BY THE WAY

Evening Star, Issue 21316, 21 January 1933, Page 2

BY THE WAY

[By Q.T.]

“ The time has come,” the Walrus said *' To talk of many things.”

Although the, mayor has hut recently returned to the Town Hall to open his pile of Christmas and New Year greetings from vice-royalty and rearadmirals, most of us have, by now, swept from our mantelpieces and buried in boxes our cards adorned with horseshoes and swastikas, black cats, blue birds, and sanguine wishes for the future. The Christmas season takes an unconscionable time in dying, suffering the discomfort of artificial respiration from the lucky “mums” and aunties who won the five pound prizes in the art union. The Christmas spirit is buried, but the holiday mourning persists. Everything is slow—slow bowling, slow batting. Speed fiends are losing favour, and people are being congratulated on-giving up the motor car and allowing the horse to return to his own. Felicitations to the horse are mingled with pats on the backs of those Hampers who, disdaining vehicles, go on foot to admire the beauties of Nature. Rather than face the monotony of January, men as different as Spenser, Gibbon, and Sir John Moore turned their backs on the world and died. As at home, so in farthest India. where laws are being introduced to check boys and girls from seeking escape from the world. Legislators may not realise that the excitements of asceticism are a relief from January dullness. The only thing working at top speed is the “Lost and Found Column,” which is crammed with canaries, dentures, suit cases, spare rims, and tyres. Other things doing their best are the thermometer and the space between the flags at St. Clair. * * *■ * The end of January’s near, And all the multitude must come Reluctantly from here and there To what we sing of in the dear Old song as “Home Sweet Home.” Once more the neck must feel the yoke Or collar (take it as you please). One hopes the beastly thing won’t choke (It’s much too bad to crack a joke On solemn things like these). Once more, likewise, with many “ oh’s,” To carry out the metaphor, One’s got to put the suffering nose Against the grindstone, I suppose, Til! nineteen-thirty-four.

The motor trips, the camps, the hikes, The boarding houses, bad or good. The vftyagcs on ships or bikes, The doing of the things one likes, Must finish—as they should.

One’s skin, now tanned a healthy brown, Or burnt a fiery, blistered red, Will have to tone its brilliance down, Through many months of work in town, To pinkish drab, instead. Alas! that things should happen so, And pleasant nolidays should end! But work’s man’s heritage of woe. Besides, it’s good for us, you know, To work for what we spend.

Yet looking back along the line . Of pleasant January days, Bo thankful to the Power divine That all the month’s been warm and fine For those who love to “laze.”

Ami so we’ll take the sunshine back We’ve gathered, just to hold And use it to supply the lack Of brightness, when the winter’s black, And all the world is cold. * * * « “ God bless hikers,” says the Gover-nor-General, whereat we fain would drop a tear. It is not that wo feel the blessing misdirected. On the contrary. reflection on the country side in pre-hiking days and to-day must convince observers of the present wealth of colour on the highways and byways, of the diversity of types to bo seen there, of the laudable demonstration of the young to forego the use of mechanical means of transport in their recreation. We feel that these manifestations of life are surely worth a blessing, at any rate, from our rural population. How pleasant it must _be for these remote dwellers to see passing their fields the vivid scarlets, blues, and greens which mark the upper garments of the hiking community; and how amusing to criticise the effect of shorts, knickerbockers, and other variations of masculine garb ns sported by the female Hampers. No dusty, drooping swagger ever received the attention which is bestowed on these up-to-date vagabonds,

squares of chocolate with a fine ecstacy. I moved on again, and was glad of a lift after another mile. The country became desolate, and when the sea water came in sight at last, it idled through swamps and swamp grasses. Between Rahoutanui and the top of the Paekakariki hill, I had my first sight of the loveliness of the North Island bush, Wo passed by fern groves and trees wandering like cattle herds over the slopes. New birds watched us and flow easily through the leaves. Wo swept round the bends of the big Paekakariki hill at forty and fortyfive miles an hour. This happened to bo the first alarming lift that I had had. The driver rested at the top while I got out and watched the scene with a new astonishment. The air was so clear and bright that one could see the coastline laid out raapwiso right up as far as Foxton. There it was—a circlet of bays with a thin brush stroke of foam and sand, and in among the minute trees, scattered settlements like a child’s brick villages. Close on the left lay Kapiti Island, sometime Maori battlemented fort. It is now a sanctuary, and the fort is manned by the birds. Behind us, the sun shone on the Nelsdn hills in the South Island. We wore so high rip that the wave line seemed to be quite still, and the wide ocean, as far as the horizon, was a still blue. The far-awayness of the scene made it more perfectly like a map. It was unique because the map was the real thing. Wc sped down the steep drop on the north side of the hill. My helper was a bad driver, and ho made things worse by telling me, as we came down, about some of the dreadful accidents that had happened on this road. I was glad when ho loft mo at Paokakariki proper. Palmerston North was still very far away. At tea time a middle-aged married couple gave mo a lift. They allowed mo to ride in the back scat, while they themselves stayed in tho front scat anil kept up an uncanny aloofness. Tho driver spoke only three sentences to mo, one of which was about “ third party risk.” Ho told mo that not even my asking for a lift would exempt him from responsibility. This gruff side of his kindness disturbed my previous ideas on the subject, hut I resolved to make tilings hotter by writing homo at once, and demanding that in case of accident, no claim should bo made on my behalf. Tho woman refused to speak oven in sentences, hut they took me right on to Palmerston.;

rucksacks on back, sticks in hand. Perhaps even the wireless is turned off in the farmhouses that their feminine occupants may the more easily absorb and discuss the passing spectacle. God bless the hikers by all means, but why, from what we had hoped to be a well of English undefiled, why “ hikers ” ? The Oxford dictionary knows not this term; ‘ Modern English Usage ’ passes serenely from “ bight ” to “hillo ” (see hallo). As we have always suspected that there is no difference in meaning between tramping and hiking, let us abandon this parvenu from the Middle West, content to remain in word what wo are in spirit, tramps and vagabonds.

