NO END TO 'EM.

Evening Star, Issue 8154, 1 March 1890, Page 3 (Supplement)

NO END TO 'EM.

TO THE EDITOR.

_ Silt,—My word ! Some people seem licensed to do as they like ! Not honest people. If they should happen, innocently, to do some trifling thing, ever so little awry, they’d get caught up like one o’clock. I suppose they need to train themselves in wrong ways, and study ’em out, so as to get wrong all through, before they can do much iu that line, without scrapes. What brings this notion into my head just now is the continued and determined way that white-and-brown cow and calf are loafed upon our invalid friend’s place the other side of the Valley. As sure as the day—and three or four times a day sometimes—the panel comes down, or the gate opens, and that blessed cow and calf hurry there as if they’d been kept starving to make ’em hurry there. And the females who go about after ’em have taken to tether the cow to people’s fences on the public streets, leaving the calf to wander anywhere. The cow tries to get after the calf, and I wonder the fence doesn’t come down with her pulling. And I think whoever those fences belong to ought to know how their property is being destroyed. I’ve been talking about it to our invalid friend. “ Loafing cattle are a great nuisance, a dangerous nuisance that ought to be put down,’' says she, “but the cattle loafers are a worse nuisance. People who arc dishonest enough to loaf their cattle upon other people’s property are dishonest enough to steal anything they can lay their hands upon. Their going about after their cattle is just an excuse tor prowling about to see what they can steal. In the eyes of the law they are ‘illegally on the premises,’ for they have no right nor business there. A while ago one of those cattle loafers, pretending to fetch his beasts away from wandering, stole a number of tools. Another, the child of a notorious cattle loafer, pretending to drive off hia cattle, carried off timber belonging to a division fence that was being repaired, and carried it off in broad daylight. “And,” says I, “ you can’t expect but that people who could skin their neighbors’ sections to build their own sod walls and gardens, and could shovel the screenings off a public footpath, would be mean enough to steal even a dishcloth.” "Anyway,” says she, “you can see who and what’s on my place and you’ll witness, for one, won’t you ?” ’ “ That I will, with pleasure,” said I.—l am, etc.. Spy Glass, Dunedin, February 26.