AUCKLAND BELLES.

Observer, Volume 3, Issue 74, 11 February 1882, Page 345

AUCKLAND BELLES.

A Belie of the Past. — Mbs Still (nee Miss

Bella Nation). No suburb of Auckland has remained so completely undisturbed during the last twenty years as Pavnell. It is a sort of " Sleepy Hollow," content to jog along as it did. years ago, in calm and sublime indifference to improvements and innovations. Once the aristocratic quarter, it can never believe that other places have gone ahead, and left it lagging in the rear. It reposes upon its laurels, utterly oblivious of the fact that, like its own hall — weather-beaten and defaced — its best days have faded, to return no more. And to its best days, when Parnell was

in the heyday of its youth and jollity, belongs the belle who forms the head-line of this article. Of all the many hospitable houses there, none was more hospitable than Colonel Nations; of all the bright and happy families which grew up there, no family were gayer than the Nations. Who does not remember the twin boys Arthur and Charles (known familiarly as "Jack" and "Grill"), and their inseparable companion, their sister " Bella " ? Fond of dancing and music, and of all innocent and cheerful amusements, they helped to inaugurate that series of dances which once made Parnell famous. The daughter of a once celebrated beauty, and of so fine-looking and martial a man as Colonel Nation, " Bella" could hardly fail to be pretty ; that she never approached what her mother must once have been, one could not fail to notice. She had the intensely dark eyes and hair, and the pale, clear, marble-like complexion which are often found in the land of her birth, under the burning sun of India. She had also the same quick but bright temper, and the sunny vivacity of manner, clouded over occasionally by fits of languor which mark the dwellers in the East. That the Nations gave charming little parties, and that the twins and Bella were always thrice welcome guests at every dance or picnic, is to say the least of the gay and sparkling trio, who shed a sort of charm over Parnell. But Time, which changes everything, changed even that merry household. The sons went different ways, the daughters married. Yes, the dark, pretty, gay young belle, who had been guilty of many a flirt during her long and happy reign, found her master and her fate at last in a certain Lieutenant Still, of one of Her Majesty's ships. And so, one after the other, they departed and left us, and are scattered far and wide in many far off lands. Only the fine, white-haired old colonel remains with us, for he sleeps soundly now beneath the sunny turf of St. Stephen's. But Bella is in England, well and happy, and inclining to enbonpoint ; and the bomes of the others are scattered "by mountain, stream, and sea." Do they ever look back, I wonder, to the bright days of their youth, and to the merry household in Parnell, and to the friends warm and lighthearted who laughed and danced with them in that sunny summer time ?