MAGIC SUNSETS

Grey River Argus, 30 July 1935, Page 7

MAGIC SUNSETS

Romance of Pick and Shovel SEDDON THE PROLETARIAN DOGMATIST. Chatting to uu “Argus” reporter lasi night, Air John Lee, ALB., sand he hud enjoyed every moment or his stay on the West Coast. {Since his coming through the Otira, the days had been line, and if the clear night's had been bitterly coid, weli 2 that was seasonable and hud been more than compensated ror by the warm hearts and open hearths of the people he hud met. The sombre hills and The white peaks against the purple sunsets, were thing that wrenched the emotions with iheir compelling, and grand and most unusual beauty. * lie had been specially interested in his wanderings over the old diggings aieas around Kumara, which was packed with raw material of fiction. “Ohh could imagine,” he a host of hard bitten adventurers descending upon the Coast from the earth’s four corners The hillsides would resound with the impact of the pick, and the scraping music of the shovel. Shanty towns wou d grow up, and prospectors would venture further and further into but*u and mountains for the yellow metal. There were dance halls and the joy of rich earth and the tragedy of failure.

To the east the alps, to the south , mountain riveis, that could in a night, become impassable torrents. The un•idaptud adventurer would be tamed a little by the very earth he attempted to tame. And then, out of the diggings came political romance. A man ventures who has nut much education, and not a mighty intellect, but- who has that rarer quality, a humanitarian heart. Th e cultured people refer to him in scathing terms*. He is impossible. because he has sprung from the world of pick and shovel m< n. Put the impulses of the generous heart are

always more mighty in the founding ami building of nations than the scepticism of 'the cultured mind. The pick and shove 1 man from the ranks* of the physical pioneers becomes a political pioneer, showing the world that society can be tempered by humanity; that instead of human beings being comp 1 ley to conform to an inhered machinery of life, the impulses of the heart may modify that’ machinery. What a miracle. A pick and shovel man say ■ng that society shall conform to hum an needs*, and not that humanity must conform to a. materia! way of eixstence. Seen in true perspective Seddon becomes the g:eat pro etarian dogmat ist, advancing human aspirations : gainst, cultured doubt. Thu heart i« always dogmatic and life can be good s; vs t’hc man to whom life has been \

.'’tern physical burden. Culture will vanish: one can hear the aristocratic voice of the Christchurch “Press’* s;ying. “if the toiling masse'-- arc al lowed to make cult ure and leisure democratic.” And “the Seven Devi’s of Socialism’’ go on to make New Zea land one of the wealthiest an : not- the educated country on th- 1 face of »he globe. Look at it how we will, Wb that there is a genius of the haert that ar’ times dwarfs the genius of the mind. The cold, mountain says* life .-•hall not be the lower forms of life run their striving course, despite that’ sceptical frigidity. The Coast abounds with romance. You see, I have already suggested two stories—one against a background of gold—greedy, hard-bitten vagabondage

-—a rivalry among men caught in a common struggle wijh th e physical vigour.** and rewards of a, new land. Another, a later one, of a man. massive i f statute and big of heart, with the muscles still knowing ‘the weight of the pick and shovel, and the ears the ringing of these tools, emerging to become a great figure; this man feel ing. rather than knowing, how that New Zea’and could be made better for the common man. The heart in its blindness making mistakes, advancing oxer trial and error to success. The cultured sneering sceptic, who believes that things must be as they are. because they have been that attitude characteristic of t’hc Uni vers xy mind, the heart sterilised of compassion by the head, -the well-incomed dyspeptic asking why people should bother about food!

“I must confess that all this habeen running through my mind since I passed through Kumara. sat before hospitable West C’oa>*t fires. To understand the Coast- on ; . must dream a ilittle of its past’. To understand Seddon on e must se ohirn laying down the pick and shovel. There is a wealth of romance here and some day a New Zea <land pen will recapture it for other generations. And the s*tory of Seddon the pick and shovel man is still to be human’v told. We say there is noth ing in New Zealand to write about, yet, wherever one goes, one feels the throb of a life connected w’th a romantic past. There must be odd diaries and records* about that should be pub lished before becoming lost —diaries as interesting a« thos*e of Downie Stewart recently published of bis ancestor® and early Otago. Tf a University scholar asked for a subsidy equal to the gold subsidy to help maintain him while he engaged in re c earch here m Wes Hand I suppose he would be told that’ such research would not add to the nation’s wealth. But Westland has set me dreaming.”