THE WEEK, THE WORLD AND WELLINGTON.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3007, 2 October 1908, Page 7

THE WEEK, THE WORLD AND WELLINGTON.

(By Frank Morton.) I

Shmmer! I don't know what the temperate in the shade may be; probably not much,\ stated in mere degrees of heat.; but after the long and clammy winter, after weeks of alternating bleak and smiling spring, the weather seems almost torrid by comparison. The ladies (since to call ihem women in Wellington is aceaclv inei.lt, they shall be so styled)—the ladies are afoot in white apparel. The little girls are cheerful and spry as terriers. The street-loaffrs look on one with eyes of whimsical pleading, as who should say, "Whisky, for anguish of the solstice!" The very cir-conductora are of an unfamiliar, tolerant urbanity. I saw men on the wharves working joyously, as tnough they were making hay, and every morrent expecting Jfhyllis to come dimplir g along with a gallon or two of orown October There is new cordiality in the atmosphere, a new lilt in the pulse of commonplace events and persons, a new glamour in every familiar glow. I {who love a fire at all season?, as a cat loves cream) am sitting: in my shirt-sleeved by an open window, it is absurd, of course; but every minute or two I seem to hear the drone of bees. The rote of summer's splendour on the town lies genial and gracious like a' flush of sensuous music on some perfect sea, or like the shimmering vesture of tome fond and winsome bride who laughs from out her heart , to find her love so "joyous and her hope so richly fruiting to her Miul's delight. And oh, la-la! la-la ! I'm a dry as dust journalist slipping dangerously on toward a perilous age, and I feel;as frisky as a colt. I'm so poor that I am unable to buy five thousand excellent things that I really need very much, and I Veel as rich as a tropic sunset. It's surely very ridiculous; but for the life of me I can't help it. I'm going to tell you something. If \ you want to see Wellington to the be3t advantage, come< and look at it on such a day as this. It stretches away f-om my window generously fair. The hills about it are gloriously pround and sweet. The very harbour loses all defacement of the big swart ship 3, and lies as blue and )i-ipid as the eyes of Amaryllis. Jiw,!ay up ynnder above the blue Itl ink that the grave archangels are smiling brotherly encouragement to striving finita souls like me and you. For once life's page ia printed in a shining gold, and all the illustrations are delicious. Politics, Business, >Care, and Trouble—these things seem to ba iiko figures in a remem-

bered nightmare one suffered once when one was very sick. The ugly ithrngs are all expunged for a moment by a dab of pleasant illusion. "NeW' from Nowhere," that book of William : Morris', the most joyous dream of Socialism that ever got itself expressed, must have been written in this sort of weather. Anyhow, it suits this Eort of weather excellently. If you have not read it, there's a pleasure awaits you. 1 am reminded of the fact just now be,cause the other yesterday afternoon I .heard a Socialist address. It was vdown at the Queen's Statue, apd the speaker was the good chap Robert Hogg. I' love to hear an intelligent Socialist, if only because his theories are so comforting. So far as my

knowledge of the Wellington crowd goes, Hogg is the most intelligent of them all. He is as incisive as he is fluent; and if smart talk could upset th«! old order, the old order would be ,already upset. The trouble about Socialist'talk is that it ia always choked with generalities. Thus, - Hogg, pitying the poor capitalist, explained that Capitalism kills in.teliuctuality. It does—and it doesn't. JHogg'-J point was good; but,he derive i it so hard that he blunted it. The > mehe possession .of money never •destroyed any man's intellectuality —a word I loathe, by the way. 1 The habit of money-grabbing is the igreat" destroyer. The man who • mean'y •crawls for money has no inclination to do anything else, and his soul suffers atrophy. But lots of capitalists have no reason to crawl. Lord Kelvin ia a capitalist, and Hogg would scarcely argue that Lord Kelvin's intellectuality is destroyed. Many men, born with ■ money, achieve greatness by its aid. Lord Salisbury, born with money, became a great statesman. Liptori, the capitalist, is in every way a greater man than Lipton the struggling tradesman ever was. Cadbury, born with money, adding to his wealth till he died, left-a n-ible record of service to humanity. Peahody used his millions to benefit the race. Even ±be gi-eat millionaires who are not .greet philanthropists are Soften intellectual enough.

Tel. 160]