STILL HALE AT 93.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 280, 26 November 1931, Page 14

STILL HALE AT 93.

MR. THOMAS HOLDER.

A VETERAN ARCHITECT.

SERVED IN NIXON'S CAVALRY,

It is rather astonishing to find a man in his 94th year taking a keener interest in the politics of the country than many men half his years. This hardy pioneer is Mr. Thomas Holder, of Claude Road, St. Helier's Bay. If it were not for his indifferent eyesight, he would probably be in the thick of it, but he has to survey the battlefield from the quiet vantage point of his sunny verandah. He says Sir George Grey was the finest statesman he ever met, and he regrets that we have departed from the great pro-consul's liberal ideas about the land, which ought to be free to every man who will use it. "They tell us that this is God's Own Country, and in that they are right, but they forgot to tell us that, we must obey God's laws, and if we had we would not be in the state of depression we are to-day," said Mr. Holder this morning. He has no patience with the present-day demand for speed and excitement, and he thinks we will never get back happiness until we realise that we were intended to use our hands and brains in good honest work. "Too many of us have got our hands in our pockets —or in the pockets of the other fellow," he remarked without a trace of malice; he merely wished to emphasise the fact that the desire to get rich quickly could only end in disaster for the individual and the State. Maori War Days. Born near Manchester in 1838, the year after Queen Victoria came to the throne, Mr. Holder was trained, as an architect, and in the spring of 1860 he landed at Auckland from the ship Caduceus, after a passage of 112 days. The country was on the edge of the Maori War in the Waikato, and like many other young men he shouldered an Enfield musket— a formidable affair, feet in length and heavy in proportion. Being short of inches, Mr. Holder did not relish lugging his elongated rifle and an infantry pack along the rigdes to the south of Auckland on sentry duty, and when recruits were called for Colonel Nixon's mounted corps he offered his services. The colonel looked the young Englishman over and remarked, "Just the type I want; not too much weight for the horse and plenty of activity in the man; I'll take you." When Mr. Holder joined, the corps headquarters were at the stables of the Criterion Hotel, Otahuhu, and he recalls that before the men were armed with the cavalry sword ("nearly as long as myself") they were supplied with pick and axe handles from the store of Mr. John The handles proved a useful weapon in the hands of the cavalrymen, and served admirably until the supply of swords came to hand. Soon after he joined up Mr. Holder met the famous von Tempsky, who had organised a force of Forest Rangers, all fine men and wonderfully well trained.* He .remembers that von Tempsky used to carry a long knife, which he held point up the back of his forearm, in which way it made a perfect guard against attacks from the deadly tomahawk, one of the favourite weapons of the Maori. The men of the Forest Rangers were specilly trained by their resourceful chief dn methods of defence against that nasty weapon in the hands of a crafty Maori. Horse Liked "a Drop." Much of Mr. Holder's duty consisted of carrying dispatches between "the front," which was then up in the vicinity of Drury—Symonds Redoubt, and Auckland. Nixon's force had stables at Papakura. The first horse Mr. Holder had when serving with the troop was a nuggety little animal which had some rather engaging tricks. One day he was carrying dispatches .into Auckland and pulled up at the Junction Hotel, Newmarket, as he was parched with thirst and hungry to boot. .He threw the reins over the horse's neck and went to hang them on one of the 1 hooks at the hitching-rail that stood outside every house of call in those days. But the charger would have none of it, and threw Up his head repeatedly. The bannan came out and laughingly said, "It's all right, sir, give him his head, he knows where he is." Mr, Holder .put the reins over his arm, and the horse followed him into the bar—a big, open place—as nonchalantly as the oldest toper in the town. When they got inside the barman took up a stone ginger-beer bottle, filled idfrom the beer pump and inserted the neck between the horse's lips at the side of the mouth. The charger swigged it off, and to his astonished owner the barman remarked: "Oh, he has often had a refresher here; the man you bought him from was an old customer of ours—and so was his mount." Reviving reminiscences of his services, Mr. Holder says he was not half as much afraid of the Maoris as he was of some of the ipakeha soldiers. One of the Irish regiments had a particularly lurid reputation. As an instance, he was riding into Auckland one day and on the road overtook a detachment of infantry with an officer in charge. "Stick close to me," said the officer to Mr. Holder, "some of these fellows would cut your throat for a drink." And Mr. Holder took the advice, as a public house was in the offing. Crimes were common in some of the regiments, and some of the men spent almost as much time in gaol as, they did at the front. After the war Mr. Holder resumed his profession as architect and ' for many years practised in Auckland. He is now living in retirement, and if appearances and a pulse like a young man of twenty go for anything he should have no difficulty in joining the ranks of the centenarians.