"HOME, SWEET HOME."

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 85, 11 April 1925, Page 14

"HOME, SWEET HOME."

PALACES AND SHACKS.

STRANGE DIVERSITY OF TASTE

TIN SHEDS AND MARBLE HALLS

Out at Muriwai there used to live an, old pensioner in what looked like a few sheets of corrugated iron arranged witli a minimum of trouble to shea the ram. I Design there was none. The chimney! was merely a couple of sheets oi iron, on end, and lapped at tho sides to make j a sort of funnel. The place lay in the j lee of a big flax bush, and as a further , protection against the gales that occa- ■ Bionally howl in from the west across J the Tasman Sea there was a wattle of ; manuka branches. Inside this strange structure was smoke-blackened. There were no windows. Piled high was a heap of old newspapers, which bespoke | the occupant a not illiterate person. | Within a furlong of the top of the clili's j the occupant was lulled to sleep every! night by the song of the surf. Year in and "year out 1 the old chap lived in his den,"rpiitc a happy old hermit. j And then one reads of tho f:ito of the huge pile down at Dunedin, known j as "Larnaeh'a Ca.stlc" which has sol many rooms and cost such a pile of pennies that no one ran aflord to live in it. They say the builder died an unhappy doath in spite of the wealth of j bricks and mortar, and carving and gilding upon which he spent a lifetime and a fortune. He raised such a pile that it was even too unweildy for a mental hospital, to which use the Government put it for some time. And such a use of it soems a strange, trick of fate to play on the planner; but tfate was ever ironic! Between these two extremes, the huddle of stray sheets of old corrugated iron on the cliff top on the shores of the Tasman Sea, and the costly palace that is a land-mark for miles round, down at Dunedin, we have an amazing variety of structures which all bear the magic name, "Home." When you look round and observe the immeasurable difference in appearance, comfort, and size of the dwellings of men, it seems impossible that the various occupants can all belong to the same race or the same 6pecies. And the odd tiling is that tiie house is no indication of the amount of contentment you will find inside. Most of us have dreamt that we dwelt in marble halls, but the average man would really much rather have a place where iho can put his feet on the side of the mantelpiece when he draws his chair up to the fire in the winter evenings and settles down to his book and his pip.;. This marble hall business is all very well in opera or the "Arabian Nights," but for every-day use most of us wish for something not quite so cold. A Strange Passion. Why men should raise gorgeous palaces and massy mansions when all that man really neede is three meals a day and a small bed at night, has never been solved, but it Qias been a foible of many great minds ever since some misguided people started out to build a j famous tower down Mesopotamia way As you gaze in awe at the mighty work of the Egyptians you are lost in admiration, but back oi it all you wonder why all that bother. Although the old Jews very rightly concerned themselves with man and his relation to the Deity rather than with material things, the passions lor something immense in the buildinn glimmered in David, and broke out in feolomon. All over the world it has been the same. In India we have a Shall Jehan who as a memorial of his loved wife, built whai is probably the loveliest building that ever rose from the earth And so we find these builders all over the world-black, white or brown. Psychologists have never gone much into the why and the wherefore, but no doubt passion!" a laW hehind this too Big to Live in. In New Zealand there have risen some costly mansions from time to time, but the palm is taken by Dunedm b castle, which has proved such a white elephant-for everyone, including the Government, into whose hands it eventually fell. Auckland can show some stately homes, but nothing quite so ambitious as Larnach's Castle and to-day most of them have become institutions instead of homes. Probably the most ambitioue home that was ever planned in Auckland-"was the pile know** as the Pah Farm, a great wooden structure built many years a<*o hy a former Superintendent of the Province, who was one of Auckland's leading lawyers. Planted finely on a hill at the back of Onehunga the place had a lordly outlook, and when the oaks, elms and other European trees grew up, the demesne was as good an imitation of one of the stately homes of England as one could expect on this side of the globe. After the builder left it was a school and a white elephant by turns, and now it belongs to a religious body that uses it as an orphanage. , A Noble Eyrie. "Kilbryde," the beautifully-situated home of the late Sir John Logan Campbell, on the once-picturesque,Campbell'3 Point, was another fine old mansion, and it contained some good timber ■work. And to-day if you want to find "Kilbryde" you would have to rummage among the yards of the housebreakers and the second-hand timber dealers. Sir John was eminently a builder, and it was the dream -of his early days to some day build a home for himself on the terrace of One Tree Hill, where now stand the tea kiosk of the park he so nobly gave the people of Auckland. That was his idea in planting .the fine mile long avenue of pines and" other trees that sweeps up to the,terrace from near by where his statue stands in Manukau Road. That avenue was to have been the drive to his ideal home built on the slopes of the ihill he climbed before Auckland was Auckland and the isthmus was a waste of fern and manuka scrub. Jt was a noble site, and emblematical of the noble mind that hit on it for his ideal ihome. But for the commonplace man these palaces are rather overpowering; he prefers to make his nest in something less ambitious. He would be content to stroll over the well-kept park and through the lofty rooms as a holiday xccreation, but is even more content to get back to his humble bungalow, where lie can dibble in the back garden, mow the pocket-handkerchief lawn himself, and take his meals in that friendly place "the living room," where he really feels at home, and would not change it for all the marble in the world.