CYCLOPOLIS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2687, 13 September 1905, Page 69

CYCLOPOLIS.

By Jessie Mackat.

I It bears another name now; but vhen it is dug up by some Mongolian antiquary who traces in shard and mound the ancient Aryan civilisation of New Zealand, it ' will be named anew from the thick debris of shattered gearca?es and petrified tjres, and will arise to ghostlike communion with the upper world as "Cyclopolis, the City of Wheels." In those days, when the Avqn creeps to the sea an oozy track of reeds and flax once more, and the two cathedrals have long mingled their disputed Apostolic orders in the one long lasting older of decay, it will be wondered how the Cyclo- ' politans ever made -nay through the whir- j ring labyrinth of their own streets without being run down by the ancient demons of the rood. The poets of that time will have revised the centaur egend up to date, and will sing of monstrous beings compounded partly of flesh and blood and partly of steel and rubber, who annihilated , time and space in the eerie power of their automatic life. And since your Mongolian is never a lover of wheels, he will ha.ye evolved for himself a new Book of , Machines after the manner of ''Erewhon'" j Bvitler ; and will point oblique morals with the fate of those impious tamperers with Nature, — Nature, who knows best tLa complement of limbs and scope of limb power that a man should have, lie -will find in the sand-heaped mounds -of the old Avonian city the same avenging «ti">i:c trat the orthodox now find in the 'lust ox the star-ospiring towers of Bii?s Nimrud. | But Cyclopolis does find its way about, ' calm and uncolliding, "as if its inch of way were the seas profound." An inch of way it is, at least twice in the day — noon and 5 o'clock in the afternoon. If a Martian were to stand in front of Godley's fctnhie , then, he would be filled with the same ' eerie astonishment that possessed Fitzjames i 1 when the Highland hill gave birth of a sudden to the warrior host of Roderick Dhii. In an instant the square is a ] !ve and ! black with wheels. They pour out of 'looi's, I arches, alleys, and part in four rivers of j traffic to the four cardinal points. 'J he hungry swallows homeward fly, threading, their silent way deftly through tramlines and across - comers. There is charming variety in the &cene. Here is the fii'.lufTiable butterfly, skimming home, bird-like, on her shining machine, to her dainty lunch az Papanui. Here is the city typine. healthy, hungry, and brisk, steering a dustdimmed warrior of a bicycle through the press to the door of her favourite tea room. Here is a smooth, well-groomed merchant on a smooth, well-groomed machine, bear- j ing ponderously down on the lesser fry of 1 the road. Here is a stormy petrel of a | schoolgirl, with her hair, book straps, ard 1 sash all flying defiantly on the wind, while \ ; her schoolboy brother spreads his slim and \ spidery frame over his rattletrap machine in one world -forgetting ecstasy of speed, j Here comes the avow-ed enemy of his race, > the road hog, who has long since taken on ' earth the way of the hawk in the hpaver.s, | and bears down ruthlessly on the helpless ' wildfowl of the street — stout country women i 1 with Maori kits, tender-footed old gentle- ■ j men, toddlers making a bee-line for the lolly -shop window. Lastly there f-c;i\es in I sight the broad foundation of rhe wheeled world — a grimy-faced, steady-riding work- I man with, the sign of Ins trade slung care- | lessly over his shoulder. He is soberly ! guiding a mud-grey roadster, that neverthelss can hold its own with the shiniest trifler on the track. | Boston sees life through a haze of academic transcendentalism : Chicago sees life , through an aureole of pork : Cyclopolis sees it through its aggregate tyre ; if it goes not , on wheels, to the typical Cyclopolitan it ! goes not at all. Like Enid, he prays, Turn thy wild wheel through Sunshine, storm, and cloud; and fancies that if there were a cycling track in the blue where the clerk of the weather could experience the novel delight of a. celestial spirit, there would be a mighty improvement in affairs terrestrial. Ihe hummocks of Gloucester and Kilmore ! streets are an avenging dispensation ; the tarred expanses of Hereford and Madras streets are a foretaste of heaven: the all but inappreciable elevations of Papanui and Cambridge terrace are accurately tiken by the heart of every Cyclopolitan. The minority has not a rosy time fnywhere — unless the minority happens to be' a colonial baby. But the non-cycling minority is emphatically the dust of the ro;.d in Cyelopolis. "It has its remedy,'" says the majority, with a haughty finger on the bell. "Learn to cycle, or get underground !" And the minority, crushed with its own conscious unworthiness, gathers its umbrella and its brown paper parcels to its heart, and goes flopsily to the wall. Sometimes a flying Bayard murmurs "Thank you." as a lady steps aside foi him. We think he was not raised in Cyclopolis. The politics of Cyclopolis are 'hardening up to Radical pitch. One© it was a centre of that refined Conservatism that spread from the steamy slopes of Ararat ; tor> it is as "new" as Tennyson's throstle. Some say this is the fruit of education, so we say it is the harvest of "Saturday n : ght in the square." But I think it is the cycle that is annihilating the dividing salt cellar of caste. Doth not the same wind blow home John Smith from the foundry and Mrs Highflyer from her dainty reflection in the Royal Cafe? Doth not the same policeman make Melons of them all who are caught lampless in the holy streets of Cyclopolis? Have they not kindred feet to ache w ; {hal when put to their natural use in re my weather? The coach and four was au ev ; l '. thiu£ of jprivilejjej tli§ coster's barrow js as

a lowly mark of caste ; the wiie-l, LI c the Freemason's sign, is cosmopolitan.

Broadly, Cyclopohs knowi oniy two classes — the wheeled and the wn^eiVs"*. In another decade it bids fair to level all distinctions., and build an up-to-date Eden on a well-tarred foundation.