TWO TALES OF A CITY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume xxix, Issue 7543, 20 July 1908, Page 4

TWO TALES OF A CITY.

WELLINGTON BY NIGHT.

1 The dreamer is on the heights of "The" Terrace, lounging on a balcony, with enough moonlight to allow him to see the smoke curling up from his pipe. The stars twinkle to him a message that this is the best of worlds, and corroborative evidence is given by the easy chair and, the good tobacco, "and it is a lovely 'city," he muses, "in spite of the stucco, happily blurred, and the barn which is said to be an art gallery." His eyes feast upon a garden of lights —a haze of white lillies and daisies, red poppies, and anemones, gently stirred by the light night wind. His eyes half close with the delight of it,^ and he opens them to rest on the dark hills which girdle the shining sea; and his gaze drifts to the sable shoulders of Mount Victoria. He sees not the jamtin, the dark-green bottle, and the decaying boot upon which night has mercifully thrown her mantle. Only the glorious contour conies to him, and the lines, dimly limmed against the dusky blue, thrill him.

His glance drops to the shore, and he 6ees a great fi re-fly whirling and buzzing by the sea; the red and white lights of the car dance upon, the little waves more airily than ever fairies trod the green, and the dreamer has a reverie about it. "Wonderful world," he sighs in deep content through his smoke. He sees not the rubbish on the beach nor the water rate' holes among the rocks.

A deep whirring chorus comes to him, and his gaze shifts languidly to the middle of the baj. It is the music of the Maori's turbines; she is the prettiest fly of all; she is a beautiful monster with scales of silver and gold, one eye a ruby and the other an emerald, and the water falls away from her in lace such as the mermaids wear (co he dreams). The melody of the engines is an inspiration to him. He has a mad longing to bo a dictator on the bridge, ordering a course, under forced draught, to No Man's Land. Back he comes to the practical, to the machine, to Power, to man, to New Zealand, hustlinfT and bustling, to the great body of this country, with Wellington as its heart, and he a drop of blood in the vitalising organ. The glory of it fires his fancy. He feels lyrio, epic. If he had only a pen at this moment, how he would write, and the citizens would bring a crown of laurel to him. But it is too much trouble to stir; the divine afflatus goes off in pipe emoke.

THE OTHER PICTURE

In Te Aro a stroller peeps into a Little Bethel, and he sees one pale sweet face among half a dozen, reddened and coarsened by liquor. The pale face belongs to a woman, the red ones are'owned by men. Infinite patience and pity sit upon the brow and the lips of the woman, and • her eyes have the tenderness of a mother's soothing a wayward child. The men are disposed to sing songs after their own heart, and to have horse-play with one another, but she calms them. It is a nightly scene. Some of the actors vary; the red-faced ones change, but the palefaced one never deserts the boards.

A little further on two or three ragged children with piebald faces (the motley is due to grime) play about on the footpath, very cheerfully. It is long past the bedtime of all youngsters who hope to have stalwart frames, but there is no place for them at home yet awhile. Probably they belong to an overcrowded tenement, and ore sent out to save the nerves of other inmates of the house.

A European plunges into a Chinese establishment, and comes out with an armful of washing, wrapped up in an old newspaper, and is mildly "chiacked" by a few youths, propped* up under a verandah, expectorating oft the sidewalk. Everybody seems to be in the streets—men, women, children, of all ages; every night, appears to be a Saturday night in Te Aro, The unkempt

children, the loungers,, the lights, th« buzz of voices, make the area like a patch of London.

Two detectives flit by—they generally hunt in couples at. night—and •they take stock of the groups which they pass. They,take a turn through Haining Street, where shuffling figures are ever cringing about from one shuttered hovel to another, and they pass through other squalid lanes, with their well-trained eyes quietly on the alert. They pause at one or two hotels where "crooks" are known to congregate, they rapidly survey the individuals at the bars, and are quickly gone, with a mental photograph of the faces.—The Post. . ' . ■ „. •