“THE COLONEL”

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19478, 26 December 1925, Page 10

“THE COLONEL”

AN AUSTRALIAN-AMERICAN VISIT TO HIS BIRTHPLACE SEVENTY YEARS’ ABSENCE '‘Have a yarn with the Colonel. He’s an Australian, come out to look up his birthplace. Been donkey’s years in America. Owns a string of newspapers. ’ ’ We looked up the Colonel, says the Auckland ‘‘Star”, and he looked us up—rather fiercely through a largo pair of horn-rimmed glasses. The Colonel was plainly angry. ‘No letter!” he said, in astonishment, to the clerk at the postal window on board the Carinthia. ‘‘No letter! Don’t tell me than! There must be a letter!” He said “must bo” in such a tone that, one felt a letter must surely be produced in some manner from somewhere, or else the Carinthia would be blown up with the explosiveness of his indignation. But there wasn’t any letter. The Colonel came around from the window of the ship’s post office, and told us all about it. ‘‘You the newspaper men?” he demanded. We said w r e were. The Colonel was not so hot as ho had been at the window, but he was still flurried, and plainly perplexed. ‘‘lt’s a d— shame!” said the Colonel. ‘‘Oh?” we said, interrogatively. No News From Grafton

“Yes,” said the Colonel. “I wrote to the Mayor of Grafton, and 1 expected an answere here. 1 reckon 1 am Grafton’s oldest citizen —I was born at Grafton, sir,” he added proudly. We spoke of the Grafton Bridge and the Grafton Cricket Club, but said we didn’t know Grafton had a Mayor of its own—and we were going to tell him how Grafton beat Parnell last match, but were getting towelled up by University on Saturday, when the Colonel interruted us impatiently. “Grafton, Australia,” he said, still more proudly. We apologised, profusely. Then we soothed the Colonel, stating that there was a steamer due from Australia —the Aorangi—in a couple of hours, and that no doubt there would be a letter aboard her from his Worship the Mayor of Grafton, New South Wales. “Do you really think so?” asked the Colonel. We said we did. “Come this way,” directed the Colonel, and he conducted us to the smoking room, sat us down at a table, and gazed benevolently at us through his big spectacles.

“I have been seventy years away from the town of my birth,” said the Colonel. “Yes, sir, I am seventyeight years of ago. I was born at Grafton on July the nineteenth of the year eighteen hundred and fortyeight. ” Certainly the Colonel was a wonder for his age. He didn’t look a day older than sixty—short, rebust, and very active, with a plentiful head of sandy-grey hair. Barring he was a little deaf, he was a young man in all but years.

The Paper at Palm Beach “Colonel Richard O. Davies,” he said—“sec you spell it correctly—l’m a newspaper man myself.” Then he got back to the Mayor of Grafton. “I wrote to that Mayor from San Fran cisco, saying I was coming out,” he said. ‘‘l told him no doubt 1 would be the oldest citizen of Grafton. Yet up to now I haven’t got a reply from him. Isn’t he slow? Isn’t it a d—shame I want to leave my ship at Sydney and run up and see my birthplace. I should think they would be glad to see me. But I reckon all the people I knew there will be dead now. It’s seventy years ago since I loft. ( “Y r es, lam a newspaper man,” said the Colonel. “1 have been a newspaper proprietor for cloce on thirty years. I own the Palm Beach ‘Daily News’ —I’ve had it for 22 years. Say, he continued, ‘‘it’s a gold mine that paper, and 1 don’t mind telling you. Guess you haven’t a paper like it in this part of the world. It’s the only paper printed in Florida on book paper. I print it for millionaires—yes, wo cater only for multi-millionaires at Palm Beach—we have a clientele of our very own. Yes, sir!

‘ ‘l had worked for a big newspaper syndicate on the advertising side for 18 years, and I had really retired when I wont to Palm Beach for my health,” went on the Colonel, “but somebody persuaded me to start a newspaper, and I did. You bet it’s a good paper. We get 1000 dollars a page for advertising in our cover page, and we got from 500 to 500 dollars a page for inside space. We don’t take cheap advertising. We get more for our space than do the New York ‘Herald’ or the New York ‘Times.’ It is the finest little paper in the world—and then some. All the richest merchants in the. world advertise with us. We arc international. ’ ’ Ourselves and “The Boys.” The Colonel got away from his paper to tell us that we had treated the boys of the American Fleet splendidly—New’ Zealand even better than Australia, or Australia even better than New Zealand, one or the other, he didn’t quite know which, but he guessed we both treated the boys right—and if ever we sent our Navy to America, well, our boys would get a real good welcome. They heard a lot about Sydney and Melbourne in America; not so much about New Zealand—but they knew’ New Zealand had treated their boys absolutely fine. ‘‘But I was forty years in England before I went to America,” said the Colonel, thus showing that he had not been all the seventy years of his absence from the la’id of his birth in cultivating his fira American accent. “My father was captain of a British w’arship—sailing ships they were in those days. After we left Australia for England, we were chased by a letter of marque almost to Th verpool. We were all armed. My brother and I had each a blunderbuss. I was in London for the festivities on the declaration of peace after the Crimean War. Yes, sir. It is seventy years since I left Grafton, but I remember it, and now I’m going to visit my birthplace. The Oldest Citizen? “I guess I’ll be the oldest citizen there—don’t you think so?” asked the Colonel. We ventured to think that there might be some pretty old people at Grafton. ‘‘They usen’t to live more than fifty or fifty-five years when I was there,” saic the Colonel. ‘‘Oh, the expectation of life has advanced there, as elsewhere,” we hazarded. We added that, as a matter of

fact, we thought there were some old people there. We rose and thanked the Colonel for the interview. ‘‘The Icasure’s mine—entirely mine,” said the Colonel courteously, and we left him expressing the hope that the morrow would bring him his letter from the Mayor of Grafton, Australia.