DRINK-SHOPS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume II, Issue 103, 9 April 1881, Page 4

DRINK-SHOPS.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE STAR. Sir, — The only hope of redress of the evils of the liquor traffic is to be found in the growth of public opinion. It is of no use to appeal to the Resident Magistrates, the Justices of the Peace, the Licensing Benches, or the Police. These all appear to be spellbound by the traffic, and incapable of any action, for the benefit of the public, which might hurt a hair of a publican's trade. I therefore make no appeal to any of them, but ask the use of your columns that I may, through them, reach the people direct. I believe that the day will arrive when the people will come to their senses, and refuse to have the liquor traffic forced upon them by the decision of three or four irresponsible functionaries. But the people will only do this when their moral sense is fully aroused, and, unfortunately, that sense is at present so deadened by habit that they suffer the «vil to continue, and do not see with their eyes, nor hear with— *keiT~"ears, what thetjstffi«^ s^3oJng to ruin so___i»«^r^lfevery one who does use his eyes and ears would tell his neighbors ■what he sees and hears when forced into contact with the public-house, it •would make an awful record. I propose to give a few incidents which lately 'Came under my notice when obliged by the necessities of travel to take up my abode in one of the drink-shops in this district. The place was Opunake, the time last ■week. Myself and three other bona Jide travellers of the male sex, and my wife, had to seek accommodation at the "hotel" for a couple of days. During the last twelve hours, which were .-a sample of the two days, the following incidents occurred. On Monday night I had gone to bed, and was just dropping to sleep, between 11 and 12 o'clock, when into the room below mine there appeared to rush, or reel, a drunken man. As he staggered about with his heavy boots, he made the wooden house shake and my bed dance under me. He seemed to have a vocabulary of about six words, every one of which was a curse, a blasphemy, or an obscenity, which he showered on the head of an apparently more sober companion, or on society in general. There was only an inch of flooring between us, and every word and motion was as distinct as if he had been in my room. This was pleasant for the bona fide travellers concerned, myself, and my wife. I appealed throngh the floor, but it only brought a cannonade of blasphemy and brutality in response. I then got up, put on some clothes, sallied forth, and found some one who belonged to the house ; I think it was the cook. I made complaint to him ; and shortly after the man was turned out. Two hours afterwards he returned, and awoke me the second time, by knocking at the window below, and appealing in piteous terms to "Jim" to let him in. " Jim," however, would not do it ; so with a volley of curses on "Jim's" devoted head, he took himself off to sleep, I presume, in the fern, or the pig-stye (if the hogs -would admit him) ; and I again resumed my broken sleep. In the morning I went for a stroll before breakfast. On the verandah of the hotel, was a poor drivelling drunkard, suffering apparently from last night's debauch. A pretty child, of three years old, was toddling about. The man held out his hand, and tried to coax it to him, but it declined to rociprocate his advances. I could not help thinking that, some forty years ago, he had been such an innocent toddler himself ; and that the pretty child, some forty years hence, if it follows the customs of the country, and yields to the temptations placed in its way by a paternal government, may be such a staggering, leering, hiccupping, filthy, ragged, ruined, disgusting object, as he was. Immediately after breakfast, I went out by the principal door of the hotel ; the bona fide travellers' door. Instantly I was involved in a melee. Out of the door of the bar alongside, came two fellows engaged in the liveliest pugilistic exercise. One of them was very drunk, and had the worst of it. The blood was streaming from his face, and a volley of curses from his month. We bona fide travellers, and some quiet Maories, got between the combatants, and stopped the "mill" ; but the drunken one remained; the blood and the blasphemy continued, and nobody belonging to the house appeared to sweep them away. • I was now absent for two or three

hours. On my return, between noon and one o'clock, my attention was called to a man lying on his back on the verandah, in the full blaze of a hot noon -day sun. He was dead drunk ; in the fourth and last stage of intoxication ; his upturned face, a handsome one, disfigured with marks of a recent combat ; no hat or other protection on his head. No one connected with the house cared for him. The orange had been sucked in the bar, and the peel was thrown into the gutter. If he had died there, and it was just as likely as not, the coroner's jury would have declared it was by the visitation of God, or accidental death, and he would have had a funeral, like some distinguished statesman, at the expense of the nation. I went to the bar, and told the barman what a condition his I manufactured goods were in. He was too busy serving out beer to «?ive me much attention, but said he would go and tell somebody. Alongj side of this poor victim, I observed a pet lamb, taking a siesta. Having gone to bed sober, it had had the sense to put itself into the shade, while the man lay in the sun. But if sheenjsould be got to drink rum, and rnacf money in their pockets to pay for it, I have no doubt that that innocent animal would have been in the same cjndition as the man was, dead drunk under a burning sun, and its money in the licensed victualler's till. It is fortunate for sheep that they are not men. When that lamb attains maturity, its carper may be stopped by the butcher's knife ; but it is in no danger of rotting in a drunkard's grave, after having experienced some forty or fifty years of the miseries of a drunkard's life. Wo coroner's jury will declare that it died by the visitation of God, nor will it be indebted to the County Council for a pauper's coffin. The bona fide travellers had now to leave their pleasant quarters. Their carriage had been ordered an hour before. But the whole force of the establishment was being taxed to its utmost ability and beyond it, in pouring out long ales, and drains of rum or P.B. for a throng of Maoris and Europeans, with whom the bar, the downstairs rooms and passages were filled to suffocation. The groom was not to be found. The stable door was locked. After much unproductive remonstrance, one of the bona fide travellers took a big stone and broke the door open. He harnessed the horses ; found the carriage pole after some search, yoked up, and we finally escaped. But before I could get my wife from the hotel door to the carriage, we had to run the gauntlet of the imbibing crowd, and listen to the harangue of a drunkard who singled us out for his special remarks, not at all of a complimentary character, as we were taking our seats. In conclusion, it is due to the " respectable licensed victualler," who provides for the wants of the bona fide traveller in the locality in question, to say, that the provision he makes is very far superior to that of drink shops in general. Up stairs, where we had our rooms, all was clean and comfortable ; we were well fed, well attended on, met with every civility, and had no complaint whatever to make. But that filthy drinking bar utterly spoiled it all. The softest feather bed is thrown away on the weary traveller when his ears are assailed by the curses and bowlings of a blasphemous drunkard, who has just been brought to a state of inebriate perfection in the bar below. The most dainty food is tasteless when the appetite has been destroyed by sights such as I have described — the bleeding, brutalised, rowdy, reeling, sprawling, victims of the tap. It would be bad enough if one knew that such a state of things existed a mile off ; but when you have to rub shoulders with it as you go in and out of tbe house, and the sight and smell of it all is around you on every side ; when you breathe an atmosphei'e imbued with all the horrors of a manufactory for the destruction of human souls and bodies, it utterly prohibits all feeling of gratitude or obligation for the care bestowed (not gratuitously) on the bona fide traveller, whom circumstances compel to seek food and shelter in one of our colonial drinkships. — I am, &c, William Fox.