PETER PAN.

Waikato Times, Volume 98, Issue 16096, 20 September 1924, Page 14 (Supplement)

PETER PAN.

HOW HE WENT TO BRUSSELS. HIS GREAT DAY AT HOME IN THE BELGIAN CAPITAL. . SIR GEORGE FRAMPTON'S GIFT. Peter Pah has gone to Belgium; Peter Pan is in Kensington Gardens. How can this be? It sounds like a game—" Think of a number, double it." Let us see. Sir George Frampton, the sculptor of Peter Pan's statue in Kensington Gardens, has made another just like it. He has taken it to Belgium and given it to the boys and girls of Brussels to remind them for ever that he loves Belgium and so does Peter Pan. This Way to Peter Pan. The Brussels boys and girls had often thought enviously of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, and they still cannot believe they have one of their own. Every day large numbers of children go along the Waterloo Boulevard in the Belgian capital, and stop at Egmont Palace Park. The man at the gate just looks at them, and, without waiting to be asked, says, "This way to Peter Pan!" The new Peter's home in Egmont Palace Park is not rfearly so large as the Kensington Peter's. It is one of those little parks people are apt to pass by. Because of that, Brussels children love it very much. Now they will love it still more, for magic has come there. Good Sir George Framptoii, to bring so much more happiness to a happy place! The trees and flowers know It; and when no one else but the Belgian boys and girls can hear, they call, very holt and whispering and silvery—Peter Pan, Peter Pan. And the answer comes very clear and gold and flutelike: Who's calling me? A Day of Sunshine.

The day Peter Pan's wrappings were taken off (you remember how particular Wendy was about Peter's ilannels) was a lovely day, with great floods of sunshine washing the sky and trees and grass. Peter was standing there on his little platform looking like a wrapped-up mummy inside the folds of the Belgian flag and the Union Jack. On either side of him were some hundreds of little schoolgirls in white/, and crowds of small boys, staring first at Princess Marie Jose and her important friends, and then at Peter, wondering and wondering what he would look like.

Princess Marie Jose was just the lady to unveil Peter Pan. She looked so much like a fairy-tale princess that you hardly quite believed it. You expected her to disappear in a puff—so! But she did not disappear. Sir George Frampton talked, and good Burgomaster Max, and the British Ambassador. Then Princess Marie Jose pulled a string, and the Belgian and English flags came slithering down, and there stood Peter Pan. Burgomaster Max.

Burgomaster Max did more than make a speech. He told the children the story of Peter Pan, and they loved it all fhe more because they knew it already. If it had not been for the Ambassador and a few other grownup people, wc are sure one of the listeners would have called out to Burgomaster Max, as soon as he had finished, "Now please go back to the beginning and tell it all again." Instead of that, they stood and smiled at Peter Pan, and then danced round and round him. They knew he knew all about it.