" IN THE DAYS OF MY [MR REEVES'S] YOUTH."

Otago Witness, Issue 2686, 6 September 1905, Page 65

" IN THE DAYS OF MY [MR REEVES'S] YOUTH."

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES BY THE HIGH COMMISSIONER. (Fboii Oitb Owar Correspondent.) LONDON, July 14. Mr T. P, O'Connor has persuaded Mr W. P. Reeves to supply ths autobio- ' graphical chapter in this w-eek's issue oi 1 M.A.P. The High Commissioner for New Zealand treats his subject, "In the Days j of My Youth," as follows: — ' As a child I lived on the ooasfc of a small island far out in one of the largest and loneliest ocean expanses of the world. And the colony of which this island was a part was itself almost empty. In the year of my birth (I was born on the same day as v General Baden-Powell— namely, February 10, 1857) there were, perhaps, 60,000 whites in New Zealand, and not quite as many brown natives — this in an. archipelago nearly as largo as the United Kingdom. Moreover, both races were scattered about iri 1 - scanty handfuls. I remember my boyish indignation on reading in a school geography, about 10 years later, that Auckland, "the capital of New Zealand, is only of the size of a large village. This estimate was true enough of New Zealand towns in 1857. My birthplace was the seaport of Lyttelton, named after the father of the present Colonial Secretary. Lord Lyttelton had helped to found the settlement of Canterbury. He visited us in the sixties, and I remember my surprise at noticing that a member of the mysterious never-before-seen species called "Lords" was so strangely ljke ordinary men. The great world seemed always very far . away. -News reached us onoe a month by small mail steamers from Australia bringing English letters and English newspapers two months old. Of course, ' there were neither telegraphs nor ocean cables. The first telegraph poles were set up in the province when I was a boy of six or seven. I used to stare very hard at th© wires, in the hope of perceiving the flight of one of -the messages/ which, I was- told, flashed x along them. Especially do I remember the arrival of a certain mail steamer in 1852. She entered' our harbour just after nightfall, and, as she could not oome alongside of the primitive wharf, the health officer had to go off to her in a boat. My father was with the doctor, anxious 1o hear the first news, and I, an urchin of five, was allowed to crouch in the stern sheets. I can still remember looking- back at ~ the lights of the town as we left the shore behind; also the glow that streamed from the steamer's portholes. Then a voice from the gangway shouted out " Death of the Prince Consort," and it was presently explained to me that the .Queen's husband was dead. This was the first oublic event that I can remember. _Nearly 40 j-ears later it fell to my lot to send an official telegram to the Premier 1 of New Zealand (who, at the time, was in ■ Melbourne) announcing the death of the ■ Queen ierself ; and it so happened that this telegram was the first to carry the sad tidings to Australia and New Zealand. Looking back upon the surroundings of my early years, the dominant impression remaining is that of a life amid vast empty spaces. On one side lay the ocean, on the ether a bare, grassy plain, 30 miles across. Beyond the plain were high, snowy Alps, range upon range, behind which the sun used to set. Now, the plain is planted with trees; the>i, it was simply a &ea of yellowish wind-swept gcass. The earth always seemed large — one could see co far in the clear air — though " the tiny settlement and its minute affairs were so entail. Far away across the ocean was another world, the I great world of affairs, where there were ! nations, parliaments, wars, big cities, and i terrible crimes. The monthly mails told us of such things; and 1 they loomed vast, vague, -and fascinating. So one grew up • accustomed to watch what was going on at the. other end of the earth, for otherwise life would have been too narrow altogether. Always a bookworm, I knew more about England at fche age of 12 than about my own New Zealand. Conversely, I have for the last 10 years lived in London with my eyes turned half the time to the Antipodes. Thus all my life I have been, as it were, looking across the eea. Without ceasing to be a New Zealander I have also become an Englishman. Yet in talking over affairs with English friends our point of view seems I almost always not quite the same. On the other Hand, I do not look at things quite as I should if I had never left New Zealand. It is a detached kind of position. Most men when indulging in reminiscences, long or short, are given to dwelling upon what seem to them critical,, moments in their lives. If I were to try to pick out suoh instances in mine I should be tempted to begin by recalling the instants in which I have stood closest to imminent death. I began to graze destruction nearly 45 years ago. My .family then lived near the mouth of a short tidal river. Small coasting vessels laden with timber or odds and ends used "to cross the bar and lie moored- near our house, and coasters are as intensely intex^esting to small boys at tho other end of the earth as at this. So it ■happened that, just at the fall of night, I was watching a ketch coming to a berth. The bank on which I stood was high and steeg — iitdeed, overhung the stream, which wag swirling rapidly out to sea. Of course, boy like, I planted my short legs on the extreme and overhanging edge of the miniature cliff. * Scoured out by the current, it gave way suddenly, and in a second I was kicking and splashing in a dozen feet of-" running water. _03dly enough, I can still recall the shouts of the seamen as two* pf them tumbled ever the side of $&& Jastafr '-

into a dingoy, which was luckily towing alongside Also, I can remember the tightness of tho grip on my neck and shoulder, of tho friendly pair of tarry hands which presently hauled me into the boat. I could not swim a stroke, and had swallowed enough brackish water to give me a holy horror of rivers for some years.

