NO DISCUSSING COLOUR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14109, 10 July 1909, Page 1 (Supplement)

NO DISCUSSING COLOUR.

BY TOHtTNGA.

"There's no discussing colour!" said an artist friend the other morning, coming down Qusen-street. The roadway and pavements were slowly drying in the bright sunshine from the drenching showers of the nigh.- and the flushing of the nightly hos> men. The air was balmy as the breath of Youth, serene and soothing as the rare sense of physical well-being; the sunshine flooded gorgeously down through a filmy veil of cobweb-lace, so wondrous fine that the whole of it, from Kawau way to far beyond Manukau, from the far Thames hills to Waitakerei yonder, could well be blown away by a laugh too loud; the blue skv, the tender warmth, the lengthened shadows, the clean, wet streets, the chatting groups at corners, the lounging wayfarers, were those of early summer morn, not of midwinter, hastening to mid-day. Midwinter! Of course it froze the other night, when the red'sun rose lazily into the slate-blue sky and called the myrmidons of the mist to do his thawing. And it rained another night, indeed it rained; and it blew the other morning, we all know how it blew. But the frost was brushed away as industrious housemaids brush crumbs from carpets, and when the frost had gone, how perfect the day! And the rain ceased and the wind fell, and the . round moon rose upon a starlit world fit for the sons of men to walk in with the daughters, of the gods. As they did walk, doubtless, wherever they got the opportunity, and as they wished to walk, doubtless, wherever they hadn't.

And this was midwinter! Surely an Auckland midwinter is of all things the most feminine; one moment cold, gloomy, and repellent, making mock of our praises and dissipating all our dreams; the next, so full of sweetness and tenderness, so perfect in its kind, so subtle in its enchantment, that we know it to be above compare with all else that is Beautiful, and feel the love that passeth understanding sink deeper and deeper into our hearts and lives. To every man English-born, across the long years drift memories of the may that whitened the hedgerows and of the primroses that yellowed beneath, when the south wind blew again and brought back the sailor-men and the cuckoo that told us Spring was here; and memories of June, the queen of months, of flower turning to fruit, of the warmed earth and the languid breeze, and the dewsoaked mornings, and the wonderful noons, and the enchanted nights. We know them perfectly, those days treasured in exile memories, know that as we die, they will take us to them and lull us to the long sleep j as a mother lulls her play-tired child with j cradle-croons. And Auckland pelts these j perfect days at us as a child pelts sticks and flowers—this wonderful Auckland midwinter that is like none others in all the world. They are all in the lucky bag— of English Springs and English Junes, days of mid-tropic splendour and of mid-arctic sullenness, days of weeping and days of I sulks, and days of laughter, and days of all- ' fading happiness and joy. The old land poured her days in seasons, passing sedately onward from spring to winter, swinging' Solemnly along from youth to age.; But the new land will have none of this. We are ! never sure in it of anything but this: that the blackest hour may precede the brightest j and that he who thinks he can forecast tomorrow may be happier than he deems, j " There is no discussing colour," covers it all. You cannot make a man seeded by explaining to him what "red" is, if his eyes are blind to the red rays, and if red appears to him as yellow or as pink. You cannot make = a heart sing at the golden glow of sunset, nor make it understand that when, " God set His bow in the clouds" He wrote a message of hope in universal language, unless it feels instinctively and of its own volition the meaning commonly felt to attach to reds and yellows and blues. If a man is colour-blind that is the end of colour for him. If he is partially colour-blind, the colours he cannot see do not ■ exist for him. And if a man sees nothing to love in a country like New Zealand and in a climate like Auckland's, then the question arises at once whether he isn't country-blind and climate-blind. Obviously, if he is there is ho more use discussing such things with him than if he were colour-blind. And " thereV so discussing colour!" O

It may seem a strange thing to suggest, but is it not true that as civilisation increases the number who are defective in some way or other, disproportionately increases. In barbarism a man needs all his physical senses, needs strong limbs and straight, needs keen eyes and true eight, needs good digestion and whole teeth, needs to be able to feel all the physical pleasures and to resietl|ll the physical ills. This we recognise, but is it not equally certain that in barbarism a man needs all his emotional instincts, needs to love the place that is his in order that he may be come heroic in its defence; needs to love the climate he lives in in order that he may endure cheerfully its unpleasantnesses, and rejoice exceedingly in its joyous j moods ; needs to love a woman so that life is as nothing to the gratification of pleasing her; and of being with her in order that the weaker sex may have the unreasoning service of the stronger; needs to love his own children, so that his labour for them is its own reward in order that Life may abide from generation to generation. Is it not true that as civilisation, as .we have it, encourages and fosters the defective in mind and body, so it also encourages and fosters those defective in the supreme emotions that inspire love of women and of children, love of country and of climate, love of the Beautiful and love of the Adventurous May men not become "colour-blind" upon these great emotions? And "there is no discussing colour." : Ther« is no country in the world more fitted to be a " home-land" than Auckland, and no country whose peculiarities of climate more appeal to all the home-loving instincts of domestic peoples. For its skies and its clouds and its perpetual changes of mood, its furious winds and its gorgeous sunsets and its drenching rains, and its unfailing sunbursts, .all tell of a soil that is rarely parched, and never frozen, and of a kindly warmth that never fails. They tell of contented cows feeding their [way to the milking sheds, of fat pastures stretching over hill and valley, of orchards nestling under the shelter-belts of cosy homesteads, where comely women nurse their babies, of fair cities washing their feet in the sea and pillowing their heads on breeze-swept hills. They tell of the far Northern land, set in milder seas and under a kindlier sun. And if any man does not read their message thus, it is because he is colour-blind, and there "is no discussing colour." We pity the maimed, the,, halt, and the blind; we look with compassion upon those who have not the complete senses through which man's soul looks out upon the universe, or who have not the complete sense by which man walks congenially among his fellows; we would do much "for those to whom fate has been harsh, knowing in our hearts that they are the: scapegoats for sins from whose penalties we ourselves may have escaped. And should we not feel even more pitiful and more compassionate for those who are maimed of the great emotions, crippled of the great instincts which make human life worth 1 living, for those who have never known what the skies and the clouds say, what the winds whisper, what the surf gays to the shovel