TOMBSTONE FOR THE MAGUIRE CHILDREN.

Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12469, 20 February 1909, Page 2

TOMBSTONE FOR THE MAGUIRE CHILDREN.

flVthfl Editor of "The Colonist.") : Sir,— -There can be no one whose heart has not been touched by the sad passing away of those four lonely little : children, the . Maguires, on ~Fridav evening last, white to the bereaved father at Wellington the most sincere expressions of sj'mpathy have gone forth. . ... •. Many parents have expressed a wish to form. a fund at Nelson for the purP° se of a tombstone to be erected to the children's memory at Karori Cemetery, Wellington. . Such a fund would, I am sure, meet with ready response, and any contributions fori warded to teachers in the city, or to the newspaper offices, would receive i due acknowledgement. I am, yours, faithfully, : GEORGINA F. SUNLEY_ ' Ha'mpden street School, 1 Feb 18th, 1909. • [A subscription list for Jhis object has been opened. . Any amounts receded at this office will be duly ack- . nowledged. The children of the . Uampden street school have collected . £I.— Ed., "TLo Colonist."] ; A PATHETIC INCIDENT. 1 Distraught with the news that a i near relative had perished in the dis- . aster of Friday night, a young girl ; hurriedly arrived . alone on the plat- . form of a country railway station with i one idea— to get to Wellington. Her sorry condition was obvious to. several, but it appealed more directly to a Salvation Army lass, who, in pure sympathy and goodness of heart, ap- ; proached the girl, who related the dis- . tressing circumstances which had occasioned her lonely journey. The . tender hearted Salvation Army woman touched to the quick , seeing that the ; girl was in no condition to travel by i herself, decided at once that it was a case for action. She said that 'she would_ accompany her to Wellington. The girl would not permit this sacrifice, and persisted that she was ablo to travel alone, so the lassie compromised by providing her with the means of securing assistance in Wellington. Arrived in Wellington she went to a friend's place, and with her went to a large drapery establishment to secure a few articles of wearing apparel, befitting her sad ; state, before undertaking the painful duty of identifying the body of her -relative. While in the shop the employees learned ed of the sad circumstances of their customer, and at once rushed to herassistance with a generous open handedness which did them and their firm of employers infinite credit. The sad lot of this unfortunate young woman was such that after attending early Mass on Wednesday she was discovered in a dazed condition in the street, and when accosted by a kindly ; disposed gentleman said that she could not find her way home, though it was but a few hundred yards away, and added that she seemed to have lost the power of thought. The gentleman tooli her into his home, where she was most kindly treated, and later escorted to her friend's, house. The incident is but one of the . many illustrations of the havoc the tragedy of Friday night has played in many a home, and serves to show that there are kindly folk at every street corner only waiting a chance to extend aid and comfort *to . those sorrow stricken and less fortunately situated. — "Dominion." .STATEMENT BY MR PINNOCK. Among those who acted with com-, mendable promptness in connection' with the consequences of the wreck of . the Penguin were Messrs G. Pinnock and Almond, the proprietors of the Commercial Hotel and the Trocadero respectively (says the "Dominion" of Thursday. Both \ gentlemen are keen motorists, and when the news flashed round the city, Mr Pinnock at once sprang into action. He communicated with the Union Company^ and was informed that a motor car had already been sent but, but this did not extinguish the hope that; lie might be .of service, so, enlisting the sympathy of Mr : Almond, <*they stocked the car with stimulants, blankets, arid towels , and went out through the rain to Makara, where, through the forethought of Mr Nathan, pack horses from his station were in waiting to carry necessaries over the mountainous track to the scene of the wreck. When half way 'down over the hills, Mr Pinnock met a man with a loaded pack horse coming back, and on being; questioned he said he had heard' that the survivors had left for' town via the beach, and he was returning with the goods the Union Company had sent out. • Mr Pinnock persuaded him not to return, but to go right on. There was a boat load of; women and^ghildren missinff who might yet be found and who might want the good things they had brought. So the man— a Makara farmer — turned about again and made for M'Menamen's, over hill and dale. "It was a good job we did go on, said Mr Pinnock, "for when we arrived at M'Menamen's they had no bread and there was not a bottle of spirits in the house, and there was Mrs Barman and others' there who wanted stimulating after their terrible -experience.-* ; This was no" fault of Mr M'Mehanien's, "rather the other 'way, as he had (given the survivors everything in the house. "I reached the beach at about 11 o ? clock, at which, time only a few. of the bodies had been pulled up out of the reach of the tide, by two or three shepherds from the station. As we went along we came upon others, scat^ tered hereand there along the beach, and we started to pull them up high and dry. These ; had not been touched by anyone since theyu had been thrown up by the waves, and I'll tell you what (said Mr Pinnock, with deep conviction) — some of those . poor people were alive when- they reached the beach, as sure as I am alive.' Why do you say that? "When we got there no one had been before us, and yet the smooth sand near the feet and arms of several of the bodies was disturbed, as it in their dying struggles they had yet strength enough to move their limbs. In some cases, too, I noticed a depression at the side of the head, as if they had been able to move it about. My belief is -that several of the men reached the shore alive, perhaps not conscious, and died there from exhaustion.- Seeing what_l saw, nothing will convince me that I am not ngnt. Had it been possible to render succour to some of- them, lives might have been saved." .'■■,.'• : Mr Pinnock speaks strongly in respect to the lack of any organised attempt to recover the bodies and treat , them with the respect due to the dead. . He has grounds for . complaint, too , when it is considered that between. 11 , a.m.. and noon .his party came upon ; bodies that no one else had seen, much ; less touched, except some of the ; sur- ; vivprs, who.may have seen something 1 of them on their way. to town, \

THE PENQUIN'S MAILS. The Chief Postmaster desires us to aotify that in view of the improbability of mails on the Penguin being recovered, correspondents would find it to their advantage to post duplicates. Io may be mentioned that all mailsposted at Nelson for the North Island or countries beyond New Zealand after 9 a.m. on Thursday, the 11th, and berore 9 a.m. on Friday .the 12th, would be on the lost steamer, with the exception of those for Auckland end laranalci, which were sent to their destination by the Rotoiti on Friday