Untitled

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 11248, 11 April 1908, Page 2 (Supplement)

Mrs Carrie Nation has decided to abandon the war cm American drinking saloons, because she thinks the fight a hopeless one. She. is broken m health, and has spent all her money. In referring to the neglected state of the Symonds street cemetery m Auckland, the Herald, says ; "Instead of wellcropped grass plots bisected by neat paths, in' place of graves that give evicU ence of .having at least occasional attention paid to them, the place is lai'gely a wilderness—a. veritable home of the forgotten. 'Where,' for instance, the sti-anger to Auckland might be supposed to ask, —'where does Governor Hobson lie entombed ' Is it any credit to the powers that be, or. to the community at large that the answer must be what it is? The grave of Governor Hobson m the Symonds street cemetery would puz. zle the oldest inhabitant to find just now. It is one of those m the immediate vicinity of the new Grafton bridge works, and it is m no fit state for the resting, place of such a man. In the same locality may be seen the grave of Sydney Stephen, one of the first of our Chief Justices, who died m 1858. There is not much sentiment about his resting place. A heap of fir tree branches rests upon his monument, arid at the time the observations of. the writer were made an overturned barrow rested against it. The grave plot of Major-General George Dean Pitt, at one time Lieutenant-Go-vernor of the northern province, is covered with an unchecked growth of grass and weeds. Heroes of the Maori war, and naval heroes, too, lie beneath patches^ of ground whereon no care is apparently bestowed, and singular instances of neglect could, be multiplied ad nauseam. Thus we allow our national esteem for men and women of the past to show itself."