DUNEDIN LETTER.

Bruce Herald, Volume XXXXIV, Issue 57, 22 June 1908, Page 5

DUNEDIN LETTER.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

If I remember rightly, I concluded my last with a pious prayer. I use the word " pious " advisedly. All prayers arc not pious. Some ejaculations, though prompted by the spirit, have no kinship with the spirit of love or thanksgiving. Mine, I am glad to say, was one of thankfulness blended with humility. I did not lift up my head and my gown and my purse like the Pharisee of old, uor did I unduly abase myself. In plain English I expressed my sentiments on the recent Tnapeka election. They were brief and to the point. 1 said that I was heartily glad it was over, and, having said this, 1 read a short but appropriate burial service and putthecoipse beneath the sod. This, I submit, was not only a Christian but a kindly thing to do (I have known Christians who are not kind), and I received many congratulations on my first appearance as ah undertaker. Touched to the heart and warned by a sensitive though approving conscience, I bowed before these spontaneous tributes to my litness and shrinkingly accepted the small offering of silver that accompanied them (" I always make a reduction on a quantity ; obituary notices a specialty ") Alas! for my vanity, my swelling heart, and my enlarged head. How soon was 1 to bite the dust of self-abasement and to wallow in the mire of derision. On opening ott(j my evening sheet the Monday following the funeral obsequies I saw, printed in big letters among the late news items, three grim, ghastly, grinning words, mockingly obtruding themselves upon my gaze, " 'The Tuapeka Electiou !" A faint feeling came over me. Had 1 been an amateur actor I should have drawn my cloak around me and died gracefully. Being nothing more than a father and a tax-payer I merely groaned : "What, not gone yet? Can the dead come to life? Have the New Zealand undertakers, under the enneivating influence of an Arbitration Court Award, fallen so low that they can no longer postpone the resurrection of a bye-election ? Are we never to quit the Chapel, shout 'Great Scott' and blow our Horn in peace?" I looked at the small print; the subheading was too shaddery for words. "Was the election valid?" it asked. "Was it valid?" I muttered, "ye starry hosts above, ye divinities that ride the air and direct the storms ! listen, oh listen, to the inquisitive sub. ! He asks « Was it valid?' Oh, that the slave had forty thousand lives ; one is too weak, to poor, for my revenge." Truly, dear sir, I ask in all modesty and with due deference to the opinions of better men than myself, "have the dead a right to come to life again ? is it fair that a progressive country should be haunted with the ghosts of its own past ?" Steadily I read the letters, and as I read they seemed to move and threaten. "You believed I was a dead-head, a has-been, and a haswasser, did you ? Ha ! ha ! beware how you trille with serious things and persons again." And, as the message thus spoke, I quailed and quavered. " Begone," I feebly said, "thou canst not say I did it; never shake thy gory locks at me." Respite and nepenthe came next morning. The latest "urgents" cast doubt on the rumor; the Chapel sounded his horn and rallied the depressed Scotts. " Never fear, my merry men," said he, " like MacMahoii, I am here and here 1 stick. Chatto Creek can't move me. With my friend the Kaiser I say ' Jet 'em all come'.'" So, at this hour I rest content on that strong voice in a blatant land. The Doctor should know. He doesn't want another election (just yet); I don't want more speeches (at any time); and between us we may manage to restrain the voracious maw of a hungry press, _ But alas! poor me ! that election still is sitting, harder than it sat before, like Poe's raven that you've heard of, just behind my heart's front door_, and I'm frightenednay ! I'm certain, it will leave me nevermore.

