Railway Matters and High Railway Officials.

Observer, Volume XXVII, Issue 36, 25 May 1907, Page 22

Railway Matters and High Railway Officials.

(For the Observer)

IN a letter written by me, and published in the New Zealand Herald in April, I endeavoured to express my thanks to the Railway Department for the improvements effected during the last two years between Auckland and Avondale. I proposed to follow that first letter with a second and concluding one, and did bo, but, alas ! that second epistle does not appear to have found favour in ..the editorial sight, and it has been suppressed:' The subject, however, is an important one, and here is " The condemned thing," as a Yankee would say, as near as it is possible to reproduce it:— To the Editor. Sir, —In my previous letter, I specied some of the improvements recently effected on the AucklandAvondale railway, and I purposed completing the enumeration in a second letter, but I find, on consideration, that the only additional improvements consist of certain public conveniences erected at Kingsland and Morningside. In this connection, it will be gratifying to many good people to learn that the use of tbe establishment of tbis nature at Mount Eden station is regulated on strict Sabbatarian principles, it being religiously placed under lock and chain every Sunday. . The ladies' waiting- room at Mount Eden appears to be so insanitary that even in the most inclement weather tbe ladies are constrained to occupy seats in tbe open portico, anH frequently trespass even on the one solitary garden seat generally supposed to have been supplied " for men only," as A. J. Black says in bis advertisements 9 . 9 At Avondale itself, insult is added to suffering by the frequent appearance of trucks laden' with crude fertilisers, the pestilential odours of which are a sickening outrage on tbe nostrils of waiting passeugers, and a menace to public health. But there the truck* remain, hour after hour, while cheerful, chattering Chinkies" leisurely discharge the reeking contents iuLo their carts, apparently keenly eujoying what is to others a filthy, loathsome nuisance. Protest and complaint have been ignored by the high railway officials, with that ineffably supercilious contempt for the public, of which they are such thorough .masters. , The train service is still spasmodic, inconvenient and insufficient ; while the time-table often tells the most atrocious falsehoods concerning the arrival and departure of trains. The long-promised fast, furious and frequent motor train service has not yet eventuated, and, though there were exciting reports lately of the motor having been actually seen in the rails, it seems to have " mysteriously disappeared," as the£ newspapers remark, when a defaulting bank manager, sharebroker, or government official takes a sudden and regrettable departure. But " I will pursue this subject no further," as the King remarked when, after a long chase, his fugitive High Chancellor fell over a precipice. " Some day I will write a monograph," as Sherlock Holmes often said, on "The Superior Railway Official; his ways and his means," together with some remarks, probably of a cursory nature, on the meanness of his ways. "He is not yet classified," as the savants say of Pelorus Jack, but we know something about him — unfortunately. It is clear that he is not an ordinary human being. He is conrinced on this point himself. His bead contains few, if any, ideas, but it is infested with quite a number of extraordinary hallucinations. The three most prominent delusions are (1) the belief that the public railways are his private property (2) the impression that the public are his servants (3) the conviction that being aeuperior railway official, lie is necessarily, a superior being. HeHg seen at his beat, seated at his o^fick table, " making a countenance,"/ ac \baucer would have said, .to un/'etßta* some;*' ■■■ ■■;*'' l ' 1 ' • ' . " ' .' 'it*. -■.•■■■ ■.*•■%■

new Regulation. His efforts to comprehend it are' not usually crowned with complete success, but when he has discovered a way of so applying the Regulation as to result in the greatest amount of inconvenience to the public, combined with the least amount of trouble to himself, his delight is really pathetic. There at bis table he aits, and sits, and sits, till some other official a grade higher than he is instructs him to do something. "Yer pulls the string, and the figger works," as the showman says. It works in a deadly, dreary, mechanical way, which possesses a weird and horrid fascination for the ordinary human spectator. It moves until the initial impetus which caused it to move becomes exhausted, and then it relapses into its normal attitude — a wooden effigy at a wooden desk ! The advent of superior railway officials was distinctly foreshadowed, thousands of years ago, in an old Book, for which I still have a lingering fondness — a profound respect. Here is the adumbration : — " They have mouths, but they speak not ; eyes have they, but they see not. They have ears, but they hear not ; noses have they, but they smell not. Feet have they, but they walk not ; neither speak they through their throats." "This is decidedly warm!" aa the devil ejaculated when St. Dunstan tweaked the Satanic proboscis with bis red-hot pincers; but "it is painfully correct," as the flagellated schoolboy sorrowfully admitted of the teacher's arithmetic, while the latter scrupulously counted the strokes of the birch. Bat I must not further anticipate that monograph, though to do so is " a great temptation," as Eve said of the apple. If the editor granted " insertion," As the ladies oft say of their lace, In this subject I might " seek immersion," As Baptists do when they "find grace." But perchance 'twould be quite " novel reading," The passion for which should be stemmed, As such terribly bad mental feeding, Which our own C. J. Parr has condemned. Oh ! If L had the pen ot a Percy A. Vaile ! I would wribe in such strains That my readers — like his — would cry " Mercy ! May the devil take you and your trains !" " I could easily pour out more matter," As Ruapehu quite recently said, " But I think," as remarked once the hatter, "It is fitting, just now, on this head " That ray pen should " Have rest, and cease toiling," As the saints who do soar up above; Lest in trouble " I find myself broiling," As the steak sadly said to the stove. Still, "My aim could not well be much higher," As we all heard Mayor Arthur Myers say, When, assisted by pulleys and wire, That tall chimney he scaled, in the Bay. " 'Tis the good of the public inspires me !" As our statesmen all say — though they lie; ••'Tis the good of the public that fires me !" As the rubbish declared with a sigh. 'Tia for up-to-date trains I am praying ; - If the prayers of the righteous prevail. Why, it goes, yes, it goes without saying We'll have up to date trains without fail ! "Sir, I have no wish to trespass iurtbt-r upon your columns," as the great Napoleon said to Wellington, after the battle of Waterloo. — I am, I regret to say, still Wii/ltam Cooper. ■". Avond'ile South. '■ .' J