AN EDINBURGH LETTER

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1648, 30 September 1903, Page 73 (Supplement)

AN EDINBURGH LETTER

NEW ZEALANDEBS IN SCOTLAND

Special to the ‘‘Mail.” EDINBURGH, August 14

The capping ih the McEwan, Hall was an impressive ceremony. Tlie building, one of the most magnificent in Edinburgh, is circular, and the dome is divided into fifteen parts, each decorated with a life-size figure painted on a background of gold mosaic. At a farther end, over the dais, a fresco represents the Temple of Fame. The ceremony was opened by prayer and by a recital on the grand organ, the finest in Scotland. The colour effect was superb, subdued sunbeams falling f rom the Top of the dome on the rich mural paintings and tho multitude of silken hoods, violet and green, ‘ magenta and heather, with hero and there a flash of scarlet or a strip of blue or white. Tlie- same cap was rested momentarily on each bowed head as one by one the long possession of blackrobed graduates swept past, conspicuous among them the graceful forms’ of the girl graduates wearing white' trained dresses under the flowing black drapery, and the light gleaming on golden or auburn coils of hair. A senatorial dignity was added by the aged principal • and his compeers. Th e a students were singularly decorous, and a. colonial “under grad.” would have voted the proceedings slow. Our little colony was well represented in the cosmopolitan procession. New Zealanders presented for the M.D. degree and each highly commended were: —Arthur Leonard Anderson for his thesis on the- Kontgen Hays in Intra-thoracic Disease; W. J. Barclay, for his thesis on Vital Statistics or New Zealand; Leslie Ivingsforcl, for his thesis on Tuberculosis in Children. Arthur A. Martin was commended for liis thesis on his* medical and surgical experiences in tho Boer War. For the degree of Bachelor of' Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery there came up Garnet Wilson llarty and Chas.. Mackie Begg, of Dunedin. Mr B egg’s brother, Dr A. (j. Begg, who ah’o graduated at Edinburgh, lias this year returned "to New Zealand. On the lists of other Scotch Universities I notice- the names of Helen Stephen Baird, graduated at Glasgow, and Alistcr Lachlan Maclean, at Aberdeen.

One or two fresh items of news about our undergraduates are to band. In the class exam 3. Miss Mills passed high, taking first-class honours in three subjects; Miss B. Kippenberger shared with Miss Wyburn, of Wanganui, the medal in practical anatomy. Mr B. Webster was inadvertently set down in my last notes as amongst the medicals, lie has now completed three years’ course in arts, and has begun an honours degree in English literature. He intends studying French and German for a short time in their native countries, and will enter the ministry afterwards. Tlie family have the sympathy of friends here and in New Zealand on the death of the Rev Gordon Webster. RESIDENTS AND ABSENTEES.

Town is “empty” just now, rows of suburban houses shut up, and flats to let everywhere.

Mrs and Miss Hughes have returned to London, and are now at Richmond. Our students are scattered over Britain and the Continent. Miss Ruby Fletcher and Miss Trent, of Canterbury, are visiting Ireland, Lancaster, Loudon and Kent. The two enterprising young . colonials came together to Edinburgh last year, and have attended classes at the cooking school, "which is really a school of domestic economy. Miss Trent has gone through a year’s housekeeping course, and i 3 thinking of taking a suitable position in Britain or on the Continent. Miss Helen Inglis has nearly finished her three years’ training at the Royal Infirmary, and thinks of returning to New Zealand, visiting Madras on her way out to see liei sister, Miss Jessie Inclis, who is now attached to the London Mission. Just noiv Miss Inglis is sister in charge of the Women’s Medical H ard. TMe Royal Infirmary is a very fine institution with accommodation for about 800 patients. It is built in projecting blocks, each block separated from the next by & strip of grassy ground. One side faces the famous meadows with tlicir green turf and trees, and footpaths where Scott and all the Edinburgh worthies once walked and meditated. At the end of each block are balconies for the patients and on the opposite side the flat roofs serve the same purpose. Here consumptive patients are treated by the open ai,

method, even in the snows of a Scotch winter.

Mrs, Napier, formerly a resident of Christchurch, and also of Dunedin, and financial secretary of the temperance association, has settled for a time in Edinburgh. after a journey across America. Mr R. Laing is now in* Edinburgh. He came to San Francisco by the Ventura, leaving New Zealand last May. In. America he saw something of California. Denver, Chicago, New York, Boston and the picturesque town of Quebec. Mr Laing did not escape thefnevitable American interviewer, so wo may trust that the Yankees have now picked up a notion or two about tho most progressive of British colonies. In Boston ho was present at a great educational conference, attended by 30,000 people. From America Mr Laing cam© to Liverpool by the Tunisian (Allan line), then overland by the Midland to Edinburgh, 'where he stays a week. After visiting his relatives in Aberdeen, he will go down to- England. PARADISE OR PURGATORY. An English visitor seeing the number of colonials hero asked me if all good New Zealanders come to Edinburgh before they die. But life in Edinburgh seems to bo rather their purgatory than their paradise, for none of them stay when they can get away. No sooner is the University closed than the undergraduates desert in. shoals, and at the, end of their three or five years’ course they vanish completely, some back to New Zealand, others scattering all over Engldnd. Amongst the solitary exceptions is Dr Stevenson, of Coates’ crescent. THE WEATHER." We have been through the whole. Tennyson ian details of Edinburgh weather—tlie bitter east, the cloudy Forth, the misty summer and the gloom that saddens Heaven and earth. We have had some comparatively fine days, and, to queto the criticism of. an Auckland medical, • “the weather is not so bad! just now, if only you would not call it summer.” The same young lady truly observed that the skies of Auld Reekie were never really blue, but they were sometimes “French grey.” It has seemed quite an ordinary July and August to North Islanders, and the only absurdity is the sight of green peas and strawberries in all the fruit shops. It stopped raining once (except for showers) for nearly five days, and when the rain, began again, the papers said what a good thing it was the drought seemed/ to be over.! Australians might ruminate on this. '