GRACEFUL COMPLIMENTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3804, 8 February 1927, Page 68

GRACEFUL COMPLIMENTS.

NEW ZEALAND’S PURE ENGLISH. AMERICAN NOVELIST IMPRESSED. * „,, WELLINGTON, February 1. lhe manner in which the English language has been preserved in the Dominion, the clear and correct way in which it is spoken by all classes of the community, and the complete absence of dialects of any description, greatly impressed the farnou# American novelist and world traveller Mr Gouveneur Morris, who is returning to San i'rancisco after a month’s holiday in New Zealand. > ln , Great Britain, Canada, and Australia, said Mr Morris, “the English language is more or less a lost art, but in New. Zealand everybody I met —conductors on trams, railway officials, waitresses, and public and educated men spoke English as it should be spoken. It wag v. SO a great treat to visit a country where the newspapers are of such a high standard. I was struck with their quality and excellence, the leading articles and report* being written in the best English prose. Everywhere I went I found the people hospitable and kind towards strangers.” Mr Morris liked his stay at the Bav of Islands, more so than anywhere else in New Zealand, although he did not go to the South Island. ‘At the Bay of Islands,” ho sai d> “ y0!l have a s P ot - the lay-out c£ which by nature is unexcelled in any part of the world, and it is unspoiled and largely unvisited.” The people of Wellington, ho said, were cosmopolitan, and no parochial feeling was apparent.