PLACES WE DON'T FORGET.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15551, 7 March 1914, Page 1 (Supplement)

PLACES WE DON'T FORGET.

BY ELSIB K. MORTON.

The mind of the average man or woman i 3 a, queer, jumbled up place, with much loose litter lying around and a few good things stowed away at the. back somewhere, but in pretty well every such storehouse there are odd fragments of memory that are in themselves veritable treasures. Very few of us, perhaps none of us, know just what that treasure-house contains; little odds and ends of experiences we thought forgotten, a portrait in the gallery of faces that we never even knew was there. Two men collide in the street of some city half-way to the end of the earth, take a hurried glance at one another, then memory takes a sudden back-flip and from away back among the dim corners of the mind comes faltering the recollection of a certain glad evening spent together a score of years agone their first and only meeting. There is one thought in particular that probably every memory holds enshrined — the thought of some place associated with years that have slipped away. Maybe half a century has passed, but you still recall one little spot in childhood's home .in a far land, perhaps in a corner of the garden where primroses first raised their starry faces to greet the spring, or a wide meadow open to the sky, where you first felt the call of sun-kissed, boundless spaces and your young heart thrilled to the song of summer as she passed. Afterwards you learned that the pall of winter would surely driy.e the primroses back into the brown earth; ''th* all the world held no space wido deep enough to bury one single-memory' so that its gnost might

never return, but no hard-won alter knowledge can take away the charm ut those first imperishable sweet memories.

Certain places are rich in memories, and when we visit them the past unroJs as a scroll and we live again in those hopes and aspirations, that surety of success that ma lies life such a glad, bright thing to look forward to when we are climbing the sunlit heights. Again, we may not see a place lof years, then some chance word, some trivial incident, and a long-forgotten scene Hashes to memory with a sureness and vivid wealth of de tail that in itself proves old Time to be a cheat and the soiu of man superior to life s limitations. Places become linked with the present and the past in our minds for reasons innumerable. One spot we must needs love tenderly for all time because it was the scene of some precious jcy; another holds its place imperishably consecrated to overwhelming sorrow. And then there are those places oi which we would thankfully blot out all recollection; tho remembrance of them is a poignant heart-thrust, but over such memories the waves of time wash vainly. For there be some stains that all the "waters of Lethe can never cleanse and scars that Eternity itself cannot efface.

Places in themselves do not stand for much in the storehouse of the mind. You might travel from here to Greenland's icy mountains and back by way of Timbuctoo without missing a single sight, and yet not have one clear-cut impression to immortalise your trip. You might go to our own incomparable Southern Alps, and be so worried about the shape of your mountaineering boots or the possible result of eating canned food for several days that the glory of those mountain heights would be lost in petty fear of a pain. And then you might come back and go <_• 'or to Cheltenham and declare it the most lovely spot in all New. Zealand, because the fates were auspicious and you had what you'd ..probably calll-" the time of your life J ' by thiSse golden, shores. .. ' v . ; The, places ' thifc \ib don't forget, the .places we .love, are those that are linked with ' happy memories. Sometimes (lie links run unbroken through many years, and form part of the joyous present. One such place I have in mind, a place vheie i can revel in the boundless freedxn of earth and air and sky two hours ?f'or leaving Queen Street, where I can wander barefoot the long day through ;f it, so please me and see no face, nor hear any voice save that, of forest and river. In a little green clearing at the top ot a I.ill I can lie and watch white clouds chasing fleetly across the wonderful blue rbove, watch the tender, grey-green young ti-lr.-e all around swaying lightly, rustling, sighing, while the summer song of the cicada goes on ceaselessly and sunbeams glint down through the green shade of the old puriri that is my shelter. Nearly half a century ago a tiny shanty marked the brow of my hill, one of those' shingle places built by the brave hands of cur lathers, little resting-places in the wilderness, homes in the wild that testified to tho courage and strong faith of the pioneer builders. Of the cottage itself not 'i trace remains; of the fence nougi.it but a few dry sticks, an inch deep in crumbling, greyish lichen. But you know a cottage has been there; more—you know that loving hearts once made it a home, for over by the old fence arq the remains of a garden ; an old, old rose bush stretches out rambling arms, and,. wonderful, its arms are filled with sweetest, daintiest pink roses, the old-fashioned dog rose that you never see in modern gardens. And above the pink lies gold, feathery, floating sprays of gold, that vie with the very sunbeams for wealth of brightness. For the gnarled acacia still keeps vigil with the rose, and pink and gold they bloom side by side yeai 1 after year, through sunshine and storm, with none but tne birds and the bees and occasionally, myself to revel in their brave sweetness.

Bush fires have swept the hillside time and time again. . I have seen it all drear and desolately blsck, a waste of charred stumps and smouldering mould, and I have mourned for one of the places I love best And yet, a few short months, and the young ti-t,ree has pushed its way through blackened soil and in an incredibly short time all scars have vanished, smoothed out by Nature's sweet restoring hand. If I take but a few steps to the brow of the hill I look out on a view that will be fresh in my treasury of mindpictures so long as that treasury remains. Far away are the waters of the Manukau, stretching out long arms of silver to the violet shadowed range that shuts off the western ocean. The bold, bluff outline of the North Head mounts up sharply where the mountains drop down to the sea. Miles and miles away a tiny mound on the horizon marks One tree Hill; the foreground is one magnificent panorama of level country, checkered with green fields of farms without number, criss-crossed with dark rows of pines, with here and there a serried line of poplars. I don't know where that panorama ends : somewhere away up beyond Pukekohe and miles farther till the faint blue outline of a mountain rises from the plain. The country round about the hilltop was the scene of some of the darkest tragedies of the Waikato War; right opposite is an ancient Maori pah, and many a gruesome relic of bone and rusty bayonet has childhood's eager search revealed ! But of those dark days no sign remains to mar the peaceful beauty of to-day. The call of wild birds and the hum of summer insects are the only sounds. At the foot of the hill a little creek goes singing down to the far sea. At sundown and at daybreak all the tones of its music sound clearest when the voices of day are stilled. The voices of night, too, all speak round and about the clearing on the hill— the chirp of the cricket, the call of the " morepork," inexpressively plaintive as it echoes from the depths of the bush. . . Sometimes all the voices of night are silent, and then it is very, very still and a little eerie on my hilltop; sometimes one can almost hear what the wind .is whispering to the swaying ti-tree, and unseen presences press closely. . . . Such a place breathes of peace and rest, gives tired hands strength to take up the load that has becom» too heavy, and nerves the faltering spirit to fresh endeavour. It is one of the places we love for all time, one of those places we never forget.