MANAIA NOTES.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XXXII, Issue 11484, 13 September 1889, Page 2

MANAIA NOTES.

(Feoh Oub Own Correspondent)

| Manaia, September 10. Every traveller has noticed that the English language is very hard to speak, but the globe trotters also observe that it is very easy to swear in English. The noble savage of this gem of the Pacific is no exception to the rule. Like all other noble savages he has fallen a victim to the bad habit of swearing in English. At the Court to-day, two or three Maori cases were tried in which the charge of 8 wearing appeared. Mr Harry Good who has be.en appointed a Licensed Interpreter rendered the native patter intelligble to •.the. Justices Messrs Sutherland and Perry. The facility and correctness -with which. ■ Mr Gtfod speaks the language is astonishing. He certainly is to be complimented upon his skill. Well there's no evil without gome good in it. So when the presiding J.P. asked the prosecuting native what the abusive language consisted of he let fly with a -regular cannonade of anathemas and execrations in such good English that the worthy interpreter was saved from the calamity of being obliged to swear himself. Someone present hinted, that, although he was a licensed Maori linguist he could not hold a candle to that.

To-night a meeting of ratepayers w 3 held in the Town Hall, to consider the advisability of borrowing .£2OOO, to be expended on bridges within a certain area under the control of the Hawera County Council (security to ba a special rate of l-9th of a penny). This loan has been the means of trotting ■ out a lot of unnecessary ostentatious of&ciousness. This is the second meeting of the kind within the last month in Manaia. The total number of meetings is unknown, the only certainty about the matter is, that Mr Thomas Parsons has had all the say about it, and has said so much that he' has forgotton what ho did say, and has rounded on the poor reporters who have followed him like dogs all over the place to "phonogrify" his statements which are all so similar that it is impossible to particularise them. The public are and always havo unanimously agreed that a special rate should be. struck and this good breath is all wasted. I should not mind being taught farming by Mr Parsons because he isreported to be the best farmer in the district, but I certainly do kick against being dictated to by him in tha matter of reporting. Since the moment when light and darkness first made their appearance, a good many phenomena have been brought into existence, and, among others, is a statement of that bald-headed, monosyllabic, old monologist, Conf ncius.who lived in the years about 8.C., 628. Confucius was a Chinaman, and he said >f We are all brothers." Perhaps in those days our an- | oestors were not very different from the yellow-skinnod leper of pestilential Pekin, but in these times that statement won't pass— any >' chow" claiming kinship with a Britisher, Gonfuciu's also said — " Wo-, man is nature's masterpiece." Either he, or his translator, together with a whole mob of plagurazing, ungrammatioal, self-dubbed philosophers, were a bit out of it, Woman, if she be anything at all, is the "mistress-piece." But what I want to point out is a great Chinee masterpiece to which Confucius can't hold a candle. It is worthy of Jerrold himself. It was at a football match between the Hawera and Manaia school boys. There was a little 12-year-old Chinkee boy looking on, and among the players was a lad very nimblo_ on his pins, good at ducking and dodging, who whipped past his opponents like a thin streak of lightning on patent axles, and got a goal. This smartness won the admiration of the Chinee, who, throwing up his arms in gymnastic delight, yelled—" Through ?Gjn, through 'em, by jimmy, like a dose of salts in