Once again, this time in 1864-, I was indebted to a seaman's hands for saving my life. Again ifc was evening, on a sailing vessel running 10 knots out in the South Atlantic. The men were heaving the log and I was watching them, sitting the while on a hen-coop, the top of which was flush with the 1-ee bulwarks. A sharp lurch threw me backwards, jerking me from my seat; my head was over the bulwarks, my hands grasping empty air. Happily the quartermaster, dropping the minute-glass, through which the sands were running, sprang to the side and grabbed my ankle just in time. So, instead of being engulphed in the Atlantic, I was dragged inboard, soundly and deservedly shaken and rated, and sent below. Five-and twenty years later I played my last game of football. When stooping to pick up the ball I was accidentally charged, struck over the eye, knocked senseless, and carried, still unconscious, into a hospital which stocd conveniently near to our football ground. The house-surgeon did not at first sight take a sanguine view of my case. I have been told that he cheered my fellowpJayers with the dry remark: "Well, you've done for him this time !" However, after a while I came to, and became aware that I was in a large high-roofed hall. Voices scunded— a long way off. Presently one of these voices said: "He's coming round." And then in my ear, "Do you know where you are?" "'Yes," I answered; "I'm in the hospital." Now, neither then, nor ever since, have I the slightest recollection of the accident itself, or of anything that occurred for a minute or two before it, or for an hour or co after it. Why, then, on coming to, did I comprehend in a flash that I had been carried into the hospital?

At the date of this misadventure I was a member of the House of Representatives of New Zealand, and I was still in bed with a very aching head 1 when I received a letter from a valued political supporter suggesting that it was lime for me to give up football and devote myself to more serious matters. At the moment football seemed a sufficiently serious matter to me. Other friends, however, todk the same view as my correspondent, so in my next platform speech I solemnly premised my constituents that I would not play again Nor did I.

Even mors lacking in humour than the letter just mentioned — at least, so it seemed to me — wss my first invitation I>q contest a New Zealand constituency. It cam© in this way. One fine day two or three influential local politicians from a certain electorate dropped in for it chat, and intimated that their member, though, a very able and well-known resident, was likely 'to bo keenly opposed. As the spokesman of the party said: "PeopL "down our way are very dissatisfied with the side Mr has taken ; they're saying' that they'd do anything to get him beaten. I've heard men say openly that they'd vote for a chimney-sweep to turn Mr out. ! _ Now, Mr Reeves, wliy don't YOU stand?'' •' In the end I did, and, though not, a chim-ney-sweep by profession. I had not been in polities long before I was as black as many vigorous critics could paint me. father was so actively oonoerned in New Zealand public affairs that I was. so to speak, cradled in colonial politics. Yet until about 20 years ago I was— save on one pomt — more interested in studying the march of events in England. True. I had begun in 1882 to write on New Zealand ! affairs, but it was not until five years later that I dreamed of taking any open share in them. During these five years I wrote on them with any vigour I was master of, but without, so far as I could ; discover, changing the views of a singlo human being Suddenly, in the midst of a general election, J found myself at tho head of a political league and booked to address a , public meeting. I had passed my thirtieth year without ever facing thai ordeal — had never, in fact, spoken even to a small dinner party for more than 10 minutes. Fortunately, only a few hours' notice wag given me. or I should have fidgeted into a fever. With immense care I learned my introductory sentences by heart, and made voluminous notes. I was horribly nervous. The little audience — it scarcely filled a big schoolroom — seemed a portentous expanse of white faces staring 'at me through a kind of haze. I began by reciting the carefully-prepared sentences. The white faces appeared to smile goodnaturedly. Then came the pineh — I was at the end of the words I had got by rote! Could Igo on? 'Oh, joy! The words came faster than I -wanted them. Point after point suggested itself in proper order. I never looked at the voluminous notes, llie kindly little audience woke up and cheered fche effort of the beginner. They gave me a unanimous vote, and I went home perspiring, but happier than I have . ever been since after making a speech. I made up my mind that, if I was to do anything in the way of persuading my iellow countrymen, I had much better talk to them than wrii?e at them. The odd thing was that this hurried conclusion was right.

At the- end of the meeting, by the way, an elderly Scots-New Zealander walked up and regarded me deliberately. "Young fellow," he said at length, slowly, "if you ■had as good a stomach -as you've got a 'head, you'd be Premier of New Zealand in ■a dozen years." The gentleman, who was Premier of New Zealand 12 yeaTS afterwards, is my superior in many qualities of mind and body, but he has a very striking and especial advantage over me in the direction indicated as my weakest point.