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CHAT ABOUT TRIFLES. No. 1. — From Dunedin To Oamaru.

I fancy I hear some irritated old traveller by King Cobb, battered by a journey of fourteen hours, on reading the above heading, growling, " Call that a trifle !" and really, on taking everything into considei'tition, the growl ought to be allowed some weight. But as every pleasure, like every pain, is only slight or serious by contrast, I think I should be inclined to consider the seat of a coach — " cribb'd, cabined, and confined," though you may be by all those ills that travelling flesh is heir to — immeasurably superior to the horrors of sea-sickness, the close cabin, and perpetually panting engines of the fine, faststeaming boat " Pivot ;" or even the independent glory of a solitary ride on horseback, which is apt, if the distance be great, to ca«9e disagreeable sensations to a novice — " Just in the part where Honor's lodged, As wise philosophers have judged ; Because a kick in that place more Huits Honor than deep wounds before." " All aboard !" How often has that portentous sound rung in my ears, and what different sensations has it not aroused ? When exulting in the consciousness of having plenty of time, I listen to the warning note with the coolest indifference ; when, with eyes suffused with tears, I am vainly endeavoring, at a roadside inn, to swallow some refreshment heated to the highest possible temperature, I am seized with dismay^; when comfortably satisfied with my dinner and myself, I wait for it even with impatience ; but what horror thrills through my yitals when I wake, and learn I have just two minutes to wash, dress, pack my portmanteau, and run a quarter of a mile to the " office," where I know a terribly punctual and inflexible driver is thundering, with a strong nasal twang, " All aboard !" It is a curious fact— unaccounted for by anyone, though generally admitted by all— that the punctuality of a coach is in an opposite ratio to that of the travellers. If you should be in good time, the probability is that the coach is not ready, the driver not " fixed," or a quarter of an hour is allowed to pass in waiting for the country edition of the " Daily Blazer." But should, by chance, the unfortunate traveller be three minutes late, he will, in all probability, meet the coach flashing past him in the street like a comet, while the combined uproar of wind and wheels drowns his feeble hail ; and after a frantic run of two or three hundred yards after the too punctual coach, the chase is given up by the traveller extricating himself from some street mantrap, and returning, with bitter sensations, on his track , to pick up the half-dozen brownpaper parcels that dropped out one by one from under his arm during his involuntary exercise. It is related of a certain naval officer that, when a midshipman, he was so anxious to distinguish himself, that he passed the chief part of his time looking out for signals, and that after this interesting amusement, he would sleep so soundly that nothing could wake him unless the word " signal" were whispered, when he started up directly. In the same manner do the magical words " all aboard !" arouse me from the deepest slumber — such as I was indulging in at the blank hotel, Dunedin, blank day of blank, as the lawyers say, at half-past four a.m. A nightporter was dexterously flashing a light into my eyes, at the precise angle long experience had taught him produced jointly the greatest amount of wakefuluess and pain in the eyes. Muttering an anathema on the peculiar perversity of coaches, which are always marie to start at the most iinearthly and unnatural hours, I scrambled out of bed, huddled on my stray garments, and set off at the top of my speed for Uobb's office. Arrived, I found the coach not out, the booking-clerk not up, and the driver still in the arms of Morpheus, — I having, in my hurry, arrived twenty minutes too soon. Shuddering in the damp, -cold blast that crept with merciless keenness along the 6treet, and performed a circular waltz at every corner, I withdrew for shelter to the Provincial archway, so clear to the memory of the Dunedin loafers in the early days of the goldfields. Eneconced there, I waited patiently for the starting of the coach, assisted by the *' traveller's best companion" — a pipe. The sky was of that peculiar leaden tint assumed by Night when the advancing sun has just given that sable goddess notice to quit. A solitary policeman was walking drearily up the gusty street — " Whose only care was to retain his hat, And take himself— his father's son- off home," and flashing his bull's-eye in sundry corners, being apparently impressed with the belief that the most likely place in which to detect a rogue would be a key-hole or letter-box. Suddenly he stopped, and the lantern's rays being directed to the earth, I saw an arm suddenly rise out of the ground and fall again. A movement of the policeman's foot was followed by an exclamation. I hurried across the road, and beheld a jovial bacchanal taking his ease in the gutter, " with his martial cloak [i.e., Inverness cape] around him." " Get up, and go home," said Policeman X. " Home, home, sweet, sweet," &c. ; and a enore finished the quotation. " By the Lord Harry ! if it isn't one of the actor chaps at the Princess Theatre," exclaimed the constable. " Get up, sir : day's breaking." " Let it break ; I hope the pieces won't be lost. ' Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund Day stands prostrate on the misty chimney pots' — that's Romeo improved by P.B. ' How goes the hour, Horatio ?' " " Confound all this humbug," grumbled the policeman. " If you don't go home, I shall have to lock you up." With a vigorous wrench, the " acting chap" was brought to liis feet, when he immediately recommenced his declamation. " Lock me up ! Away with him to the deepest dungeon beneath the castle moat. Thou hadst better been bom a dog, Iago, than attempt to lock me up." - X began to wax wroth by this time, and but for my intercession would have accom-

