THE TALE OF - TIMBER TOWN.

Otago Witness, Issue 2649, 21 December 1904, Page 70

THE TALE OF - - TIMBER TOWN.

By A. A. GBACE,

Author of "Tales of a Dying Race" (Chatto & Windus) ; " Maoriland Stories," etcl PROEM. Timber Town lay like a toy city at the bottom of a basin. Its wooden houses, each placed neatly in the middle of a little garden-plot, had been painted brightly for the delight of the children. Thers were whole stieets of wooden shops, with verandahs in front of them to shade the real imported goods in their windows ; and three wooden churches, freshly painted to suit the tar-tes of their respective — and respectable — congregations ; there was a vrooden Town Hail painted grey; a wooden Post Office, painted brown ; a red college, where boys in white disported upon a green field ; a fawn-coloured school, with a play-ground full of pinafored little girls ; and a Red Tape office — designed in true Elizabethan; style, with copulas, vanes, fantastic chixn-ney-pofcs, embayed windows, wondrous parapets, — built entirely of wood and painted the colour of Devonshire cream, with grit in the paint to make it look like stone. Along the streets ran a toy tram, pulled by a single horse, which was driven by a. man who moved his arms just as if they were real and who puffed genuine clouds of smoke from his tobacco-pipe. Ladies drpssed in bright colours walked up and down the trim side-paths, with gaudy sunshades in their hands ; knocked at doors, ■n ent calling, and looked into the shop windows just like actual people. As a matter of fact there was nothing to worry about in Timber Town ; no ragged beggars, no yelling hawkers, no sad-eyed, care-worn people, no thought for to-mor-row. The chimnt-ys smoked far breakfast regularly at 8 o'clock every morning; the play of living began at 9, when the smiling folk met in the streets, and turned, Ihe men into their offices to play at business, the women into the &lhops where mean and good things to eat were to be had for little more than love Between 12 and 2 o'clock everybody went nome to dinner, and the cabs which stood in front of the wooden Post Office and dogs which slept on the pavement beneath the verandahs held possession of the streets. But if anyone would see 4he beauty and fashion of Timber Town from 4 to 5 in the afternoon was the hour. Then wives and daughters, having finished playing at housekeeping for the day, put on their gayest costumes and visited the milliners. Southern Cross street buzzed with gaudy life ; pretty women bowed, and polite nien raised their hats — just as people do in real cities ; — but as everybody knew everybody elso the trowing and Qiat-raising were general, ju&t as they are when the leadhsg lady comes into the presence of the chorus on the stage. Then the vision of gossiping, smiiing humanity would pass away — the shops put up their shutters at 6 o'clock ; the game was over for the day, and all the chimneys smoked for tea. Timber Town by night, except :when t-hs full moon shone, was sombre, with nothing doing. The street lamps burnt but indifferent gas ; people stayed indoors and read the piquant paragraphs of the Pioneer Bushman, Timber Town's evening journal, or fashioned those gay dresses which by, day helped to make the town so bright,' and went to bed eaxiy and slept with a. soundness and tranquillity .veil earned by the labour of playing so prettily at the game of life. " The bills which surrounded the little town pressed so closely upon it that by sheer weight they seemed likely to crush its frail houses into matchwood. On one side mountains, some bare and rugged, some clothed with forest, rose behind the foothills, ?nd behind them more mountains, which seemed to advance like the great green billows of an. angry sea. On one side stretched the blue of distant forestoovered ranges, upon the other the azure of the encroaching ocean, which finding a way, between the encircling hills, insinuated its creeping tides into the town itself. And overhead spread the azure sky. for the sky above Timber Town was blue nine day* out of ten, and the clouds, when they came, performed their gloomy mission quickly and dispersed with despatch, that the sun might smile again and the playing of the people continue. No nest in the forest was ever more securely hid than was Timber Town from the outside world. Secreted at the end of a, deep bay, that bay was itself screened from the ocean outride by an extensive island and a sandspjt which stretched iss many a mils..

Inaccessible by land, the little town was readied only by Arater, and there, in that quiet eddy of the great ocean, lived its quiet, quaint, unique existence. In such a place men's characters developed along their OAvn lines, and lacking that process of of mental trituration Arhich goes" on in large cities where many minds meet, they frequently attained an interesting if strange . maturity. In such a community there was opportunity for the contemplation of mankind ignorant of poverty; "and "such a happy state, begotten of plenty and nurtured by freedom, had its natural expression in. the demeanour of the people. It avos not characteristic of Timber ToAvn to hoard, but rather to spend. In a' climate bright through the whole year, it was not natural that the sorrows of life,

where life was one long game, should press

leavily upon the players. , ButVe come upon the little Timber Town at a time of transition from sequestered peace" to the roar and rush of a mining boom, and if the stirring events of that time seem to change the tranquil aspect of the scene, it is only that a breeze of life from outside sweeps over its surface, as when a gust of wind, rushing from high, mountains upon some quiet lake nestling at our feet/ stir the placid waters into fcam. So through the wild, scene, when the villain comes upon tlie stage and the hidden' treasure is brought to light, though the play may- seem; to lose its pastoral -character, it is to be remembered that if tragedy may endure far the night, comedy comes surely enough, in the morning.