RANDOM SHOTS

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 70, 21 March 1908, Page 12

RANDOM SHOTS

BY ZAMIL

Some write a neighbour's name to lash; Some write — vain thought — for needful cash. And raise a dia. For mc, an aim I never fash— I v.-rite for fun. At the risk of '"arguing myself unknown," I may remark that I have never heard of !>,lr. Herbert Seaton before. But as I gather that he is president of the Kew Zealand Shopkeepers' Association, 1 merely move that the Auckland members of that enlightened body do straightway pass a, resolution strictly confining Hγ. Herbert Seaton. where he belongs. It seems tbat he has recently been on a visit to Auckland, and the contrast between it and Wellington has been quite too much for his sense of proportion and his judgment. Not that he thinks Auckland a nk-pr place than Wellington— quite the contrary. But the change has evidently been to very much for his nerves that he can hardly be accepted t> a serious witness even in his own city. Among other things he complains about the odour of Lower Queen-street — a scent that he insinuates is compounded , of sewage and fried fish—and suggests that the City Council should provide strangers with a scent spray for self-pro-tection. I may not be so sensitive as Mr. Herbert Seaton, but I would back Lambton Quay against Lower Queenstreet any day for a good rich fruity smell. But then a man who will tell you, as Mr. Seaton does, that "Queenstreet lacks tne brisk lively air of Wellington." must be sadly deficient in the faculty for accurate observation . I don't mean to be anything like as offensive as Mr. Seaton does, but really, Wil-lis-street and Manners-street and Cubastreet are very faint and dreary and distant imitations of Queen-street, and, of course, the chief reason that they sometimes look busy is that they are so narrow and crocked that half-a-dozen people and a cab are enough to block the way in any one of them. But the particular feature of Auckland life on which Mr. Herbert Sea ton's florid fancy has fixed most tenaciously is our tram service. According '.o the '■Dominion"' interviewer, Mr. Seat in was i quit.- charmed with the Wellington tram G-»rs v. ben he got back. Cht." own i:onveyanees he calls "the noisiest cars under the sun," which may be true of one or two antique specimens, hut is a ludicrous burlesque of fact when you apply it, for instance, to the new cars running on the Ponsonby line. And then the manners of the conductors!—really too shocking for anything! Now, I don't mind admitting that our tram service oc- I casionally breaks down, and that there I are several points about it which would be rapidly improved if only Mr. Walklate and Mr. Hansen would listen to mc. But I am more than a little tired of hearing the offensive and insulting language that some people make a practice of using about the tram conductors. I don't know 'Why, when a man starts driving a cab or-a tram, the general public should be supposed to assume that he has no feelings and no soul, and that everybody is at liberty to attribute the worst possible motives to him. I have heard people speak of cabbies as if they were always extortionate and untrustworthy. My experience of cabbies i≤ that if you treat them decently they are as a class a most obliging, patient, and considerate lot of men; and so with 'bus drivers, who have to put up with rather more stupidity and ignorance and selfishness than most men during their day's work. And as to our tram guards, I have always found them at least as well-behaved and kindly disposed as the majority of their passengers; so that if Mr. Seaton has fared otherwise, I am reluctantly compelled to believe that he brought ii on himself. Considering the tone of his remarks, I would not be surprised: I have always been afraid of that positively fiendish invention, the street toboggan, and though I am very sorry that its dangers have just been illustrated m rather a telling way, I hope that now somebody has got concussion of the brain, somebody else will try to put this nuisance down. I don't know of anything much more terrifying to nervous old ladies., for example, than the sight of these boards on wheels careering madly down the asphalte paths on some of aur steep hillsides. I must say that 1 have often stopped to admire "the skill of the _ young- "chauffeur" in steering, md using his brake, and the reckless •abandon' , of his crew. But there is llways the possibility of the engine of destruction getting a little beyond the drirer's control, and in that case I would jrefer to be on tne other side of the road. So doubt it is fine training for tight-rope walking or naval warfare, or any other jursuit that requires nerve and entails -isk of life. But the trouble is that these nachines involve risk of life to the inno:ent outsider, and that is where, I think, ie police ought to step in. I understand that in the South Island .here is a movement on foot—directed by •hat indefatigable philanthropist, Mr. H. ;. Ell—for the perpetuation of Maori i ilace names. Now I quite agree with | iim that as most of them are very musial, and all of them mean something nore or less descriptive and imaginative, t is a great pity to lose them. More- I ver, by keeping them we avoid the egre- ( sin into which our American cousins ell when they discarded native names I md called their towns Dodge or Pompey >r Brownville. But it is always advisable iot to carry a good idea too far, and I think that the limit in this particular aas reached, by a gentleman who wrote to the ■•Dominion" last week about a place he had found somewhere in Hawke s Bay. It is near Porangahau— tni, is meant to lead you up to i! nt \v .-and when it is called anything by the lathes ,ts name , s Tamataukakatan<n■■angakoauau. This, I presume i< & c respectful title employed by Maoris on terms ot formal courtesy with the place. What they call it -for short," t have not yet attempted to discover But 1 know Mr Ell would never consent to sur render that "alphabetical procession" S^ffi^me^-^neth^S oi my reverence for our aboroginal antiquities, I trust that out of consideration for our Post and Telegraph Department we may be permitted to call it something Hi Ward " would be better thaS i