DOMINION NIGHT.

Evening Post, Volume 27, Issue 77, 27 September 1907, Page 2

DOMINION NIGHT.

■ ■ ■» CONCLUDING CELEBRATIONS. THOUSANDS IN TOWN. LIGHTS AND SHADOWS. Whatever the people ( of Wellington thought about the arrangements for Dominion Day, they were of one opinion about the programme for the night. Everybody — father, mother, and the baby — considered it a duty to invade the city to^ see the lights and listen to the bands. Again the unfortunate cars groaned and creaked with their tons of palpitating freight, and long before eight o'olock torrents of humanity surged around the places where electricity flashed out the Dominion's pride in itself. The lights drew the moths in myriads, and the multitude principally trekked towards the Government Buildings, where the torchlight procession was due to begin. The marshal (Mr. J. Moore) had some difficulty in rallying the forces, and the impatient folk who seethed in the streets commenced to become fretful. However, by 8 o'clock, the serenaders stepped out — the veterans, the troops in their prime, the cadets, the Fire Brigade, ana various bands, a blaze of light and a blare of sound. At' close quarters the procession did not greatly impress adult eyes, for the torches were sparse in proportion to the xnarcherS) but children were delighted. Indeed, the whole nocturnal street celebration was something rather to delight the little ones, and the elders who could become children for an hour or two and be all the better for it. At a distance, when figures were blurred and only the lights were visible in a great serpentining glow, the spectacle was something to give even a misanthrope a momentary thrill. Viewed from the top of a car by the Post Office the lights trailing through Willis-street looked like a great stream of molten iron oozing from a mammoth furnace. This illumination, moving and fixed, was one of man's ways of expressing his joy. Putting on his "store clothes" was one, and he had been doing that all day ; making a noise was another, and ne had done plenty of that, and was prepared to do more. - By the time that the procession forded a passage, to the Town Hall, it was almost 8.30, and there was scarcely a square incb/'ol' pavement or roadway that had not" some foot upon it. It was a rolling tide of faces, with the mighty waves sweeping as far as the eye could see. When the torches were lowered everybody tried to get into the Town Halt. Everybody *iad already been making tHat endeavour for an hour or so, and, naturally, the vast building was packed. Two pr more people tried to make themselves comfortable in a spot designed to receive only one, and ultimately the rush for admission became so desperate that the police and a detachment of the Permanent Force were obliged to thrust back the populace by main force and humour, and finally everybody said everybody else was 4 very good fellow, and thus the festival went the way of al l good festivals/