From a bye-election to the drink traffic is a natural and an inevitable transition. One leads to the other. You meet the candidate on one side of the street and (before the election) he takes you across to the other. After polling day he is not quite so attentive. It was ever thus. The road to perdition is easy and the candidate who was pathetically anxious about your fifth (who is down with measles) doesn't even know you tire no longer a bachelor the month' after- So we cross the street and enter the hotel. Glancing up I note the words, written in a bold hand, " All hope abandon ye who enter here," (signed) G. li. Nicholls. I make inquiries of my guide He, very politely, informs me that his name is the Revd. William Thomson and that he has been instrumental in making every hotel iu Oiago more respectable and serious than a Sunday school. There was a time, he continued, when I must admit, hotels were not conducted on spiritual but spirituous lines. This struck me as_ an utter misconception of the use and object of an hotel. So I resigned my pastorate of souls and accepted the ollice of organising secretary of the reformed Licensed Victuallers' Association (at a reasonable increase in salary of course—the laborer is worthy of his hire, surely? and the higher you go the higher you pay—he ! he !) with the object of mending the holes in the characters of my clients." I looked up at him in amazed adulation. "Yes, friend" he continued—had there ' been two of us I am sure he would have said 'brethren'-possibly 'dearly beloved brethern '—"l was was pained to find how low the trade had fallen. It was distressing to one to learn that some people m Dunedin and Mornington preferred church on Sunday to an hotel on Monday. Here then, I cried, is the held of my future life work : here will I pitch my tent; here will I enter upon the contest and here, provided my salary does not fall behind, I will inculcate principles of true temperance, of good beer, pure whisky, and mild cigars. It is mine to educate the licensed victualler, to change him into a morol being, to make him regard the Act as something that must be obeyed and not like the ten commandments which are broken every day of the week if you feel so minded. Oh, my friend, picture the warm rush of delimit that thrilled my very being as I contemplated myself iu the guise of a regenerator of drunks, a converter of publicans and the universal provider of hard drinks to soft heads.". My guide paused for breath, wiped his forehead, looked at the man behind the, bar (who wore a button on which the letters' C. W.'JV were printed), murmured "Yes, (ill them again," and continued: " You were looking tit those words of the immortal Nicholls," he said, "as you came in. I am glad you did so, for this is the last day they will be seen there. They represent.the bad old days of wicked words of naughty men .and—and—l really feel ashamed—and of people who take too much! Ugh 1- (and he shivered quite nicely). But from to-Jay on these, shyare the Words that take their place." Ashe ■ spoke he drew from out His vest a roll of '\vhat proved-to he rich, white silk, deli- . Lcately embrolied iu gold, with a hand-

each corner representing an angel blowing a trumpet (? brass), while down the cenuc was a finely-executed text (no expense had been spared) which read: Abandon soap, and drink Speight's beer J "That," said he, as he took up a hammer and tacks, "will fix 'em." The next minute the name of the immortal Nicholls was, in the language of the poet, " non est." "But if you please," I said, as we left the cheery bar around which were distributed texts printed on beautifully got-up cards (money, as I have remarked, is not considered) coyly resting among glass decanters marked " port" and black bottles marked "whisky and pink slendernecked bottles marked " raspberry " "but, if you please" (the texts, I should have told you, were charmingly apropos, as for example: " There's no place like home," " What is man without a mother," "Neither a borrower nor a lender be," "No cash, no drink," "He who drinks once drinks well, he who drinks twice drinks better," "True temperance is to drink without getting drunk," "RememI ber the thirsty, you may want one yourself some day," and so on) "what do the letters ' C.W.T.-' mean on the button of the man behind the bar " —fine title for a song this—all rights reserved). My guide blushed and smiled and, as we stepped into the broad path that led from the door, lie whispered "Converted by William Thomson!" All of which may seem nonsense to some and mysterious to others, but which is only a condensation of the arguments and claims and pleas set forth by the secretary or organising agent of the Licensed Victual lei a in his letters and advertisements in the daily papers of this city. Mr ThomHoin claims that he has reformed the re ; tail trade, that drunkenness has decreased, that they want only good meu in the business, that they abhor a drunkard, that they like the moderate drinker, that bad language and dirty habits are an abomination to them, in short, that their way is the safe, the sure, the only way. They are the true reformers, the genuine temperance party, the haters of cant, the trainers of a noble and strenuous manhood ! And their claims are put forward boldly and unblusliingly. It is a direct challenge, a fair deiiance, an open charge. Whether the public who are not interested either way will accept the evidence and acclaim the challenger Ido not know. lam long since retired from the prophesying business.