HOW WE TREAT STRANGERS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 4858, 24 November 1883, Page 3

HOW WE TREAT STRANGERS.

There is something very amusing to a stranger in the entire and unreßorved faith Ohristchurch people hare that everyone must know their city as well aa themselves. The stranger wants to know the way to 595, Dublin street, we will say. He asks a Christohuroh man in the street. The Ohristoharoh man looks down on him with a feeling of mingled compassion and. contempt. He evidently is thinking to himself " Where has this benighted stranger been living, who does not know Dublin street ?" Then he looks slowly around, taking his bearings, and when he has done bo ears, "You know Smith and Jones' warehouse ? " Stranger humbly confesses that he does not know Smith and Jones' warehouse. Ohristohurch man looks amazed, but restrains the oxprosiion of his surprise out of consideration for the feelings of a peraou obviously of weak intellect. Then ho says, in a tone that is I oheerfully paternal, " Well, you know the Cathedral, I suppose." Stranger gladly and proudly states that he does know the j Cathedral. " Well, you go to the Cathedral, and (counting on his finger*) you take tho fifth street north of the Cathedral, and that's Dublin street." Xho stranger thanks him and meekly walks away towards tho Cathedral, wondering how ho is to find out tho various points of tho compass ; boing ignorant, poor wretch, that the streets of Ohristohurch, with the exception of High street, ran North | South, But and West. Ohriatchurch people should be a little more merciful towards strangers in their directions. DuriDg the late Agricultural Show I exoited | the moot uproarious mirth amongst some of my friends by asking where the Show woe held. They could not beliove that I was in oarnest. " 2Sot know where the Agricultural Show i« held, why (sarcastically) do you know where the Cathedral is?" When I replied that it did not follow that I should know whore the Show was to be held booauee I knew where tho Cathedral was, they oonde- | sceudod to oxplain matters to me. Now I had j been told that the Khow was held at Biocarton, and I had also been told by another person that it was held in Colombo street norlh. Both diroclionß, it appears, were mistakes, or else they woro given given by wicked persons who wero taking v mean advantage of tbo ignoranoe and innocence of a lone orphan in a strange land. *