LOCAL GOSSIP.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13390, 19 January 1907, Page 1 (Supplement)

LOCAL GOSSIP.

"Let me have audience for a word or two. —Shakesperc.

Nothing has been talked of this week so much as the weather. lam told that 36 rears ago there was very much such another spell of rain in the middle of summer, but that, as the country wasn't settled up, it wasn't noticed:

The rains themselves hive done a lot of damage, of course, but it isn't only the rains that have' upset us all; it's the. Hoods. Now, rain is just rain, but Hood is rain that can't get away fast enough. It is in this connection that I hear hard things said of the weeping willow. Many people hold it to be responsible for the extraordinary flooding that has occurred, and certainly the willow ran do more choking-up of a creek or river bed in a shorter lime than anything ,-lioit of a landslip.

The willow is undoubtedly a growing and insufferable nuisance. It is spoiling and choking the Waikato and other streams. It is sucking up their waters in tunes of scarcity, and preventing their waters from running away in times of exceptional rain. It is pretty enough to look at, but it ought to be brought into the Noxious Weeds Act. Only I haven't heard of any way of fighting the willow. It won't burn and it won't ringbark, and if you cut it down its blanches take root.

The wonderful vitality of the willow is the cause of the willow trouble. If a twig i* broken off and swept down stream it lakes root where it drifts ashore. If a. willow post is planted it becomes a tree-. It grows on the laud or in the. swamp, in the water and out of it. If things go on as they are every waterway in the North Island will be a bed of worthless willows. It isn't anv wonder therefore that the. flood waters can't run off as they ought to.

But whatever causes the Howls the great inconvenience which accompanies them .shows lion* greatly we now depend upon daily communication. Thirty or 40 years ago, if tin' country heard from Auckland once in a while it whs quite satisfied, and when a man went on a journey he didn't mind to a week or two when he [jot back. Now the morning paper is as much a necessity in distant places as the weekly paper was once, and the traveller makes his arrangements on the expectation that trains and steamers will run like clockwork. When they don't the country is as much upset as the" town would be if tin:* butcher failed to kill and if the baker forget to call.

Trains ami steamers stop short when the weather is too black for loading or when the railway washes out, but the mailmen take their lives in their hands and stick to their work, no matter what happens. Every vear live* are lost in the carrying of a few letters, for it is a. point of honour with all good mailmen to get through. Nothing must stop the King's mails. Bast year the mailman from Whangamomona to Tatu lost his life in the terrible Tangarakau Gorge while carrying three letters. Three letters! The rivers were in flood, the tracks smothered in mud. the land slipping, the rain drenching, the rides lonely and long. But this mailman, like hundreds of others, warned of the danger refused to think and pushed on with his little pack. He failed and died. But most get through, and that's bow the King's mails are kept going in the back country.

So let me draw attention to the mailmen -who during all these extraordinary rains and widespread floods have done their duty. We have brave soldiers and gallant sailors: but in the peaceful walks of fife we have heroes also, and among the heroes, though tWy don't, seem to know it, must be ranked the men who carry, by many a devious track and many a dangerous road, through flood and through tire, the King's mails.

The sight of a Minister for Justice bewailing the sad fact that he is prevented from stealing a slice of park land for a courthouse ought to be finematoscoped and shown to distant ages. Mr. Kettle is every bit as bad as Mr. McGowan, or worse. They both gaze as greedily at our poor little bit of park as boys gaze at apples when bulldogs are about. What makes them so angry- isn't that they really want the bit of park for a courthouse, but that they can't get it.

As everybody in Auckland knows there is any amount of room for a new courthouse on the present site. Every other public building in Auckland gets along without a caretaker's cottage, but the police court lias a caretaker's cottage which occupies land enough to put a pictine gallery on. It is on one side of the ro,.d ; the park is on the other side; yet our police magistrate and our Minister for Justice want to take the park and leave the cottage as it is. Mr. McGowau weeps because " a section of the Auckland public" objects to this. I think if it ever cane to a poll Mr. McGowan would find that the section" included nineteen out of twenty Aucklandcrs.

But will somebody tell me why it is that so many people can't see a piece of park or common without wanting to steal it? And why it is that a man can't see an old hat. mi the path without wanting to kick it? And why it is that a woman can't see a mirror without putting her hands up to preen her hair.'

After killing so many lions at Home it is rather hard upon Mr. I*. .A. Vaile to have to shoot at Auckland mice with popguns.

I am glad to see that the Government has repented of its parsimony to (lie Auckland post office, and has completed what may be termed—by Sir Joseph Ward — extensive improvements. These take the form of an additional window and ,1 small table for addressing correspondence, and probably represent the local post office extension for the next year or two. And yet Auckland is dissatisfied.

Alter the deluge the dust. It was blowing about, on Thursday and has rarely been worse than on Friday in some, parts of the city, for which various theories are advanced. One is that the rain washed the dust into heaps as mud, and is now taking it up in shovelfuls, just as the scavengers do, and with.the same results. Another is that the exceptional dust-clouds are largely composed of dried "mildew." An advocate of the latter assures me that during the rains everything mildew-able that got damp became coated with more or less visible fungus—the hay in the fields, the boots under the bed, and so forth—and that this was grown in millions id' tons if we only knew it. Now. he says, it has dried and is Wowing about; whirl] may he true or not. but sounds plausible.

T see that the colonial public is accused of a tendency to vulgarity because of remarks written in the visitors' book at the Exhibition. But I don't think that people who write their names in visitors' books are fair samples anywhere. Often reluctant visitors are officially persuaded to "write something," hut those who rush to do it are usually neither troubled with bashfulness nor seasoned bv travel.

The Devonport Tennis Club had the opportunity to distinguish itself this week and failed. The ladies were to give an. "At Home," on Wednesday last, at which tea and rakes were to be dispensed to the enthusiastic, but when the happy day came hoys were swimming happily about in the place where the lawn.wan supposed to be. And where, as I consider, the North Shore was found wanting is that the At Home'' was not transmogrified into a water party. We have had water-polo, and walking the greasy pole. a.nd other aquatic variations of -port. Why not wafer-tennis? Devonport «xl * chance to make it and passed. Meacutio.