GISBORNE-THIRTY YEARS HENCE.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 970, 8 December 1879, Page 2

GISBORNE-THIRTY YEARS HENCE.

Old Dan Page sits on an easy arm-chair, outside of his hotel door, under the shade >f an old poplar tree, which he proudly boasts of having planted thirtyyears ago. .'' • • :g . Old Dan has nearly done his three-score-and-ten, and says ho don't suppose it will be very lo»ng before .the bell rings which lie will have to answer.' Dan's head, at the top of it, is as bare as one of his billiard balls. Those who recollect the old landlord in years passed away, will remember that he had, a fair share of .wool on his poll ; b'uti the little that is left to him now has been 9 bleached by time, and his beard appears as if covered by a hoar frost. *' 'Old Dart is'still hale and hearty. His only trouble is a touch now and then of gout in his toe, at which time it is trouble for anyone who may happen to appy^phJiiin. For one to come within a foot of"tTiat big toe of Kisi would probably result in a : bottle or a turn bier being shied at his head. The only doctor who Dan will allow to' attend him is jolly old Bollen, who, within the last few years, has grown so sleek and plump with good living, and so jolly- with good temper, that it becomes (-quite a pleasant sight to look upon him. The old-doctor is a, great favorite with his patients* because he never goes in fur putting any one on a gruel and water; diet. He says to a patient, my dear •ur, or madam, as the case may be, if you feel y<>u ; want , a little brandy and water and. you think ;it will do you ; good — why, then, have a little brandy and water, although per-: haps whisky is less inflammatory ; or when a patient shows symptoms of returning appetite, and asks to be allowed the wing of a chicken, he says by all. mean, my dear sir— have the wing of .a chicken — have two wings if you can eat them, although I should recommend a cbuple of lamb chops with a tomato- ii preference, or a sweetbread, if one is to be got, stewed in a little sherry or done with egg arid bread cruniba. The only one the dear old fellow is hard upon is old Dan Page when he h«s got one' ofchis attacks on him f and his slippers won't take in his tnes, "It won't do, old man;" the doctor will say ; '"bpttledstoutandyour lower extremities djiesn*) agree.. You must go back t6 barley-water— and mind you whj^t. I aajr: —barley-water without a dash of anything in it;" and Dan, though he growls a bit, does as hi is told, for, as he saysj'what's a man if he won't obey orders. -./" ' Old Dan, when he is all right "And his toes comfortable,, is very fond of' pitting, as he is sitting now, in an arm cliair iif an eveuing talking about former times, and spinning yarns. Dan * tells : how he remeriib^red when the law put a padlock on a man's mouth on a Sunday so as he shouldn't have a glass of beer drawn for him, not if he, wa& dying for it*. ; "It wasn't wicked you see," says Dan, "fora man to drink beer oh a Saturday, but it was very wicked to drink, it on Sunday." Now, old Dan goes on to sa), things are altered since then. Free education has been and done it. The law now leaves it to a man to drink whenever he feels he wants a drink and leaves it to a policeman to deal with a man when i he's drunk more than he ought and can't keep on his legs. ! " Why," says Dan, laughing, as he thinks of the old-fashioned times, "the Licensing Commissioners once made me go the matter of seventy pounds expense to build a separate entrance for ladies to go up stairs who were stopping at the hotel. "The commissioners said ladies mustn't hear any swearing which might be going on in the front or side passage as they passed through. "Not," says Dan, "that I ever heard men swear much when they saw a respectable female going by. And if they did, I don't suppose it would have capsized their morals, for hb far as I've seen, men swear a good deal before women, and what's more, they swear at women when they are at home in their own houses. Haven't we all done it 1 Why, I've heard husbands as have had private ronins up stairs a damning and a b'asting their wives like wild fire. However, the commissioners made me spoil a fine bath-room and build a flight of stairs for what they called having a private entrance, and when it was finished itwas six months before a single female made tise of it, and the only one thai: did this was tohide herself away from her husband who had been swearing at her for hours and threatening to punoh her head. "Swearing indeed," says old Dan, getting excited, as he looked back upon the past, " I never swear myself, nor I don't like to hear thf.se who do ; but still I never see a women as couldn't stand a little bit of swear just as most of 'em can stand a drop of good liquor when they feel a bit faintiah. Swear;! why, I've got an old woman here that attends to the bed-rooms, and she says nothing easfs her mind so much as swearing a bit when she finds a lodger has gone to bed with his dirty boots on." ; Old Dan is never tired, when he gets | into the run of the thing, and has had ! just a spoonful or two in him, of telling; his customers what has happened during the last thirty years of his being landlord of the Masonic. The town had been ..burned down piecemeal six or seven times, in about as many years, and had all been'handsomely built again by the insurance companies, until the companies wouldn't insure any more, since when there have been no fires except a chimney or two.- He tells how one Bob Hooper, for' a second time, set the oil springs going, when everybody was mad to get hold of shares, and they went buying 'em wtierever they could get them, Snd running y up the prices, and there was

