OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 April 1939, Page 6

OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS

“MAORI MEMORIES” (To the Editor.) Sir,—l hope “J.H.S.”, the writer (uhder the above caption) of so many brief but intensely interesting historic surveys of- early New Zealand history as have appeared in your daily columns over a considerable period of years, finds someone willing to collate and publish the same (revised by him to meet the case), for genera] distribution during the .forthcoming Centenafy of New Zealand .period, if Ohly to recompense his zeal, if not his pocket, in the near octogenarian stage of his own remarkable pioneer career afnong both the Maori and pakeha residents of this antipodean area of British Empire settlement of which—apart from its well-merited. claim to be the brightest gem in the Empire’s crown—each and every colonial citizen thereof, high or lowly born, has every reason to defend, and be most proud. In one of his memoirs, our now familiar daily. guide, philosbpher and friend. “J.H.S.", mentioned the name of his own revered and familiar friend, “Hare Hbngf” (Mr H. M. StoWell), bf Wellington, a gentleman of gifat and pleasing personality and possibly one of, if not the greatest still living authorities oh Maori mythology, language and customs of the Maori race, apart from his own published Maori vocabulary which still holds pride of place in .this respect as well. Being a personal friend of Mr Stowell at the time Lady Fergusson was a student of the Maori language as a means of better cementing her remarkable friendship among, and admiration of the Maori people, her many vice-regal tours had brought into being, ere her• regretted return to Scotland, I could but feel I had been personally introduced to "J.H.S.”, as it were, on reading even the mention, by him, of “Hare Hongi’s” name! Perchance if this slight tribute of recollection of his genial personality ever reaches the eye or car of “Hare Hongi,” in this also octogenarian stage of his once illustrious quasi-political career, let it therewith be associated with the happy hours I have spent, in his upstairs hotel bed-sitting room, in Lambton Quay, enraptured by his recital of interpreted Maori folk songs, and even still. more magic-sounding violin! When, as already mooted by him, Sir Apirama Ngata (whose funeral oration to the memory of Sir George Grey, at the memorial service held in the Auckland Domain) still rings in my ears these forty years, ceases to stroll its friendly crowded thoroughfares, Wellington City will have seen, alas! the departure therefrom of another Maori notability whose predecessors—the. high-lineaged .and courteous and benevolent Te Heu Heu Tukino, M.L.C., Sir James Carroll, ox-Premier for a brief and memorable period of his always genial and cultured and statesmanlike career, not forgetting the clever Peter Te Rangihiroa (Dr Buck. M.P., now in America), and others—have honoured it by walking its very streets, and whose still-living (or departed) individual as well as collective memories will, in the hearts of its elder citizens, long survive! That each of these I have known the honour of once privileged friendship, is of no great import except to me, but enables me the better to say that any man who can do signal justice to manners, customs, and history of the Native race in the way your contributor “J.H.S.” is daily doing in the columns of your journal deserves, himself, unstinted praise, hence my own. if but feeble, contribution towards its trend! I am, etc, N. J. BENNINGTON, Masterton, April 10.