* * * # Though it is encouraging in these materialistic days to read of quests of any kind, we take no pleasure in the schoolmaster, who, with a list of 6,500 of his former pupils, has, after three cruises to various parts of the world with the sole object of meeting old boys, arrived in New Zealand, where he expects to find fifteen of these scattered jewels. There are journeys undertaken for pleasure, and others instigated by remorse. As of old men vowed to go on a cnisade to cleanse themselves of innocent blood, so this schoolmaster may be travelling to atone for his classroom sins. Perhaps the restless dominie is making a journey of restitution, intent on crying “peccavi” in five thousand different places. With an olive branch in one hand, he may come to restore cigarettes confiscated thirty-five years before, or even t orub ointment into weals inflicted in the-days of the lower fourth. What a strain on the sacred laws of hospitality! When the past is resurrected, the best parts are taken out, the worst neglected. W© all like a lump in our throats at times, at th© jubilees and the reunion dinners, the traditional occasions for lumps. W© enjoy a visit to the old school to see our initials carved on th© desks, to talk with the old tuck-shop woman. But the chief charm about a sbrin© is that it is fixed, immovable. True believers do not like ,their Mecca to come towards them. When we are hunting big game in Africa we ar© pleased’ to run across old Stinks continuing his chemistry experiments jn a feverstricken swamp; but travelling, organised, standardised sentiment is another thing. Wo shall mix ourselves a stiff peg, dreading the reminiscences of the good old days when we were all boys together in the fifth remove, and we shall mutter pessimistically when our wife tries to ch©er us—

He’s got us on the list, We’ll none of us be missed. • • • »

This is the season when in the cool of the evening the amateur gardener slips gently through the French door on to the’ verandah and inhales with satisfaction the pleasant odour of the stock called matthiola bicornis. If the sweet peas have been successful he will, you may be sure, turn his steps that way a little later, and perhaps trifle coquetishly with some of the more bewitching occupants of the herbaceous border en route—the goat’s rue. for instance, or possibly the leopard’s oane, though for our part we sliould be a little diffident about trifling with the leopard’s bane. With averted eyes he passes the bed in which, with infinite care, he had planted and tended Jones’s superbissima strain of poppies—the poppies which were to bo the especial glory of the garden, but which in point of fact turned out to be very close and undoubtedly very poor relations of the red poppy of the fields. Bacon said that gardening is the purest of pleasures, a dictum with which we cannot agree. The gambling spirit, so rightly deplored and denounced by the Presbytery when it periodically manifests itself at racecourses, is allowed to run rife and unchecked among the gardening inhabitants of suburbia, not only on high days and holidays, but all the year round, and the Presbytery is silent and unsuspecting. Think not that the failure of Jones’s poppies will chasten our friend. On his return to the house he will assuredly take down from the secret cupboard his catalogues (more precious than the Seven Sacred Books of tho East), and, passing over the lungwort, the spiderwort, and_ the moneywort, not to sneak of the bitter vetch and the red not poker (is not there something darkly sinister in tho very nomenclature of the garden?) he will work out the odds ,on (say) a good show of the new double nasturtium to fill tho bed in the front of the house next summer.

There’s not, since fifteen years ago, Eleventh of November (Referring to the war, you know, In case you don’t remember), Been such a concentrated state Of world-exacting tension. They bring to mind the Hymn of Hate, These,things the papers mention. They seem to summon up again. Tho fate of Mons, Liege,' Louvain, And lots of other things we’d fain Forget now things are quiet. We like to-day to dream of peace And plenty (when the hard times cease), Yet how can war and strife decrease When Larwood starts his riot? Look, gentlemen, I’ll tell yon what— This state of things is horrid. It isn’t only warm, it’s hot, And tropical and torrid; For some say this and some write that, And some are howling t’other; While all are hot beneath the hat And looking out for bother. Yet all the while, it seems to me, Australia and the M.C.C. Will never reach finality By any sort of protest, And all these copious floods of ink, In spite of all the experts think, Won’t straighten out this wretched kink; They haven’t the remotest.

It seems to me the clearest case For outside arbitrations; This jumpiness of race and race Suggests the League of Nations. Don’t lot us make the whole affair A war-inducing fever; Just leave it to the experts’ care ' Who argue at Geneva. l-<ot _ Czecho-Slovaks, Japanese, Italians, French, and Portuguese, And Jugo-Slavs and Siamese Discuss it round tho table, And settle if its cricket wo Have just been called upon to see, Or plain assault and battery, And therefore actionable!