA.

Tuapeka Times, Volume V, Issue 359, 27 May 1874, Page 2

ALEXANDRA.

(Tattie Editor.) . , ■ [ljeld over from our last] Sib, —Winter has at last set in with great severity, and thf; fine old couple who keep everlasting watch over the Dunstan Plat have donned their winter garments. / The Old Man and Old Woman " as they are called here; but I suppose in the sacred records of the Survey Office they are designated by some highsounding name of which I have never heard. Although there has. been little news from Alexandra, "she is not dead, but sleepeth," which she is somewhat apt to do, except on great occasions ; hut her pulse has been somewhat quickened and her latent energies aroused by a lecture delivered in the Library. Hall on the. 13th inst., for the benefit of the library. The lecturer —Mr. Fergus, District .Engineer of Cromwell —quite took his audience by surprise. The fire; of his eloquence and /his pathetic appeals to the noblest sympathies of our nature made an impression which,will,not,be easily forgotten. His subject, •' Hammers and' Anvils," he treated in a masterly style. He commenced with the Druids,'and singlod out the g.Jfcfc intellectual hammers of ancient/and modem times, and the benefit the world nad received from their welding. Mr. Fergus is only a young man, and if his enthusiastic admiration, for goodness, purity, and genius withstands, the blighting- influence of the colonial atmosphere, we may safely count on him as one of the rising stars of Otago. The school squabbles still continue, although in a less virulent form. A deal of amusement was created lately by the School Committee demanding the possession of a sewing maulihW purchased for the use of the girls. The! original fund, I believe,.was derived from a lecture delivered by Mr. Pyke several years ago for their benefit. The fund was augmented by the sale of embroidery and subBeriptions to the amount of £15^ Why the Committee should be so anxious to gain possession of it I cannot say ; but the reason they did not get it was that the late Committee sold the donkey, the property of the children, and bought a cooking stove for the teacher with the proceeds, and £12 which was collected to give prizes of merit to the children was handed over to the School Committee (by some of the ladies), with which they purchased a stove for the school mistress, so it was feared that in some of their too generous moods the Committee might sell tha sewing machine and purchase a rocking chair for either of them, not that any one would object to the presentation of the article aboro mentioned if not purchased with moneys col* lected for the sole use of the children. The Committee this year are the cream of the community, as. before stated, and are doing there very heat for the children; and among other good things, they have erected a swings but with a strange fatality for spoiling even a good thing, peculiar to. Alexandra, instead of beiug erected inside it is r outside of the fence; and as it is common property for the use of both bays and girls, it can easily be imagined it is a bone- of contention. I was am.used the other day in watching two great boys on the swing at once> while a little fellow kept a bevy of girls at bay with a stotte in bia hand; and as he walked round the. .charmed circle, he looked, and, I suppose, felt, a miniature Lord of Creation, while' the little girls went timidly away. I suppose it was his first leaeon in colonial courtesy to the fair sex; But there are more serious objections to- the swing being common than those abovementioned. The Education Board maiea the reading of the Bible and prayers imperative on the teachers, so, I think, should th« separation of the sexes during play hour 3ba made imperative an School Committees—at least near all schools an enclosure ought' to he provided where girls could take refuge. I think parents' indifference to the welfare of their children' prevails,' to- a great extent, in all up-country districts. A gentleman in passing through Cromwell a short time ago, asked a girl of twelve summers, the daughter of a local magnate, why she was not at School* She very promptly- repUed^he could not attend School, aa. the big boys treated her so-roughly. The Editor of tha "Crom* well Argus " mentioned some time age that " A Mother," whe- writes so persistently to. the Tuapexa Tiitss, ought now- to- be satisfied. I think if the "Argus** Bad persistently exposed the sanitary condition of the township, instead; of hiding it,, it would not have been necessary for the Government ,to send a learned' doctor all the way from Dunedin to expose it for them, not onlv^i the " Cromwell Argus," but in every newspaper in New Zealand; or, if the Town Councillors had displayed the same energy in supplying the inhabitant* with pure water, ftS-they did in getting their Mayor made a J.P., the mothers of Cromwell would not have to, mourn their dear little ones, bow lose to them for eTer» Indeed, it was while* watching by the pillow of an apparently dying child prostrated by % law fever, engendered by the sanitary condition of the School, that a vow was registered that for the future if ihf father* would not expose existing evfl&t then " A Mother " mutt —a vow, lam hapj^v to. say, which has been most persistently kept.—» I am, 4c. a MorauHfe AJtfsandra^ May 17* •