IN MEMORIAM.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 275, 9 November 1911, Page 2

IN MEMORIAM.

PETER PENDER

(By Ono V* ho linew Him.)

The first time I met Mr. Inspector Pender he frowned at me. That was in the Police Court some twenty years ago. Afterwards when lie understood that I was neither a knave or a fool, but really wanted to be helpful, he smiled at me, and our friendly intercourse from that time till he passed over the “Great Divide’ ’has been of the best and the kindest. His venerable old age forbids the clamour of grief or rebellious murmurings, but we cannot afford to let that fine personality pass away without some affectionate and tender reminiscences of it.

To me the most striking features of Mr. Pender’s inward life were: deep religious feelings (broad as well as profound) and tenaer-heartedness. The character of his external life was a remarkable union of dignity and simplicity. No show of uniform or glittering of medals ever made that man strut, no exclusiveness of office ever stopped him from the smallest acts of kindness.

One evening after the fall of darkness, he found a young girl of good upbringing trying to end her life in the River Avon. The old store - of wrong and grief—the old passionate struggle to end it all in the river’s embrace. The Inspector took the girl gently and half secretively to the house of a “Rescue Worker,’’ and hushed up the story by sternly bidding that lady never to divulge the pi.or girl’s name or family.

On another occasion—it was a Carnival Week, I remember —he sent me a message by one of the detectives that a certain woman—alas 1 of most notorious evil report—had left Mount Magdala and was loose on the town. He wanted to save her. Could I help 1 “Tell him,” I replied, “to find her and at any hour of day or night I will receive her,” and with acquired wisdom, I added, “be she drunk or sober.”

With a pleased grin the messenger retired. That night a little past midnight a cab drove up to my door. The Inspecor and Sergeant D. brought me the derelict. It seems that this man, head of the Christchurch police, himself went down to a house of well-reputed infamy, pleaded with the woman, half sternly, half tenderly, urged her, not in the name of the h;w, but by the love of God, to adjure her evil ways, to repent and to come baek to her religion and ler womanhood. And it was all d >ne with such an air of simple dignity. How many young girls owed th-.-’r salvation from ruin to his kin l‘v efforts no one but those who work- i with him will ever know. In one short year he helped me to ferret outof infamous surroundings eleven girls ■under fifteen. He was never in too much of a hurry ; never too closely bound by clerical chains. He could always listen and always help. May God reward him.

There are men in this town, grown staid and steady with the weight of years, who owe their present lives of happy respectability ■in the eyes of their fellow citizens to Peter Pender’s good advice, manly warnings, Christian protection. Again, may God reward him.

He is gone. A fervent Catholic, true to the best traditions of his Church, a loyal officer, a manly' man, a true Christian ; we feel sure that he has gone to his rest in the hands of God.—“Lyttleton Tinies.”