:i ■- s *?v ; * . . \. ". lothing but oil' talked about fy&& if it • was. used for yittles and drink. They imported oil miners from America, and junk in all: directions ; a new company jpeing started-^bout four times a day avery day^ififne week, Sundays included. The newspaper made a fortune in printing prospectuses and advertising the getting up of new companies. It was astonishing, says Dan, what a lot of shafts was sunk, and what a lot of money was : auuk^o.^ink^th.eni^fßid. .hflw.^pu, almost every case, water came up instead '^ of oil. l , The land raqket, says/ Dan, wiiich.jy.eni. pn two or threejvears before this was nothing to it. ~J3r. BoIIen'TSZT" to treat a large number : of people for what he called oil on the brain. " Didn't yoti over ¥ear jiHd land racket?" .says old, Dan, .turning round in hiseasychairtoanewch{r^,/VM/bl^ro^ vrord, it was the rumWstgo you ever ' -see. One man woujd bid ten .pound for an acre of lantfthSt wouldn't 'fetch him a' stiver until he had spent another ten pounds on . ; U'..,^ Well, I tell ypii^ when he went tenjjpounds another chap Would' go him five pounds better, and; another chap. would go better still ; and 1 there was the people a buying land arid selling - at high-faluting prices, anddoing nothing with it all the time but giving^- one another promissory notes,: whichv.costv heaps of money fbr stamps alone; ) Why, * I tell you blind-hookey, euchre, cut throat, poker, props, unlimited 100, a hundred to one on the, double, event, , or, ; three-up for a note a time, was innocent ' and child-like amusement to it all: No one knew, what they were going to do with the land— they, pnly' wanted to sell it at a better pi-ice to some man who bought it on btf la to sell at a higher . figure to some other fellow j-wtio boiignc for the same object, and' thence'the game went on until there came a general burst up, when things- went i better and came right, just as happens wjth one/ofr those blind biles when, it has come tor-* head and breaks . and then begins to~ heal" ' ■■'- ■■" '•■-' ■* •"•-' s!>l Old Dan does like to tell yarns abotft ' the racket of 78,' because, generally speaking, there's some tine near hinz a listening to him who | had*beeu bit very" hard indeed: '■"'>■"}. t ?■? •Well* says Dan, it has ;Qoma right .at lasfc Englishmen now can get a bit "of) land at a reasonable figure, and we ve , hundreds of little farms and gardens' all f ' pitying fairly, because pebple 1 hfcVe be*-' come contented with smaller things] andthey don't ask goldfields' prices 1 '-tot ■'■»* bunch of turnips, or a cabbage, or some-" thing* of that dorfc, as they; did thirty years ago. . ; . '• ; ? And old Dan, he goes', on a yarning, and, telling his expe> ierices. ' How ihk~ Maories have all sold their land)' 'arid 1 drunk themselves dead, except a few who are in au asylum supported by Government ; and how we've at last got a railway, and are going to ' have a port, and he goes, ahead, until he, feels the night breeze -upon him, and^ie'^&ys he's not so. young as he was thirty years ago, and he thinks he'll toddle' iri ( dolors or he Bhall have old Dr. Bollen on tihim, for not taking 'care 7 of himself. And, by the way, there is always astrdng difference of opinion betweenjolt" Dan and the doctor. Bollen tells Ban, that his complaint is gout, and if he is not very careful it may fly to his stomach. Well, Dan says, its not gout ; its liver. The doctor asks how the-, liver idaii get down to his toes, TJut' San can't be convinced, and when any one wants to make him feel sWyaee toey ask him if thle ! liver- has got ovit^b# n hia f tcfea yet.. ■..-'• ■■:) • .' •■■■! i .-■ ■■-.;< /.*» Old Dan is warm and comfortable now, and is able to look any bank manager in the face without flinching. He kas even been known W poke* fan at one of these dignatories by offering: to-. '«•do V a little bill for :him cheap. He was once on very, friendly terms with old Snyder, but fell- out with hinV because the old journalist used io chaff him about the quality of the dry hash he used to put upon his one o'clock dinner table, Snyder having gone so far as saying in the presence of about -fifty of his best customers that he would supply him with a better quality of hash' at two and six pence 'a • hundred weight, carted free to hia kitchen." But they made it up afterwards over* Haifa pint of Crawford's fourteen X beer in : a pewter measure. Old Dan has a handsome glass case in his bar which covers the three dice and leather box' which the game of " Yankee Grab " . used to be played with; but Which is now strictly illegal. . „, .