COUNTRY NOTES.

Wanganui Chronicle, Issue 12857, 1 February 1913, Page 2

COUNTRY NOTES.

(By Our Westmere Correspondent)

" Awful —Awful! Horrible —horrible! Dreadful —dreadful! Disgrace to our civilisation "

"What's wrong, my friend? Why this outburst?"

"It's the bushmen and the forest roadmen. Spend their hard-earned money like water. Chuck it away like hail before the wind —scatter it like brown peas —melt it like wax before the fire, and then go begging or rieturn to the busli stony broke^ —absolutely penniless." "Hold hard, my friend! Don't you libel the bushman, for I'm his chum. I'm his mate." "I know you are and that's why I'm opening out. You know Sammy Tosh? Why, he oame down a week or two ago with a £50 cheque in his pocket and squandered it in five days. Think ©I it now! Only five days—£lo a day. Disgraceful! Disgusting! Awful sin I call di. Then let me see, Bob Square, isn't « bit better. You know Bob, don't you?" " Rather. Bob's a dandy—a real fine fellow. " "Bosh —absolute bosh. Why. Bob's « darned sight worse than Sammy. Sammy's a shingle short, but Bob's all there—Scotch, tco, at that. He's a disgrace to his country. He splashed £70 in ten days." "WeU, .that's not so bad. It's £3 less a day than Sammy, an indication of thrift, don't you think? That's a Scotch trait. You're a Welsh leek."

"Don't you stand there and grin at me! You know very well that such men are no good to the country. They ain't supporting a wife, and they ain't bringing up chicks to supply the Dominion with future settLers to provide against the shortage of labour. How dare you defend such wastrels? " " Oanny my friend, canny a wee bit! If the bushman spends his money freely, or as 3'ou'ye put it, foolishly, 'his work, his labour, remains permanent. Your work will 'be scattered and peeled and wiped out, but the bushman's labours are monumental. Future generations will point to the hills and dales and straths and glens as having ■been cleaned of their virginal forest by the labours of the bushman. It is the bushman who scatters the golden fleeces over tens of thousands of acres and dots the cattle on a, thousand hills. But for ius spending proclivities, New Zealand would largely be covered with primeval forest. You jokers in towns scrape and sava and rob and pickpocket each other. Commerce is largely ** gam© of grab. The axeman's lite is a game of graft. You pile up your dollars and make fine gentlemen of your sons and grand ladies of your daughters. How do you know but that they'll make ducks and drakes of your savings, gathered together by what I might call wiles, but what you term wisdom. I'll bet my bottom dollar that the begging penniless bushman a* you call him gets more real pleasure and satisfaction out of life than you do. Ho lives nearer to Nature. He works hard, enjoys ius food, breaths fresh air and skeps soundly . He does not require to swiid drugs into hie system or to pack his stomach with piils. He doesn't sit at table with a book on health in one hand and a pair of scales in the other to measure out his tucker. His tucker is tucker, and he tucks it into "his pecker, and is as jolly as n sandboy who is eating his peck of dirt. He doesn't mope and simper at meals and say^.JL.£an't eat this or I can't eat that.' "Why, man alive, h« will eat anything from an old tusky boar to an evil-smelling woodihen, a mud eel or a salad of sowthistle. When he's really hard up he'll chop cutlets out of a ridge pole and fry them in a camp oven. Y<m never Jaeard of a bushman dying or pancakes or plum pudding. I've seen him flourish and grow fat, not on dainty cakes such as Dustin makes, but on a batter ooncootion of blue papa and ridge-top sandstone, which when fired and turned out of the camp oven was somewhat after the fashion of those concrete blocks that Andrew Oilmour used as kerb-stones for your dainty footpath margins. Who ever heard of castor "oil or Epsom salts in a bushman's camp. I don't say but what a packet of carpet tacks from Gibson's hardware department might sMghtly inconvenience him, but I'm bound to say he'd survive the ordeal. Ice-cream : Puff, he'd cream the ice. Then, he not only lives nearer to Nature but he lives closer to religion. He trustb to Providence. You modern men of commerce don't. You save and store and hoard as much as to say we don't believe in it: Give us this day our daily bread. The bushman does, and puts it an practice and rests on the arm of Providence. Cares, did you say? Who ever heard of a bushman frizzling his liver out with cares, or furrowing his brow, or wrinkling his cheeks with worry and harass. How'd you get your 'bush down if the kishiea suddenly took to saving and went in for land grabbing? Why. they'd bust the wh o l3 show up. If bushman took to marrying and booame settlers, things would not hum with you as they're now doing. You re a religious man, I know, and read your Bible. How do you interpret some of its moralising and undercurrent views of life? Did not the Israelites profit somewhat in their preliminary raid on the land of Canaan by Kahad the harlot? The frailties of some contribute not a little to the success of others. My dear old fellow, when you tackled the bushman and the forest roadman you little knew how wide is the life of man and how grand is the over-ruling Providence of God. In horror you hold up your hands and lift up your voice against a cat prying upon a singing bird, a hawk swooping down upon a lark. Why, man, your own boasted highly civilised life in citieg is largely a reproduction of naked Nature. The cunning fleece the simple, the knowing pick the pockets of the ignorant; those who are in the secret swim poach pearls, and the needy are the easy prey of the greedy. Don't talk to me of the open sins and ths daylight transgressions of the bushies and road'es."