A Maoriland ' kittle Pedlington.'

Observer, Volume XV, Issue 796, 31 March 1894, Page 2

A Maoriland ' kittle Pedlington.'

Gisborne, like a good many other small townships in this colony is a • Little Pedlington,' where everybody is intimately acquainted with everybody else's business ; where Mrs Jones knows how much Mrs Smith's new dress cost per yard ; where the Greens can tell you what the Browns had for dinner last Sunday and will have for dinner next Sunday, and the Browns know the Green's piano is • only a timepayment one.' And Gisborne is terribly • cliquey.' It is divided into ' sets ' and one • set ' will no more mingle with another than oil will amalgamate with vinegar. Snobbery flourishes like the green bay tree in Gisborne. It iB a small and slumberous town where people have little to do and plenty of time in which to do it, and where a very small matter will create a very great stir.

The latest excitement in this queer little community was the licensing election, which of course gave rise to the usual newspaper war. 'Ex-Publican' threw down the gauntlet by rushing into type with a sweeping accusation : he declared that_ all women engaged in the liquor traffic were persons of immoral character. The publication of this missive excited a perfect storm of indignation, and a wellknown local hotel keeper took up the challenge in a letter in which he sought to vindicate the character of the buxom ladylady and the frolicsome bar-maiden. He said and most truly, that hundreds of women had been brought up in the bar who had become happy and respected wives and mothers and that barmaids would compare not at all unfavourably, as a class, with any other class of women belonging to the same station iD life.

That shut Ex-Publioan up. Public opinion was with the ohampion of the sex or rather that section of it attacked by « Ex-Publican. l Another Gißborne excitement has been caused by the visit of oertain pious people calling themselves ' The Exclusive Brethren.' The Exclusive Brother is not a very attractive person. He affects the rusty black coat and the limp white tie of the dissenting minister who is not prospering, or the temperance orator whose mission has been only partially successful, at all events from the £s.d. point of view. The Exclusive Brother, as his name suggests, holds peculiar theological views- His creed may be summed up in a few words : He believes that only those of Mb own way of thinking are saved : all the rest of the men and women in this world are - er— not saved. If he is right there would Beem

to be a warm time a-head of the human race— -bar the • Exclusive Brethren ' whose number is very, very limited.

On a recent Sunday one of these Exolusives, referring from the platform to a wealthy grandmother who had bequeathed her riches not to him, the speaker, but to someone or something else, complacently remarked that the old lady had gone to— well, the place where little boyß who tell untruths in Court are supposed to go. Two young men amongßt the congregation got up to leave. The Exclusive Brother didn't approve of this unceremonious departure. Pointing at the young fellowß as they marched away he said : • and those young men are on their way to now.' Whereupon one of the twain turned round and said : * Can I give any message to your grandmother for you ?' Such is the newest form of religion in Gisborne.

Since the above was in type news has reaohed me from Gisborne that the author of the letter in the local paper Bi'gned ' ExPublican ' (whose identity had been carefully concealed) has been discovered, and I also hear that the Gieborne publicans intend to sue the alleged author of the letter for £5,000. Whether they will get it is another matter.