CORRESPONDENCE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XI, Issue 271, 13 December 1876, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

NEW YEAR'S EVE. To the Editor op the 'Evening Mail.' Sir— As New Year's eve is now drawing near, I wish to ask, on behalf of the public at large, Is it in your power by appealing to the powers that be to put a stop to a horrible nuisance which has for some years past on that eve disgraced our city, and been a disgrace to ourselves as a ciyilised and Christian community. I allude to the custom of all the larrikins of Nelson meeting together and parading the city on that night, and making ifc most hideous by every description of horrible sound which can possibly be extracted from the human voice, accompanied by fog horns, cow horns in full blast, and other instruments of strangely hideous sound, to the great annoyance of the public at large, and especially to those who assemble in the different places of worship to end the year, as in the old country, in sacred service and song, but most of all to nervous and otherwise afflicted ones; to these it is most distressing. Last New Year's eve ifc fell to my lot to spend the night with a young man who I was seriously ill, and doubtless there were others similarly situated. About midnight a whole mob of larrikins came and took up a position under the window where the sick youth lay, and there yelling and howling and trumpeting forth with all their might sounds hideous as a pandemonium, they drove him almost to distraction. The father of the sufferer threw up the window begging and entreating them to desist, but the result of I his entreaties was that the whole mob simultaneously, as if by instinct, seemed to inflate their lungs to the utmost tension, and then . began such yelling and screeching and howlj ing as is indescribable; theso, witb the full blasts from their discordant wind instruments produced the most distressing effects upon ! tbe sufferer. Sir, as a civilized community, ■ are we to be compelled to submit to a repetitioj o2 such a disgrace on the coming New Year's eve? If the powers that be are j po verless to act in this matter, surely the | Pr-ss is not so. If the Press of Nelson will I kirdly move iv tbia matter oa behalf of its citizens, then the thing is done, and a grateful public will thank you, as well as your humble servant iv particular. 1 I am, &c, ! „ An Old Settler. Nelson, December 13, 1876. i