MOUNT ALBERT HIGHWAY DISTRIOT.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXV, Issue 3643, 23 March 1869, Page 4

MOUNT ALBERT HIGHWAY DISTRIOT.

i • , DEPUTATION TO THE SUPERINTENDENT. In accordance with * resolution pawed at » meeting of the ratepayers of the Mount Albert Highway District, held at ths Whau Road Chapel on Friday afternoon last, tho following gentlemen waited upon hit Honor the Superintendent at 11 o'dook yester* day morning: — Messrs. Hooke, Kemp, Webster, Barnes, and Moßlwain. , , • , the deputation was courteously received by hu Honob, who begged them to be seated, and asked the nature of their business. ' Mr. Barnes then tendered to him the resolution passed at tixe meeting on Friday last, which ran a« follows :•— " That, in the opinion of this meeting, one deputation more shall wait upon his Honor the {Superintendent to see if he will haad over, or cause to be handed orer, to the trustee* of the Mount Albert Highway District all arrears of toll fees owing by the Government to the above district, collected at the toll on the New North Road." His Honor : You did not send mt a copy of that resolution. Mr. Barnbs : I am aware of that, your Honor ; but several deputations have previously waited on the Superintendent on the same subject, Hin Honob : If you would allow this to stand over a day or two till 1 can consult with my Executive I shall be able to give you a written reply. Mr. Barnbs : We should like to learn something decisive, your Honor, as the winter is now coming on, and the roads are getting very bad. His Honor : I cannot reply to this paper now. If you had aent it to me on Saturday-—— Mr. Barnes: We were here on Saturday, your Honor, and waited au hour and a half, but believing : your Honor was at the Thames we then went away. ' His Honor : Well, I was not aware of that. Had | you signified your intention to me of waiting upon me on that oeoasien, I should have endeavoured to be present. The proper way would havt been to have given me notice of your intention to meet me, and then I should have been here. However, if you will oome here at noon on Wednesday you shall have a reply. At the same time, Ina sorry to give you so much trouble, but if this resolution had been re* oeired by me on Saturday I could have given you an answer now. Mr. MoEi.wa.in : There is one thing I would like to see done, your Honor, and that is the toll-gate in question handed over to the Trustees of the Dis* triot. His Honor : The law will not allow me to do that. Mn MoElwatn : If the Trustees are men of trust, I cannot see myself why they oacnot be allowed to have the control of the matter. It is mere child's play, as the thing is going on now. His Honor : You must know, Mr. Mcllwain, that there is a law on the subject ; and I can't break it. If you will make a Council to repeal that law, then of course it is a different thing. Will you tell me of any body of trustees in the country that hold the turnpike gates ? Mr. Moßlwain: No; beoause they are all on trunk roads. His Honor : There is a law whioh hsu vested these gates in the hands of the Superintendent, and I can't do what you ask of n?e for that reason. Am I to break the law ? Mr. MoKlwain: Is there a law against your handing over this money 1 ? His Honor : That is another matter whioh I will reply to on Wed need ly. Mr. MoElwain : If there is anon a law, why waa not the money handed over ? Th j re was a petition forwarded on the subject to this office, and it was, I suppose, thrown iuto the waste-p aper basket. His Honor : You are wronsj. Mr. Mo&lwain : No, lam not wrong. Why was not that petition listened to and dealt with P His Honor j I again tell you you are wrong when you assert that the petition was thrown into the waste-paper basket— even after my denying such assertion. The petition wai dealt with as all petitions are, and forwarded to the Provincial Council. Mr. MoElwain : Then, why was it not attended to? Ais Honob : That is a question that you should put to your representatives in the Council. Mr. MoKlwain was again about to speak, when The Supbbintbndent said ; I shall not now enter into any personal controversy with you. I treat you with respect, and I expeot you to do the same by me, but Ido not think the language you have just uttered is suoh as should be given expression to. Mr. Moßlwain: I do not wish to treat your Honor disrespectfully. His Hohor : I do not think that you do, but—-— Mr. Mo El wain : If the Government is not responsible for this, who is responsible ? The ratepayers in our distriot raised £4,000 to make a road and a toll, and yet the Government gets the money aooruinc; therefrom. Mr. Whitaker, when he was Superintendent, agreed to pay certain money, and he did so like * gentlemen ; but after he went out of office lam sorry to say we only received £30— or, 1 think, £50. His Honor : The road you speak of was made be* fore there was a Highway Board in existence, and when I was in office the utmost farthing that the Government could spare was spent upon it. And with regard to the roads being placed in the hands of the trustees, there is a law vesting them in the hands of the Snix'iiutendent, which cannot be broken. With regard to the immediate object of your visit, I shall give you a reply at noon on Wednesday. The deputation then thanked his Honor, and withdrew.

Problem : Given the beginning and the ending of • letter, to gueu all the contents. It it a riddle almost *■ difficult as the old nautical joke, "Given a •hip's course and the height of the mainmast, to find the captain,* name." Some of our conquering countrymen have had a puzzling experience of this kind. The postal department attached to the Abyssiuiau expedition has broken down ,* letters have been unaccountably lost ; bags hare come to hand containing 'only a mass of pulp, or a collection of letters minus covers, and oovera minus letter*. The Post-office people are now taking steps to discover the addresses of the rarious fragmentary epistlts in their pussessiou ; lists are published, giving the opening and concluding words of each letter. As a consequence, there have been long lists of " Darling Bobs " and «• Beloved Freds," and it must require some coolnt s to say to a Post-uffioe olerk, " If you please, I'm the darling Bob referred to in fragment 593" It appsars that the letters home hare been mired and mashed in the satae way, go tt»»t the whole camp knows that they have amongst them an " ever faithful Tom," -who ha* «t home a •• darling Kate," to whom he " sends ft thousand kisses," One letter from home ends with "Susan and the kids send their lore." We can quite fancy that some endings must be strongly provocative of all kinds of emotions — snoh terminations »3 " I am however otherwise sjuite w«H, M the rest wanting ;or "The other children. are all right," the preceding part illegible; or "Let me know at once what I »m to s»y to him- ever jours," the reminder pulp. Tben two or three gentlemen may have "Susans" and "kids," and tight for the nearly unreadable fragment. It would be almost better had the letters been .utterly lost, for then it would only be » t ra- writing and great patience; now vexation in added, and the "general camp, pioneers, and -all," hate learned the sweet syllables of Amelia's . name, • with the sxact terms in which her devoted Bob addresses her. Nothing but the orowoiag victory of Magdala could have compensated ,the poor fellows for such a oruel yet comical catastrophe in oorrei-pondenoe.--2)a% Tdtgniph, , < Anew system of rose xmltare is now being practised in Europe, the principal points of which are to prune out all the old wood, to shorten the new w.ood a little and peg it flat down to the earth. ,- The rose is thus allowed: fa, bloom only oa the wooo] pi hit yew's growth, sJ|eot is ysry^bups, i f , < „ j