PERSONALITY OF THE WEEK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 137, 11 June 1932, Page 8

PERSONALITY OF THE WEEK.

Among the best-known men in the North Island, Mr. Charles F. Bennett, estate agent and valuer, was born at Thames of pioneer parents in 1879. beNO. 343. came a dentist and practised his profession in Auckland for six years, was the first honorary dentist at the Auckland Hospital, holding'tlie appointment for four years. Defective eyesight compelled him to abandon his profession, and he established the business he to-day controls twenty-two years ago. He is keenly interested in politics, a remarkably effective speaker, and a notably happy controller of audiences. Mr. Bennett stood for Parliament in 1919, and was beaten by Mr. Savage by 500 in a triangular contest. He is well known in the General Assessment Court as an assessor and valuer, and is a J.P. He has served a term on the Auckland City Council and is a member of many trusts, including the General Trust Board and those of the Brett Memorial Home, the Childr<:n's Home and St. Mary's Homes. He is also a member of the executive of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce. He has made two extensive world tours. Hβ loves his garden. In . 1925! Mr. Bennett was chairman of the citizens' committee of the United. Orphanages' appeal, in which the Archbishop and clergy of all denominations took part. The appeal for the six orphanages took six months and the result was £22,000. ■ •

Much interest having been manifested by paragraphs touching the Beyers-Holtermann Hill End gold specimens, one has to admit one knew Beyers slightly, "DOC." and "Doc" Beyers, his broken-nosed son, much better. Like all Hill End youngsters of iimptynine years ago, Doc lived mostly with a rifle, for the surrounding roughness oozed wild goats, kangaroos, scrub and grey wallabies, blue flyers, black wallaroos, wild cattle, wild horses, 'possums, pinkies, kangaroo rats, kaolas and a breed of wild mongrels whose fathers were goats and whose mothers Merino sheep. Well, this young Doc Beyers was shooting kangaroos and other fauna away up on Sutherland's place, Gowan, with Cobb, and Somebody Else. Somebody Else stayed in the stringybark hut for a day to prepare the evening meal what time the gold hunters, wearing kangaroo moccasins, returned to the log bungalow. Somebody Else was in the dusk of the twilight standing outside the hut cleaning a rifle, his legs spread wide. Behind him stood the communal water bucket. Suddenly young Doc topped the rise close to the camp, sang out, "Look out!" put up his rifle, and ehot a hole through the bucket, the bullet passing between Somebody Else's spread legs. It is unnecessary to say that the two elders captured young Doc ami preached a little sermon to him relative to the heinous crime of shooting holes in the only bucket for miles and miles round.

The children sat around the more or less festive tea table, poised and eager to descend on the kai. "I wish," said their elder sister,

who is addicted to educaTHE tional pursuits, "y o u WOODEN SHOE, wouldn't scrape your feet. I've been listening to sixty pairs of boots and shoes scraping the boards all day." Then another adult remarked, "Ah, but my dear, they didn't wear clogs." Hardly the kind of thing young New Zealanders aro guilty of, but still there is a coal town up North where a Lancashire clog maker had settled. In short, in earlier times there need to be a deafening rattle as the children entered the Hikurangi School, for parents found that the clog was pur excellence th R kind of footwear to keep little John's or little Jane's trilbies dry and warm, a maximum return for a minimum expenditure. One has observed the wooden shoe in Auckland windows in remote streets, and one hae awakened in a Northern English manufacturing town wondering what on earth the clatter could be, only to discover that tens of thousands of pairs of clogs were pattering along the pavements bearing their owners to work. Very likely theVe are a few pairs of clogs here and there in New Zealand tramping towards the sloppy byres these juicy mornings. Soldiers who served in France* will remember the wooden sabots of Jean and Jeanette, the ideal footwear for the work the French peasant does. When grandpere dies he may leave his big old sabots to little Pierre, who, when big enough, w,y, stuff them full of straw and wear them for another generation. Even at the last they will boil the billy.