WESTERN AUSTRALIA POST OFFICE DIRECTORY."

Otago Witness, Issue 2170, 26 September 1895, Page 11

WESTERN AUSTRALIA POST OFFICE DIRECTORY."

Messrs Wise, (Jsftin, and Co., with great enter, prise, have invaded Western Australia, and we have now before us a copy of the "Western Australia Post Office Directory for 151)5-98." This is the first directory of this rapidly-advancing colony, and as trade is sure to extend with the ste&dy progress now going on the work should provo invaluable. The directory is a book of some 4OO..pivges, but tbe labour and expense cl compilation were very great, as may be imagined when it ia remembered that although the population is but something over 100, 000, it is ec ttered over an area of ), 000,000 square rnilis of countiy— an area so laige that a country an large dm Ivaw Zealand could bo taken away from it without bei g missed Opening with an article on the climate, products, resources, &c. of the colony, which has had tbe benefit of a revUion by the Pivmier(Sir John Forrest), there follows a street directory of Perth and alphabetical directories of the vatious townships, and also of the colony. Then comes a trade directory, followed bj legal, educational, pastoral and agricultural, nnd official directories. The customs tariff ig given in full, and there is also some information concerning post and telegraphic rates. The volume is well advertised, and as care appears to have h«en taktn in its compilation, Messrs H. Wise and Co. Ehould reap the reward they undoubtedly dsserve for such an enterprise.

The old stage coach London hostelry, the Elephaiifc and Castlo, was in its time famous as a public resort. Its glories are now gone under the new canriitioua of life ia London, and the Savoy, the Bristol, the Charing Cross, and other palatittl hotels replete with luxury and oomforfc are very different from the While Lions, Red Bulls, and Or i tenons of the early years of the present century. Let us picture the bar parlour of the old Elephant and Castle, cay, after the battle of Waterloo, where the genius of the Duke ol Wellington overthrew, by the aid of British, bayonets and the Prussians under Blucher, the great conqnerer Napoleon Bonaparte. Burly red-faced farmers from the midlands, the dapper little keen wheat-buyer from Mark Lane, the wholesale carcase butcher, the dealer in hunters and roadsters and others of that ilk, all in harmony threshing out the talk of the day over their mugs of alo, when in comes the old stage coachman after a long journey. Not being gifted with much conversational powers and with a consciousness of inferiority in this respect, he tske3 up the newspaper a» an excuse for silence notwithstanding the difficulty that he was unable to read. In those days the mail coach was pictured in an illustration, and the paper being held upside down, it is easy to understand the torror of the old coachman, who exclaimed, "Here's a big accident, a coach capsized," and the roar of the delighted company when they learned the nature of thai capiize. How different is convivial life now to those old times. Instead of the long churchwarden pipes we have the beautiful and fragrant Vanity Fair Cigarette, the perfection of quality and the soother of worried hamtnity.