FRANKLIN.

Observer, Volume XXXV, Issue 13, 5 December 1914, Page 5

FRANKLIN.

It may fairly be held, and this paper has always held, that the seat held by a leader of a, party should be his without opposition. In the present instance the Prime Minister will, of course, be returned for Franklin, as he should be, and an opponent merely puts the country to a little.more expense and trouble. Mr A. G. C. Glass, the Opposition candidate, has, of course, very special qualifications that many electors will fully appreciate, for he is the founder of the New Zealand Farmers' Union, is, equally with Mr Massey, a practical farmer, and 1 has many of the qualities that his opponent possesses. The position is a little curious, for, by all the rules of the game in New Zealand, one might expect a Farmers' Unionist of the calibre of Mr Glass to be. heart and; soul a Massey man. He has proved himself an adept politician in preparing the

ground. Mr Massey, however, has had the ground carefully staked out since 1897 in Franklin, and three years prior to that sunk preliminary pegs in Waitemata. He can't lose his seat.

The recent General Presbyterian Assembly in Dunedin recalls a good story which was told when the last General Assembly was held in the city of the Scot. The narrator was an Auckland minister well known for his wit. According to him, a party of parsons went on a sight-see-ing jaunt into the country, and returned to the church where a special service was being held for them a trifle late. Led by himself, however, they entered the church and marched up the aisle just as the congregation plunged into the strains of the first hymn. But, alas! the hymn had been ill-chosen, for it started with the fateful lines— "See the mighty host advancing, Satan leading on." "Satan," concluded the minister, "promptly subsided into the nearest pew, and left the 'mighty host' to advance leaderless to its reserved seats!"

"Fighting Bob," of Sydney, better known in Auckland as the Rev. R. S. B. Hammond, an Anglican clergyman, is here again, and once more is on the warpath, anxious to take the scalps of the publicans and the brewers. He is the same breezy old Bob as ever, on the same old business, with the same old yarns. Last Sunday afternoon, in his first address at the V.M.C.A he trotted out promptly one of the many old stories, so often told before, about a man who cabled to his wealthy relatives for his _ own funeral expenses, and, after liquidating the remittance, unsuccessfully attempted to extract from them'the cost of his tombstone. It is a good' story, and "Fighting Bob" tells it well, but, as he told it last Sunday, the tale differed from the old version. This sort of thing is calculated to arouse a certain amount of suspicion, and Bob should try to keep his memory, green or give us something new.