THE REV. MR HEWITSON ON HIS TRAVELS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2690, 4 October 1905, Page 65

THE REV. MR HEWITSON ON HIS TRAVELS.

AN INTERESTING LETTER

The pastor of Knox Church has not forgotten the young people of his flock, as will be seen from a perusal of the following letter, which has been handed to us for publication : — TO THE BOTS AND GIBLS OF KICOX CHOtCH.

My Dear Boys and Girk, — I would like to send you a few linc^. but I find myself rather in the difficulty expressed by t-hc Frenchman, when he talks about the embarrassment of riches. When you go into a shop containing scores of beautiful thing?, of which you are allowed to choose only ono, you know that it is not so easy to make your choice, as it would bo if the shop coii'tained only two or three pretty things. That is a case of the •embarrassment of riches. I know something; of this experience when I think of writing to you. Theie is such a multitude of interesting things in Britain about which one might write, to say nothing of interesting objects in India. Palestine, and Europe, that I scarcely know when to begin. Suppose I bogin with what is right in front of me, and follow whither the .subject leads. Well,, then, just in front of the window where r am writing, on the opposite side of the street, stands the British Museum. I suppose one of ihe mof.t remarkable places of it.=. kind in our empire, and, perhaps, ■even in the whole world. In the Museum there are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of books, a great many statues, and other important and valuable objects belonging to almost every country and to every age. There are some things in the Museum that are connected with the London lying about the doors of the institution, and there are other objects that come^from the most remote parts of the world. I saw the other day in the Museum some of the presents that were given by the Maoris to the Prince and Princess of Wales when they visitod New Zealand in 1901. These gifts have been placed by the Prince in the Museum, where they may be seen by anybody, instead of in the palace, where they would have been seen only by a few. There are things in the Museum belonging to widely-separated times, as well as to widelyseparated countries. You may get in the Museum the book that was published in London only yesterday, for, according to law, a copy of every book published has to be sent to the British Museum. You may also see there things that belong to times when London did not exist, when there was no British nation, and no English people. I saw one day large stone tablet?, on which there were figures descriptive of the wars of Sennacherib and other Assyrian Icings. You, perhaps, remember the Scripture account of the overthrow of Sennacherib's army; if not, turn it up and read it. There are some swinging lines of Byron describing the same event. They used to be in the school books when I was a boy, and I was very fond of them. They begin something like this: The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the

fold And his cohorts wero gleaming ir. purple and

gold ; Like the leaves of this forest when summec

is green, That host wit.h their hannsis at sitnset ware

ESCII. Like the leaves of the forest when axitunin

hath blc-wn ThaA hast on ths morrow lay withered and

strown. For the An^el of Death spread his wings on

the i>lesl, Andi breathed, in tiio face of the foe as La

passed ; &.nd the eyes of Ihe sleeper waxed deadly and

chill, Aifd Ibeir hearts but or^cc heaved and for ever

wore still! And there Jay r.ue steed m th his nostril all

wide, Though thro' it there rolled not the breath

of his pride. And the tents were all silent, the banners

alon<a, The lances unliited. tho trumpet unblown, Ai.id the niisfht of the G-emile, unsniote by

the sword 1 , Haifo melted like snow in ihe glance of Vxe Lord ! Sennacherib, however, is quite modern by comparison with some of the things in the Museum. There are Egyptian mummies and coffins that go back to the days when Joseph was in Egypt. I saw one skcl&ton that is said to belong to a time long before the period of any historical King in Egypt. It seems to us a very long time since- our Saviour was born, 1905 years : but the date given to some of the Egyptian things _in the Museum is 3600 years before Christ, nearly tivioe that 2>eriod. It will not take a sharp boy long to reckon how far off some of these things are from our time. In the Museum I saw a letter written by an Egyptian school boy to his father. Here is. a translation of the letter for you : "Theon to his father Theon, greeting. It was a fine thing of you not to take me with you to the city ! If you won't take me to Alexandria I won't write you a letter, or speak to you, or say good-bye to you ; and -if you go to Alexandria I won't take your hand, nor p^r greet you again. That is what will happen if you won't take me Mother said to Arehelaus, 'It quite upsets him fco be left behind.' It was good of you to send me presents ... on the 12th. the day you sailed. Send me a lyre. I implore you. If -you don't I won't eat, I won't drink ; there now !" When we were in Rome I saw a Greek inscription on the wall of a schoolroom on the Palatine Hill. The inscription ran something like this: " Heliodorns leaves school to-day." I think it passible that the word " Hurrah " has been worn out, by exposure to the weather. I can see the bearing face of that boy as he turns round to his companion, who has just come up to ask what he is scribbling on the wall, and I hear him as he gladly announced to his friend : "I am leaving school to-day, and going to work on Monday." The girls cannot fail to notice the great improvement that has taken place in boys since the time of that Egyptian boy. and even of that Roman boy on the Palatine Hill. How the practice of scribbling on walls has died out. and with what regret boye. leave school now. Mothers, too, are not nearly as soft with their boys as they used to be. When I was a boy I used io wonder how learned men were able to read the tablets of those old Egyptians. The people who wrote the tablets were fill' doad, and for hundreds of years their language had been forgotten. How, then, I wondered, could anybody read the inscriptions. In the Museum I saw the key, that enabled it to b? done in the early part of lagt century. I wonder if any of