modated the inebriate with lodgings' upon the cold ground of the police-station. Bacchus turned to me, and said, with a half-drunken bow, " Accept my thanks for your kind reception of me this morning. I'll toss you fora glass of branuy warrer." I begged to decline this offer, and hoped he wouldn't mention it. " Excuse me, sir, I will mention it. Nought 80 becomes a man as gratitude, which, like the dew of the mountain — no, mountain dew — to-morrow night's my benefit — cotne and see me— there's an order for two," and he shoved something into my hand which I afterwards discovered was a washerwoman's bill for 5s. 6d. (unreceipted). I was about to return this favor, when a faint cry echoed from the corner of the street. I started, for it was the refrain of a song familiar to me—" All aboard!" I rushed frantically down the street, and seized hold of the coach to scramble in. The inside was crammed —the passengers indignant. " You can't get in, sir," said a voice from the darkness. " I'm sure it's disgraceful to crowd one so," said a female ditto. " I shall write to the 'Times,' " growled a hoarse voice close to me, belonging to a gentleman about a yard broad, and weighing, on a rough calculation, abont thirty stone. " No room — nonsense," exclaimed the booking clerk, jumping up on the opposite side, and protruding a lantern through the window. " Why, you all seem to expect a sofy a-piece. Jump in, sir !" " And where's he to sit," shouted the passengers in chorus. " The seats isn't a yard wide, and there's five on each." "Excuse me, the seats is thirty-eight inches, and calc'lated to hold six each," returned the clerk. " I'm sorry you should all have chose to go this week, 'cos we're going to run a coach for each passenger next, when the roads is good." " If the gentleman was a gentleman — " began the female from the darkness, with some asperity, "I've paid for my passage, and business compels me to go to-day or I would not trouble you," said I making a despairing effort to conciliate the inmates of the coach, but " Business, indeed," and " oh, yes," was the only comment, and the bodies as immoveably as ever barred my passage. "All right!" shouted the clerk. " All aboard !" roared the coachman, and the vehicle made a desperate plunge forward, and dashed at a rattling pace down Princesstreet. The sudden motion solved the problem of my admission by precipitating me into the arms and on to the legs of the passengers. But why dwell on the painful topic — the indignant denunciation of the shrill lady, and the thunder-like growl of the gentlemen. Suffice it to say that in the course of an hour I was shaken down into a tolerably comfortable position, having the fat gentleman's knee in my chest, two elbows in my ribs, the lady's parasol or umbrella ferule in my back, and half-a-dozen or so on my toes ; but as I believe these attentions were pretty reciprocal all round, I have no cause to complain. The coach clattered merrily along Princesstreet, past the Town Board office — immortalised by Thatcher — and the fish-market, rendered palpable enough by its strong impression on our olfactories, round that peculiar specimen of the aberration of man's intellect — the Octagon — with its monument to the father of the Province of Otago, Captain Cargill, who is popularly supposed to have come here for the express benefit of everybody but himself; along George-street, redolent of every odour but those pleasant to the senses ; and turning into Great King-street, we catch a sight of the towers of the New Zealand Exhibition looming through the mists of the morning, and on Ave go to the Water of Leith. " How dreadfully the coach jolts," exclaimed the lady with the umbrella, which pertinaciously continued to bore holes in my neck, " Jolt," echoed a voice from a remote corner, while a faint smell of tar began to assert its right to be noticed, " I hate your quiet, smooth-sailing craft. Nothing like a bit of a breeze, to let her pitch a trifle." "Ah, it wasn't so in my young clays," chimed in Thirty-stone. " There was some comfort then in travelling." and a vicious movement of his knee in my cheat followed, which the most solemn oath would not persuade me was inflicted by the movement of the coach. " Ech, sirs, d'ye see yon gate ?" cried an unmistakeably North-of-Tweed voice as we passed tke turnpike near the Water of Leith. " That's a eemposeetion. Ye wadua ken the siller we hae to gie to use oor ain roads. It's a' through the Victorians and the gold fields." " It's wrong in principle and wrong in practice," said Thirty-stone pompously. " I can prove that it is diametrically opposed to the teaching of the first writers on political economy. For example, John Stuart Mill and Frederick Bastiat — — " " Political economists. Oh, yes, I recollect," said another voice. " Wasn't Bastiat the man who proposed paying off the National Debt by bottling up all the water in Dunedin Bay, and selling it to the steamboat companies, to enable them to run their boats ?" Thirty-stone was so indignant at the suppressed chuckle with which these words were greeted, that he subsided into a dignified silence, and caused me the most excruciating agony by the violent motions of his knee. " I think," said the interlocutor, " the only use of turnpikes is to have something to trick. I recollect once I was driving out with a friend in a buggy in Victoria, and the 'pikeman gave us a ticket — No. 44. Well, at the next town I met another friend of mine, and as he was going back the same road as we were, I gave him my ticket and told him to keep behind about a mile. When we came back to the gate, I sung out ' No. 44.' " All right,' said he, and on we went. A few minutes after, up comes my friend in his trap. * No. 44/ said he. ' No go,' answered 'pikey — • you don't chisel me : 44's gone through.' • What do you mean fellow,' says my friend; 'here's the ticket — No. 44, and dated to-day. How dare you try to swindle me !' and throwing the ticket in his face, whipped up the horse, leaving 'pikey scratching his head and looking alternately at the ticket and my friend's retreating trap." (To be Continued.)

Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NOT18640908.2.22

Bibliographic details

North Otago Times, Volume II, Issue 29, 8 September 1864, Page 2 (Supplement)

Word Count
2,113

CHAT ABOUT TRIFLES. No. 1.—From Dunedin To Oamaru. North Otago Times, Volume II, Issue 29, 8 September 1864, Page 2 (Supplement)

CHAT ABOUT TRIFLES. No. 1.—From Dunedin To Oamaru. North Otago Times, Volume II, Issue 29, 8 September 1864, Page 2 (Supplement)

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