MAJOR PEIXOTTO.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 539, 21 June 1909, Page 10

MAJOR PEIXOTTO.

A SKETCH. •■ Major Peixotto, of the California National Guard, who-"fathers"'the Californian Boys, nowin Wellington, is a picturesque person. Ho is a Major, and does not care who knows it. When he strolled down the Quay on Friday, apinst a background of miniature soldiers, fie might have been Prince Yolande, in charge of the attacking force in "An Englishman's Home," doing the real thing in this country. He wears the regulation dress of an American major, dark blue cloth, with gold braid round tho cuffs and collar, and a gold worked badge in front of a peaked cap. It does not end there. -He glories in a big cavalry sword, the electro-plated scabbard of which is a'dazzling sight in the sunlight. Of fine figure and handsome mien, with the hand clasp of a Sandow, he cuts a brave figure, and one'likes him at first hearing—in spite of his sword.. Ho loves the sunshine of honest dealing as ho loathes the muddy ways.of,,"graft,' l ,and ho walks the highroad erect, with the; sun'or rain in Ih'b face, holping.'the deserving and', aiding tho stTOggler -to higher things'. Major Peixotto is the first authority on amateur athletics on the Pacific Slope. The same old war! rages between amateurism and professionalism in America as hero, only much more so. 'The Major's battlecry is "Do it for the sake of it, not for tho money, it brings I" The Major says that -the boys had a pretty bad time. on the voyage/ between Taluti and Wellington, owing to the Manauouri being too small to accommodate them »11 comfortably. Added to this, the weathor very, bad, never- adhering; to the samo motion two" days in succession. About a third of their number had to sleep in the smoke-room, and about the deck in all weathers, so that, barring a deh'gbtful day m Rarotonga, it was not exactly the "sailing. on Southern sunny seas " that the poets sing of. The; Major "guesses" that the boys wcr « tickled it, 1 , death Voh toucliing earth: on l<nday morning.,