CLIMBING OUT

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 7057, 19 February 1910, Page 5

CLIMBING OUT

(By Frank Morton.) An Auckland man told mo somo weeks ago that Wellington frightened h'im. I said that the bustle in Willis street must (be rather staggering to a man from, a dead-quiet place like he was used to; but he gazod upon mo stonily and said that wasn't ifc. Ho spoke volubly a large piece about my conspiring scurvily with somo person or persons unnamed ,'fco slander, malign, misrepresent, and grievously dieparago Auckland. Then lie condescended to explain. He said that what frightened ,him about Wellington was its situation. He said that ho supposed our motto of "Suprema a situ" was an evil jest of somebody's. Ho said: "When I .approach Wellington, I instinctively breathe hard and hold on. It is not 'safe to aoiuo into a city liko this by Tail: tho Government ought to fix lifts. When a train has reached Johnsonvillo, tho ongine shrieks, couplings crunch, and tire whole dern coincorn is spilt over the edge of a precipice. It's exciting, I dare say; but it isn't 'humane: iit killed my wife's mother." ,Ho said: "The harbour's all right enough, for >a place liko this; but what's the good of ai (hlarbour stuck like <a puddle a* the bottom of a pit ?'" In this tirade I suspected Mas or deliberate 'disparagement; so I seized a Wellington mam, and .passed on tho woeful tale. Tie Wellington man grinned, and on a sudden 'became as eloquent as an auctioneer. 'He said: "I used to hoax of Auckland quito often, when I was a boy at school; but 'I was telling the wife when . the iKnyvett affair cropped up tlhe other day 'that ttaart was the first time I had heard much about Auckland for twenty years. Auckland is so far tvtvay, so lonely, so insignificant and calm; it stirs in its sleep so seldom. Thoro is a mad jumble of land and water tip there; and there is so little dry ground in a. piece that you can scarcely walk from. Omehunga. to Ponsonby without wading. Land is cheap for building purposes' in Auckland,' because there is notibing else to do with it; and most men have big slovenly gardens to keep themselves partially aw-ake on the four or five days in every week when it becomes really impossible to, hold up the pretence of business. When tlioy got a big steamer in. Auckland a day ox two ago, ibey had a picnic aboard to celebrate the glad phenomenon. There are more human hoaxes in Auckland th'ani in any other town on earth ten. times its size. It is so beastly hot and smothery in Auckland that every man's liver clogs soon after he is born, and eo ho never really wakes up till foe is dead and looks round to find that it isn't heaven he's in. If you are adlrift in an Auckland suburb and want to find your way somewhere, you (mark down the forlorn pedestrian that is snoring least. You catch him gently by the shoulders and guide his steps so that he collides with a lamp-post and brings up. There he sticks, with this nose' against the paint ar*d his legs still moving mechanically up and ctown.' You held him up and bawl into his ear a full five minutes. Then ho turns his glazed eyes on you and asks if you spoke.. - Ten minutes later, when you have made him understand what it is you want to know, you discover that he cam't tell."

Between those differing opinions, what could a poor cosmopolitan do?

The otih'er day—last Sunday as ever was—l walked out in the thick of the, forenoon to boo Villiam. I found him busy with a reading-glass and a penknife, hunting slugs ia hia own. cab-bage-patch. "Villiam," I said, "I have discovered that lam living in a pit." . •

"Premature," said Villiam. "Not yet, old chap. But youiwill—later." I ignored his frivolous jibe, and explained just what the Auoklamd man had said. "It lis a fineday," I suggested. "Suppose we climb out of the Pat?" ''Whaflbr?" said Vdlliam. "There's nothing to see or to do. You can have the weather and all the views chucked in, if for a single tally minute you'll let me smell.a foot of London asphalt." Villiam Gs one of those ' patriotic New Zealanders you've heard talk of.

But I aim used to - Villiam's little ways, and because I know how to handle him he soon ~ went grumbling into his houso .to put cm a paiir of pretty socks, and w© set out, we girded our loins,and Went forth, wo started. It was hot. -A superficial and tolerable heat, of. coursej but on the surface it suggested Brisbane sk seven in the morning or Bockbampton immediately after sun-up. Wo walked Itfarough: a mile or two of blinking (streets, because "Wellington does not run Sunday-morning trams. Welling'ton, says that that -would bo breaking the Sabbath. The stoat ..has been heard to remark that the -cow has a very bad breath. 'How should I iknowP ' ■ -

