their bereavement wonderfully well - I send you back the copy of the letter written by one of Mr. Gillies' Tauranga correspondents with a minute of my own Mr. Norris is the writer a cousin of mine and as big an ass as you would meet in a days journey - I wish I had seen this letter a week ago I would not have paid him his road account. The very best stroke of policy we have pursued with regard to the Mangorewa forest road is stigmatised as ''mad folly on the part of the Government'' by this wiseacre. If we had allowed the thing to rest we should never have got the work done and all our political standing enforced by our late successes would have gradually declined and the ''mana'' of the King etc. would have been thrown in our way as barriers to progress.