The Star. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 19, 1907. ROUNDED WITH MAJESTY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9113, 19 December 1907, Page 2

The Star. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 19, 1907. ROUNDED WITH MAJESTY.

The death of Mr J. O. Wilkin removes from the community a personality which it can ill afford to lose. It is not always the man who- holds high civio and social positions or who is associated with the administration of public affairs who is of the greatest value in the world in which he mores. The lesson of 'generous example and sterling honesty of character often counts for very much more. For over fifty years of faithful servi6e in the one employ, Mr "Wilkin has been teaching that lesson, and the story of his upright honourable life is a standing monument to his quiet force of character. He began his career in the " Lyttelton Times " office half ia century ago " with the broom, 1 ' and, by application and pure worth, he won his way from the cabin to the quarter-deck, his administration, of every department he was called upon to conduct being marked by ability and perseverance of a very high order. For a man who was comparatively unknown in public life, he was singularly one of the people. His gentle and unassuming disposition, wedded to unvarying justness with generosity, endeared him to every member of the large staff he was called upon to control, and to them big death is literally a personal loss. Outside the office ho was always to be found helping forward from the background every movement tending for the welfare socially and politically of the cii?y in which he lived and of the dominion generally, and no man's hand was oftener in his pocket in the causes of philanthropy. It was hoped that a loaig " rest after toil," in the shape of a year's happy holiday in the Old Land, would have restored him to complete health, and the saddest feature of his death is that it should have taken place in a distant country, away from most of those home associations to which he was so characteristically devoted. But it has come to him — that ■STreat, wise flteafh cl old men honourable, "Who iiave livedi out »& the lengtih. of all their yeaxa Bl*mele«*. The community is infinitely poorer for the death of a man of a typ© which is far too seldom, met. ,