In ai liitle -while wo were at Nga.hauranga.' That negtedtod suburb is •inhabited! by u. ilace of woolly giants who keep tired 1 hens an their premises land spend, their : Biimple days killing time and fat ' beasts. Men drink at iNgahauranga. I know why, because I've been there. So long as one keeps one's gullet a purling stream, one doesn't notice -the.. smell. But. Mie na-eaof the Great Smell is strictly limited to Ngahauranga. prtoper. Along the foreshore lalflo it is ' great, butfc different. There was not a soul visible in /Ngahauranga. 'Hero (and tb.er_e a blowfW orawled dejectedly, and -here and there an umclassed dog twitched (his ears add pondered darkly on the tiselesaness of effort. But life's little ironies persisted, and in a small schoolhouse >wo passed children with bright voices were stinging something about Beulah OLfund. ideals spur tie raco and nourish the religious impulse, and 1 can quite believe that in. Ngahauranga it da delightful and stimulating to think of ifioulah. I onco thought a good deal about Beulaih myself. She was a 'freckled dear who allured the casual passer-by. in on orange-orchard at Parramatta. She Was everybody's darling, but these many years has been only somebody's. -But this as a -wellknown Weltragtonian would say, is a disquisition. On -a hot Sunday, walking up Ngahauraiivga gorge is genuine exercise. It is a breakneck gorge, with a perverted ,-road tihiat' (forever holds out to a weary world fond dreams of relief from motorists. We plodded our way up bho 'gorge, and tho motors igTugged andl snorted as they passed us. Right on the tap, .where a stretch of levelish road crawls into Johnsonvillo and' hurries ,out tho other side, tho oarS raced by. Because we did not race, wo found this racing an- added .irritation.

"There -used to be a -hotol-at Jolro

sonvillo," said Villiam: "but this country is going to tho dogs.'' I said so too. It happened that j neither of us -was a drinking mail, in the commercial sense; but you may havo nobiccd that whenever a hotel that ilra.s been ceases to be, the irilaco of its abolition becomes unpopular. I don't mean to say that a place absolutely can't survive the toss oi the inim.ita.blo comradeship of beer ; Imt prohibition- of innocent things desired is an ugly thing, even if you only prohibit candles, and tho deadening of dead Johnsonvilie is only a case in point. As Villiam and I -burned into the husk of bhe dead hotel add drank tho stuff they call hop hoar out of pots made for nobler uses, we felt that- we poured a Bad libaitic-n at a tihrine of dead libartios. Seriously, though, I think that if tattooing ivere prohibited by lanv, I should be tattooed all over in five weeks. The normal man revolts instinctively .against unnecessary fetters, and tho scars of clean fight differ essentially from the disho-nrair-able soars of gyves. But here also, ns the -well-known 'WeHiiigt'aniaii might romivrk, I deliquesce. Wo felt like deliques'eiinig, anyhow, Viilliam and I, as wo sipped the # queer stuff from the good degraded pots. The day was Quito hot. .

Beyonid Jcihnsonville, a curl of white noad, -wndoning prospects, cheering vkies; and evor rarer and more rare tho dio-oting aattos thalt flung a taint of potool at the. gladsonio day. Conversation did not languish, hut it shifted ground E«t a touchy Wo disposed ctf politics in ten m.iiniutes, and of ivoman in fiftoem. W-o veered to reverent .d'isou'ssron of greater subjects, and on© by one wo sucked tho greater buh.iocts dry. Out oln m white road Under tJie honest sun, one's braini is active and one's outlook cioa.r, and many things that seem greatly important on a city pavement shrink to their natural propoTtrons among tho negligible worms. "Lacking a Boswell, H wasted precious guineas down tlio wind.

We 'were well on toward Tawa Flat when Villiam squared liis shoulders nnd started t!h© discussion of Boot's and Feet. (Be said:: "There is too much talk about tho heart as a spring of human motive, these times. AVhat gprice tie feet? Xn tho good took wo road of somebody attached to Solomon, whose feet were beautiful upon tho •mountains: there isn't even a .passing mention of the blood-pump. When a man's feet are wrong, his life runs all askew; and every philanthropist with corns is a criminal in bib heart mt the change 'of the moon. A man 'with., an! ingrowing toenail is ripe for any ■villainy under the sun, if only, the temptation is opportune and adequate. A ohtefored heel is a blister wu tho soul, arad many a likeable chap has been driven to tihe gallows by a bunion. Then, you may talk about expressive eyes, or an eloquent mouth, or nostrils th.ait flicker to every passing mood; but ."what about the instcip ? Look at the Queen of Sheba.! Look at Joan of Are I Look at I/illio Langtry! Look a't Nell Gwyn 1" (Tliese ladies were toot visible om that ..road;', but there's no holding Villiam. when he jumps, and I didn't say a word). "A woman's instep is-the most expressive thing in the World, and so felv women have iiusteps nowadays tliiat the world is becoming very . grey. Foet flat as ui table, and ; beef to the heels—it's awful! I know a man in this district omco ftvho was never hoard of until ho married a woman with an linstep, and a while after that his name was prominent in a.hundred (newspapers ami the "Christian Outlook." Hearts aro all right in their place; but it is not till you've grasped the importance and the mystery of. feet, that you begin to know much about human mature."

