MR CHAMBERLAIN AT JOHANNESBURG.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 11998, 21 February 1903, Page 3

MR CHAMBERLAIN AT JOHANNESBURG.

Ihe following ia an extract from a letter received by a member of our staff from a young Tiniaiuvian who recently went to Johannesburg (Jo'burg as he familiarly writes it. in the local colloquialism). He had only been theie a fortnight when he wrote, and consequently had not i yet learned much about the city or the country, and therefore confines ins letter chiefly to the visit of Mr Chamberlain. Of this he writes as follows: "When I ai rived in Johannesburg, I found the one topic of conversation to be the coming visit of our great Colonial Secretary. Well. Mr Chamberlain has come to Johannesburg, and Johannesburg has seen him. His iir.-t public speech here was given in "'The Wanderers'" giomid.s (the athletic grounds) directly on his arlival. Despite a gently falling rail:, with heavier showers, the good people of the Rand wended their way to the Wanderers at an early hour, quite prepared for a two hours' wait, and happy in the thought that "it was worth it." It was thoughtful on the patt of the municipality to provide plenty of music—several bands being in attendance —and the earlier part of the proceedings were thus turned into an enjoyable promenade conceit. The great ciowd was orderly in the extreme. As the appointed time for the arrival drew near the excitement became intense; till the whistle of an approaching train and the cheers fiom those assembled on the station platform announced that the Colonial Secretary had for the first time set foot on Johannesburg soil. Some ten minutes later a huge outburst of cheering denoted the arrival of the great man on the grounds.

of Johannesburg. A vast amphitheatre open to the sky, a. moving sea of faces, curious, eager, "excited; facing them the celebrated statesman and orator, speaking in a, calm, level voice that carried to the remotest fringes of the crowd, and giving to Iris words a clean-cut directness, an incisiveness, the meaning of -which could not be mistaken. - The note of Empire was struck at the start, in an allusion to the kindly messages -which had been received from "New Zealand and Australia. Standing there in the melee of men and women lie stood the emblem of pluck and intrepidity; for he told the people things they did not want to hear, and he had the cleverness to turn one or two silences—silences whicli portended disapproval—into laughter. By his magnetism, his tact, he bent the will of the people to his own. "Mr Chamberlain closed with a glowing peroration which stirred his hearers to the very depths:—'l call you to witness,' he exclaimed, ' that the Mother Country has done her duty by you: she has poured forth her blood and treasure without stint, and I think in future, at any rate, it can never be said she is forgetful of the ties which bind her to her children. She has vindicated her place in the eyes of the world, and now every Briton, wherever he may plant his ieet, will carry with him the proud thought, that "Always in toil or fray, under an alien sky, " Comfort it is to say, 'of no mean city am I.'"

" Mr Chamberlain gives his great speech at a public banquet, which is being tendered him to-night (January 17th). It will give you some idea of the enthusiasm when I tell you that the tickets for this banquet, though originally selling for £4 each, now cannot be bought for under £25."