TACTFUL “WAITS.”

Waipukurau Press, Issue 4, 5 January 1906, Page 2

TACTFUL “WAITS.”

The outbreak of wrath throughout New Zealand at the carol nuisance on Christmas Eve seems to have become almost uncontrollable in Christchurch, judging by the correspondence called forth on this topic in the “ Press.” One individual lets loose a flood of sarcasam that is cheerful reading. He calls attention gratefully to the charming tact and delicacy which governed the selection of the items performed by a band of marauding “.waits.” “ Shortly before midnight,” he says, “ our slumbers were broken by the strains of ‘ Christians Awake, Salute the Happy Morn.’ A mode of address which I am afraid my frame of mind oid little to justify. The next number explained the object of the visit, ‘Hark! the Herak. Angels Sidg,’ being the injunction laid upon us. Harkening carefully to a ’ performance which 1 should have otherwise described, we were next invited to experience, ‘Joy! Because the Circling Year, Brings Our Day of Blessings Here ’; but a moment’s reflection was sufficient to convivce us that, as we were not the singers, the charge of inappropriateness, somewhat hastily advanced, could not be sustained. The motive of the next item, ‘ Let Saints on Earth in Concert Sing,’ was somewhat obscure. No objection has ever been advanced against this suggestion. Such criticism as has been evoked has been directed against performances which from more than one standpoint have failed to come within the scope of this appeal. The next number was, perhaps, the least successful, ‘ Let Our Choir New Anthems Raise,’ and possibly its reception was responsible for the suggestion involved in ‘Art Thou Weary, Art Thou Languid, Art Thou Sore Distressed ? ’ vvhicii elicted a warm response. It was at this junction that the performers p ] aced themselves com pletely en rapport with their audience by their sympathetic rendering of ‘ The World is Very Evil, the Time is Waxing Late.’ Discovering in the applause which greeted,this selection a demand for a further exhibition of their talents, our visitors glided at once into ‘Oft in Danger, Uft in Woe,’ and the succeeding line, ‘ Onward Christians, Onward Go,’ was given with unmistakable fervour by the audience. Unfortunately at the opening strains of ‘ Christians Seek not for Repose,’ our bulldog broke his chain, thus terminating a performance which may fairly be said to have supplied in tactful discrimination whatever it lacked in other directions.”