A SHUNTER SHUNTER.

NZ Truth, Issue 98, 4 May 1907, Page 6

A SHUNTER SHUNTER.

In the Maoriland railway department it seems to be essential .to pass some kind of an education test before you are promoted, or if you want' a, billet, and even the man who shras coal at barking dogs along the line has to pass a grammar test m order to satisfy the authorities that he is lit to shy things at said dogs. There is. a casual hand employed on the railway at Christohurch who desired promotion to shunter, and he made application to Wellington for that importarit post. An old certificate was kicking, around the house, and he sent it up along with his application. The certificate was Siigrfed by Schoolmaster McLeod, now. of Poverty Bay, and for years master at Woodbury, South Canterbury,, but it turned out to be an impudent forgery ■■; it was as unlike McLeod's signature as . a toad is t n a tarantula.' However, the. cent who wanted the job, , James Robert Fergusson, sent the b^t of forgety along and as the Wellington authorities smelt a mouse, ths forgery being so glaring, Tec. Kennedy interviewed Fergusson, and elicited the fact that his; missus may have written the thin?-. but he had posted it himself. At the S.M. Court he was charged with uttering, which is an indictable offence, and. on admitting it was sent to the Supreme Court for sentence, being released on his own bail. Fergusson had never been m McLeod's school m his life.