THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20707, 3 May 1929, Page 16

THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH.

The old order lias changed; there are new men and manners. Another bought the property who was of a different order of mind. He was a “ business man.” Ho cut down the towering trees and sold the timber; dales where nightingales had sung for generations knew them no more; he stripped the woods and then sold the' mansion for a commercial enterprise, and left the place. The farms and houses and small holdings thereupon came into the possession of lesser fry; and timidly at first, but presently more boldly, the freed village personalities began to express themselves; and they made a dreadful mess of their works! Their freedom none will deplore for a moment—but the crudities arc hard to bear, until a better thought prevails. Choice sites, sacred in the former days, were bought, for building, a hideous medley of architectural styles broke out everywhere; disorderly.?ways crept in; the farmers, having paid off the imported hop-pickers, cast loads' of rubbish close by the open roadway—tins, broken crocks, bones, boots—all the obscene garbage and refuse of a collection of hop-pickers boused under elementary sanitary conditions. Advertisements in rabid lettering and colour began to show like leprosy on the face of the lovely old village which before had worn so sweetly its' ancient dignity; a petrol pump—roofs of tarred felt, of corrugated iron—abhorred material!—tawdry henhouses which were but ramshackle contrivances of sacking, wire netting, and (again) corrugated iron . . . held in place with stones and bricks. _ Formless, ugly makeshifts; lazy work in a place where none lacked work. Ifusybodics began to appear who must meddle and . make matters worse—the War Memorial must be scrubbed, forsooth, because the bronze figure on it had made the stone plinth green! So the softly weathering grey was duly washed away and the exquisite shimmer of gicen beneath it stared out in crude conti ast to the suddenly whitened stone. The allotment holders must have a toolshed, so another corrugated iron erection must be placed in the most c spiciious position possible. Townspeople coming down in their motor ears and charabancs to picnic by the thinned woodlands must needs pick the wild flowers, not even keeping those they picked, but strewing the dainty native daffodils, frail wdndflowers, and starry primroses dead and-dying along the roadways as they walked. What is true of one village is true of hundreds; everywhere an orgy of bad taste and of "reed prevails. Some sort, of concerted action is ncccssaiy to teach these, the newly freed that they must learn the place which beauty takes in the life of the community; and respect the desire for it in others, if themselves devoid.—Marian Gran, in the Woman’s Journal. ’’