EARLY RECOLLECTIONS

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1747, 30 August 1905, Page 64

EARLY RECOLLECTIONS

(From Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, July 14. The Hon W. P. Reeves is interesting in. his anecdotage. and the chapter of autobiography which the New Zealand High Commissioner contributes to ""M.A.P." this week makes good reading. When Mr Reeves was born at Lyttelton (February 10th. 1857), there were not more than sixty thousand white people in the whole colony. The first telegraph poles were set up in the province when he was boy of six or seven. His earliest memory * of a public event dates back to 1862. his fifth year, when from the gangway of a mail steamer in Lyttelton Harbour, a voice shouted the news of the ""Death of the Prince Consort." Nearly forty years later, it fell to Mr Reeves’s lot to send an official telegram to the Premier of New Zealand announcing the death of Queen Victoria herself; and it so happened that this telegram was the first to carry the sad tidings to New Zealand. Always a bookworm, Mr Reeves at the age of twelve knew more about England than about his own coloDy. "‘Conversely/’ he observes. “I have for the last ten years lived in London with my eyes turned half the time to the Antipodes. Thus, all my life I have been, as it were, looking across the sea. Without ceasing to be a New Zealander I have also become an Englishman. Yet, in talking over affairs with English friends our point of view seems almost alwa3’S r quite the same. On the other hand, I do not look at things quite as I should if I had never left New Zealand. it is a detached kind of Dosition." Mr Reeves was, as he says, ""cradled in politics," but it was not till 1887 that he dreamed of taking any open share in them. His first invitation to contest a seat was amusing. ""People down our way,” said a local politician, ""are very dissatisfied with the side Mr has taken. I’ve heard men say openly that they’d vote for a chimney sweep to turn Mr- out. Now, Mr Reeves, why don’t you stand?” The future High Commissioner had passed his thirtieth year before he made his first public speech. Let me give the story in his own words: —

""Fortunately," he says, ""only a few hours’ notice was given me, or 1 should have -fidgeted into a fever. With immense care I learned my introductory sentences by heart, and made voluminous notes. I was horribly nervous. The little audience —it scarcely filled a big schoolroom —seemed a portentous expanse of white faces staring at me through a kind of haze. I began by reciting the carefully prepared sentences. The white faces appeared to smile good-naturedly Then came the pinch—l was at the end of the words I had got by rote! Could I go on? Oh, joy! The words came faster than I wanted them. Point after point suggested itself in proper order. I never looked at the voluminous notes. The kindly little audience woke up and cheered the effort of the beginner. They gave me a unanimous vote, and I went home perspiring, but happier than I had ever been after making a speech. I made up my mind that, if I was to do anything in the way of persuading my fellow-country-men. I had much better talk to them than write at them. The odd thing wus that this hurried conclusion was right. ""At the end of the meeting, by the way, an elderly Scots-New Zealander walked up and regarded me deliberately. "Young fellow/ he said at length, slowly, "If you had as good a stomach as you’ve got a head, you’d be Premier of New Zealand in a dozen years. The gentleman who was Premier of New Zealand twelve years afterwards, is my superior in many qualities of mind and body, but he has a striking and especial advantage over me in the direction indicated as my weakest point.