"Viilliam," said I, as 1 took off my' boot to shako o>ut a , stom© all ridged and jagged liko the pyia.mid of Cheops, "Vilham, you are xnakitog phrases." "Literature and conversation , and fashionable religion and wisdom-, while-you-wait consist mostly of making phrases," Villiam retorted. ''All the rest is journalism."

. Taiwa Flat is a cocky villago that long ago made undue haste to become important, and so. fell asprawl along the* white road.- .Villiam told me of a mythical man who made much money at Tawa Flat, and- stayed on there, lived and died there, 1 was buried there -for aught I know; and I am still wondering -why. I suppose he just hung round because ■ the mushroomß are good, and the beer Isn't yet prohibited. One paddock we crossed was dotted white with, tho adorable fungi. [ could not_ have stopped to gather them, even if I had had a basket; but I picked a fow buttons and chewed them as wo stumbled on over the clumps. I had made the mistake of going out in thin boots made to sell in Willis street, and the clumps made mo tired and sorry..'' To walk.far with oomifort you need hoots that fit perfectly—that have generous soles, and a welt half an inch wide all tho way round. If you are very adventurous, you can tuck your trousers in tho tops and be mistaken for a man of property. I didn't do it myself, (because I never knew which of those scolding cars might carry a creditor. A road along which creditors peer and pass is full of anaemiated intentions that dio stillborn. - ,

We lunched at Porirua, or we should have lunched there, had the thing Ibeen'possible.. As it- was, we ate. Imnch was, as they say, off. It always is, in the dear New Zealandoountry, if one happens to be ten minutes late. We ate flabby chilled lamb that was said to be roasted and seemed to have been stewed at a low temperature. We were tantalisod with the offer of flat malignant beer, and, so made the best of things on tea that tasted like nothing on earth but itself. And then we pursued out great concerns. The road' from Porirua on to Plimmerton is various and disconcerting. For a good part of the distance,. there is no road at rail, because the authorities (those vague -beasts!) have decided that Pli'mirfertoni shall live retired and got all its goods and guestsi by rail. A few lunatics walk out from down sometimes; but they don't matter much. This action of the vogue authorities baffles me quite,-it is queerer than Dir Newman's dissertation cm Impressionism; because Plimiivcrton, you see, has a sipacious, pleaeanlt beach, and when the beach do ompty on a fine Sunday, as we found' it, Nature's wise intention is defeated. A mile or so beyoind Plimmerton,. wo Eat tm a rook and agreed t!hat jvalking is one of those perfectly pn'end.id exercises of which upon occasionl one may halve enough ; so wo'.returned to town in ono otf -those fast New Zealand trains, and wore-spilt over tho precipice dn duo course without mishap. Let me commend this genial waJk to you. The thing to bo remembered always, when yon take a. walk, is that a walk overdone is m walk mia'do .foolish. We got hack in. time to dinte comfortably and goi out to spend itho •evemiiig. All* things were very pleasant in the Pit.

"You can'b walk in Auckland," that cheerful Wellington man told me. "If

von ivttempt it, you chafe and fade awav. Your clothes hang on you in a week; but it doesn't matter much, because in a week your clothes are utterly misshapen and decayed. If yon live in Auckland you must.do as the Aucklandors do: 101 l under the trees and in places where they gargle, and pour forth comminations on- wicked 'vV'elHngtoiii whenever you're not too Jimp and iweary to think. They have declared a holy war up yonder over Captain Knyvett. I tremble to think M-Hia* tlie result of stich unwonted energy must be. In a week or two now, we shall hear of Aucklanders dy-ing ot heart-failure amd kucnv that m. tho Keailm Kternal, lower berth, there s a malignant outbreak of the sleeping M'.-kness. TJiero is abundant aide- in Wellington, but Auckland is death made visible and (proud of itself. li lin 1 Au'cklander docs three separate things on. three successive days, he (lies"of apoplexv, and they put a stone over his remains to tell the gaping crowd Ifho-t hero was a faimioius citizen and no mistake. They a.re the runimicst c-noozers in tlio uniVeirse, hut tihcy'vo never bc«n awake yet long enough to fund it out." Sometimes, you know, I catch pnysoHf thinking that" occasionally a Wellington ian may or !bo a trifle over-lavish with the conscious purple. I lit you wcmld avoid this 'evil habit, tak-e I every oppbrtniiity tliat offers, amd i climb out.