THE WEEK, THE WORLD, AND WELLINGTON.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9090, 15 May 1908, Page 6

THE WEEK, THE WORLD, AND WELLINGTON.

(By Frank Morton.) One of the first things thpy told me when I came to Wellington was that I must attach no credence to the , slanders that derided Wellington as a dty of violent gusts. The people who told me this had nearly all been born and bred in this city; so that I supposed that they ought to know. They said that Wellington was not a windy place at all, "properly speaking." 1 believed them. I always do believe people who are serious and patriotic —good citizens with a high ambition to be aldermen. Nor, at the outset was my faith ohattered. The first day or two were of a quiet heat so suffocating and intense that my nope skinned, and I had pncklylieat for the first time in ten years. 3t was so hot that the indigenous trees fainted in the afternoons, and even ice-cream vendors looked disconsolate. It was so hot that the principal hotel actually laid in a stock of ice: a thing (I suppose) unprecedented in the history of hotel management in this contented city. I only saw the ice in the principal hotel one day: I suppose it melted so rapidly that the management lost nerve, and retrenched. During those two clays there was scarcely wind enough to move the whiskers of a fly. I told the citizens that the place reminded me of Siarra Le>ne. Not, you will understand, that I was ever in Sierra Leone; but msrjly because Sierra Leone seemed to be the hottest place I knew of, with the exception of the place it is not polite to mention in New Zealand. Happily, I had only had time to trj three cures for the prickly-heat when the weather changed. The thing befell in the middle of a palpitating night. I heard something fall with a bump; and when 1 got out of bed, I discovered that it was the mercury in the thermometer. I put my nose out o£ the window straight into the teeth of a blizzard. It was colder than a benevolent institution; and the wind (which, in my dmiple faith, took to

be utterly exceptional and abnormal) was so fierce that I was reminded of a dream I had two years ago—the dream that I was riding into the teeth of a snowstorm in an automobile that travelled 2,002 miles an hour. As the weather had been torrid for two days; there was plenty of hot water in the bathroom; so I took a bag of it back to bed with me, and thus narrowly escaped death from exposure. At nine o'clock, when I got up for breakfast, the temperature had risen •again, and the whole city lay under a blur of gentle rain. For some months we enjoyed every variety of weather and temperature quite a number of times, and those abnormal winds were so frequent that I felt quite annoyed about it. And that brings me. after inordinate divagation, to my point. I wonder if the poetry of motion is really -good for one. In Wellington, if one is shrewd and at all afflicted by nerves, one lives in a weatherboard house. That is in order that one may still have a place to sleep in if an earthqauke cornea along. But in this season—this curiously protracted season —of abnormal winds, a weatherboard house has peculiarities. At night your house swings and sways like a balloon in a cross-current or a politician of eminence waiting to see how the cat to jump., Ycu dream that you are singing "Rock Me to Sleep, Mother!" to an enrapured audience of the Crowned Heads of Europe, Asia, Africa, and Hokitika. So long as the actual motion doesn't make you seasick, (I am a good sailor, myself) you awake with quite a good conceit of yourself. Now, is this motion—this poetry of motiongood for one? I want to know. ****** Town continues very quiet, and money is tighter than it has been for some time past. I have been making some inquiries as to the alarmist rumorus one occasionally hears as to the difficulty of getting employment in Wellington, and I have decided that the rumours are without foundation. The men who can't get work in rare cases are the men who want to pick and choose, and are very averse from going into the country. There is plenty of work; but money seems to be less plentiful than usual. 1 am not a financial expert, and I dont' know why money is less plentiful. All places are alike to me, because I never had as much monoy as I wanted in any of them. ****** M. Briand, the French Minister of Justice, is about to introduce a Bill to improve the jury-system. If it passes, French juries will not only give a verdict as to the guilty or innocence of a man; but, in case of conviction, will also have a voice in declaring the penatly. I'm only a layman, and I can't see how that would improve existing conditions. If a judge found the verdict and the jury decided the penalty, it might be much better; but I suppose that is too much to expect. ****** The Wellington branch of the Navy League is still hammering away at its grievance. By hook or by crook, it wants to persuade the American fleet to visit Wellington. To a broadminded body like the Wellington branch of the Navy League, it peems 'orribly unjust that Auckland should have all the ships, and Wellington none. To me, it seems absolutely silly to think for a moment that the American Admiral cares two cents for the twopenny jealousy of Wellington and Auckland. Also, this pertinacity of complaining, when the Americans have already annouonced their intention, savours of querulous discourtesy to an invited guest. A little decent dignity is an excellent thing, whether it be in a league or a sweep.