the older boys and girls, or the members of the Bible classes, know the story. If not, I suggest it to you as a subject of inquiry. Seai eh for information about tlm subject in books, and if you .cannot find it tlicic a»k for it from the first teacher, or the first father, or mother you meet. I 6hall tiy and remember when I reacb home to ask you what you have found out. Perhaps now you are beginning to think you have had enough -of the Museum, and you would like a change. Well, lei us go out into the streets. The streets of London are fascinating; I feel as if I can never get •enough of them. Charles Dick-ens and Charles Lamb loved the streets of London, and walked in th^ra without weariness hour after hour. Charles Lamb used to say he would not exchange even the poor crowded alleys of London for all the glories of Helvellyn and Skiddow. Off we go, then ; in three minutes we can be in Oxford street, one of the important streets of London ; and if we take the tube, an underground railway to which vre descend in a lift, in 10 minutes we can be at the corner of the Bank of England, the busiest corner in the world. The traffic is amazing ; the roar of it makes conversation difficult, and the procession of horse busses, motor busses, motors, hansoms, waggons goes on in an unbroken stream the whole long day. Often the vehicle.;, follow one another so closoly that the noses of the horses in one vehicle are "almost touching the back of the vehicle in front of them. When the policeman stops the traffic at a street corner for a few moments, as he does every now and then to let the traffic in another direction get on. horses and vehicles pile up behind one another for a hundred yards. The quiet authority of the policeman is astonishing. He makes no fin?, he never shours, and he appears to carry no weapons. He simply holds xip his hand, and cabs, busses, the carriages of rich men and of fashionable lad:ss, and the coster with hi? fruit barrow, all stop ; the cyclist, too, stops and hangs on to the vehicle in front of him. The policeman waves his arm, and on the stream of traffic goes again. On the Continent in some largo cities in broad daylight wa saw the policeman armed with swords and revolvers. 1 suppose it is more difficult to beep order in these Continental cities than it is among the London crowds. Everybody in London, when he cannot find his way turns to the policemen. I must have asked dozens of policemen for direction, and always found, them courteous and obliging I should think the London police must be asked to give direction thousands of times during the course of a day. Another class of men in London yon wou'd like are the busmen. They work long hours— l 4 and 16 a day,— and yet they are a cheery, uncomplaining set of men. The way some of them speak would amuse you; they clap on their " h's ' when they are not wanted, and then, to make things equal, they drop their " g's " when thej- are wanted. I have read of a cabby who was calling " 'ighgate, 'ighgate." Someone standing near said to him, "Cabby, you have dropped your 'h.'"' "It's all right." he replied, "I'll pick it up at Hislington." In aswer to an inquiry one busman said to me, "I don't see 12 haeeidents in a year. We learn to 'elp one another. We give way to one another. I've seen two men pull up dead when they was drivin' opposite ways and like to run info one another." I suppose the reason why we run into one another and have accidents in the home and in the school is because we have not learned to pull vn dead, and to give way to one another. I wondered if that cheery old busman, in talking as he did, was doing a little quiet preaching; and I would not be surprised if that were so, for_ I find that mo«t people are fond of preaching a bit. It appears 'to me that people in London and in Britain generally, have more things to inspire patriotism than we have in New Zealand. Macaulav. when he was on the Continent, loved to think that be was an Englishman, a citizen of London, no mean city. I hope you boys know something about Macaulay. for he had great respect for the knowledge of a schoolboy. When referring to some out-of-the-way thing he often used 1 to say, "As every schoolboy knows." Macaulay is worthy of your knowledge and admiration for the love he had for England. One of his great pleasures was to visit the cathedrals of England. Some of them are beautiful and subduing old buildings, filled with memorials of men who, in various ways, have served their country. I greatly enjoyed visiting St. Paul's* Cathedral and seeing the statue? of some of our famous soldiers and sailors. I was much touched one day by the sight of a bunch of beautiful roses that had been placed in the hand of General Gordon's statue. Immediately after we left the cathedral I stopped at a book shop, when I picked up a book in which there was a story of a visit to Westminster Abbey by a father and his two girls. When they came to the statue of Longfellow the older girl took out of her dress a flower that she had been wearing, and placed it on the statue of the poet. Unnoticed by the others, the younger girl lingered behind. When she came up to them her father asked why she had lingered, and after some hesitation she confessed that she had no flower, so she had bitten off the end of one of her curls, and laid it at the poet's feet. Both of these girls loved Longfellow, as every good girl well might do, for none of our English poets has written about children more tenderly and beautifully than he. I do not know who placed the roses in Gordon's hand, but 1 like to think it may have been done by some gracious-hearted girl or some true-spirited hoy, who knew something of the great services that Gordon rendered to his country as a soldier in time of war, and to boyS in time of peace. Scarcety any tribute could be finer than that which is paid to Gordon in the inscription on his statue. Here is a copy of it for yoxi to think about and to try and live up to: — "To Major-general Charles George Gordon, C.B. , who at all times and everywhere gave his strength to the his substance to the poor, his sympathy to the suffering, his heart to God." The Bible classes, when they are arranging their syllabussos, are sometimes at a losj, for subjects. Let me suggest these for their consideration: — Paul's picture of a soldier in the sixth chapter of Ephesians ; the biographies of some of our Christian soldiers, sueb as Hedley Vicars, Henry Hoveloek, General Gordon. General Wauchop<\ and others. I think the study of such subjects is calculated to inspire in us a lore of our country and of God.

To the teachers and scholars of the school, and to the teachers and members of the Bible classes, I send my kind regard* and hearty good wishes. — I am, your minister and friend, Wm. HewujsOS. Loudpn August, 1905