Mr. William Gray

Fair Play, Volume I, Issue 9, 30 December 1893, Page 4

Mr. William Gray

We publish in this issue a portrait of Mr. William Gray chief of the Postal Department, and on the retirement of Dr Lemon onthelst of January chief of the Telegraphs as well. Mr Gray was born in Aberdeen in 1844, and arrived with his parents in New Plymouth, N.Z., in October, 1852. He there joined the TaranaM News office in 1858, and completed his indentures, after which he served in the Nelson Examiner office, where he remained until 1863. He entered the Government service on the Ist February, 1864, as junior clerk in the chief post office, Dunedin; he was appointed chief clerk in the dead letter office', General Post Office, Wellington, in the following year, and mail agent in the Panama line in 1866, and continued in that position until the termination of the service in 1868. He filled similar positions between this colony and Melbourne until the San Francisco service was inaugurated in 1870. Then he became a clerk in the Secretary’s branch of the General Post Office, and on the 20th May, 1872, was appointed chief clerk of the General Post Office. He remained in this position until May Ist, 1874, when he was promoted to the position of Secretary of the Postal Department, and in January, 1881, on the amalgamation of the two departments, was made secretary of the Post and Telegraphs. Mr. Gray, who has many friends in Wellington, is of a genial disposition, and is a very popular chief with the men under him.

The right of the property owner to have his property guarded is undoubtedly a great principle, but according to the present system of litigation he very often profits at the expense of the innocent trespasser. By all of which we mean to refer to the recent suit between Mr. Miller, monumental mason, and Fair Play. It is rather peculiar that the first legal action in which Fair Play should become involved should be with a builder of gravestones, and that he recognising the utter hopelessness of his ever being able, at least during his own life,

to assist professionally at our obsequies should seek redress in a court of law for alleged damages done to a species of property, that we are neither collectively nor individually anxious to become possessed of. It seems that on election night the proprietors of this journal decided to regale the public and its readers (synonymous terms) with a series of dissolving views on current events, and that the operator, although unauthorised, planted himself and his instrument in the yard where our mortuary friend stored his tombstones. As was quite natural, a crowd, composed of lads, who were in a skylarking humour, and men worked to a high pitch of excitement by the election campaign, collected, on the Custom House Quay and Willis street, most of them to watch the returns posted up on the Evening Post's bulletin board. The crowd, as is well-known, was a dense one, and overflowed on to the premises of our friend, the artistic chiseller of epitaphs, with the result that one or two monuments were slightly defaced by the hands or feet of the Yandal invaders. On this being discovered on the following morning, a suit was at once commenced against the proprietors of this paper, with the result that the Magistrate, although stating that the operator was the real offender, imposed a nominal fine for trespass.

Now if this decision were carried out to its logical conclusion, that is to say if similar decisions were given in all cases, we should like to suggest a few contingencies that might have occurred had the operator, presumably in our employ, been stationed in some other place. Suppose for the sake of illustration he had taken up his stand on the roof of the Bank of New Zealand and that during the excitement, caused by the presence of a large crowd, the cashier sloped with several thousand pounds, could the Bank have virtually sued us for embezzlement under cover of an action for trespass ? Or on the other hand supposing the operator had shown from the top of the Club Hotel and, during the ensuing excitement, someone had eloped with the Premier’s daughter, could we have been sued for abduction ? Or again if the Chinese cook in the vicinity of the building from whence the views were being thrown had, in his hurry, to get out and see the show, upset a kerosene oil lamp and burned down the premises, would we have been legally responsible for the crime of arson ? These questions may appear frivolous, but they are certainly analogous when we take into consideration the decision which was given. An action for trespass seems to open up such a large field of conjecture as to what extent the responsibilities of the trespasser may reach to. One of the principal cases cited by the counsel for the plaintiff and one which undoubtedly influenced the decision of the magistrate was that of aeronaut, -whose balloon descended in an open field the crowds which were attracted by the novel sight trampled on the crops of the landholder and destoyed them; he at once sued the aeronaut for damages for trespassing and recovered. Now, with a precedent like that in view, a man can’t be two careful what he does. It is under such a ruling, unsafe even to fall out of a window for fear in your descent you might smash your neighbours hot-house, and immediately on your recovery be sued for trespassing on his premises. One seems even debarred from the last resource of suicide, for fear that your heirs may be sued for some unintentional damage caused by a policeman while getting clues with respect to the past life of the corpse. Fair Play, after figuring the matter out carefully, has come to the conclusion that when it next gives a free exhibition for the purpose of elevating the masses, it will make arrangements to give it on the Cheviot Estate, by .special permission of the Government, and then it can fear nothing worse than an aotion for treason, wish confis. cation of the plant and imprisonment of the editor.

The Russian officers and sailors who were made so much of by the excitable Parisians on the occasion of their visit to Paris, must have had a rare old time, from a gustatory point of view, but of all the scores of banquets showered upon the lucky Muscovites that given in the Exhibition building on the Champ de Mars “ took the cake.” It is enough to drive an ordinary New Zealand chef off his head just to read the account of the preparations made for this gorgeous feed. There were 3660 guests, so that a goodly pile of comestibles was necessary. "We give a few details for the benefit of our colonial caterers who may like to know how “ the thing is done ” in-“ Parry.”

There were 1050 quarts of soup. The hors d’oeuvre, a sort of tickle your appetite and start you off, was Russian sardines, of which sixty-two small barrels were opened and the contents consumed. Fish came next —a little item of 1600 pounds of turbot—and turbot is the most costly of fishy luxuries. "We will pass briefly over the entrees and the jam—Boo pheasants were cut up, and 1000 wood pigeons—and come to the salad, and in France the salad is an important affair. This particular salad was called Salad Danicheff and was made of 175 quarts o green peas, 175 quarts of French beans, 50 cauliflowers, 2001bs. of potatoes, 40 quarts of young haricot beans, 108 bundles of green asparagus, lOOlbs. of mushrooms, lOOlbs. of truffles and 10000 screvisse (small fresh water crayfish) tails. How is that for high ?

We will pass over the sweets, as the names are too formidably Frenchy to be intelligible to a poor New Zealander, and come to the wines. How Isitt will shriek when he reads what is to follow—we commend the little list to the special attention of the godly Prohibitionist. There were 16 hogsheads, of 50 gallons each, of Burgundy; 800 bottles of Chateau La Rose ; 800 bottles of Perganson, 1884 (don’t know t this stuff, but 1884 sounds good); 200 bottles of port; 200 ditto of sherry; 200 ditto of Madeira; and, “ ministers of grace defend us,” what heads the tallow-eaters must have had next day—l,soo bottles of fizz.

Also, there were 1,400 bottles of mineral waters, but we are afraid there was no great run on this sort of tipple. There were liqueres—3oo bottles of Burgundy Marc (what’s that, Mr. Jack Maginnity), 500 bottles of fine Benedictine, 200 bottles of Kiimmel, and 90 quarts of “fine very best Cognac. Of course, a French feed wasn’t complete without cafe noir, and to make this, 250 pounds of the choicest Arabian coffee was used, the whole lot being prepared in one utensil and at the one time.

This truly Gargantuan spread, which would have driven old Rabelais mad with envy could he have seen it,“was served at 130 tables, and no less than 50,000 plates, 800 dishes, and 40,000 glasses were in use. (How about the breakage when the Russians got full of fiz), and the toasts were given ? And the toothpicks—we mustn’t forget the toothpicks. There were 12,000 of them. “ Prodeegious.”

And the waiting—that was also a big item. There were 250 waiters, 75 butlers, 150 cellarmen, 80 cooks, and 100 understrappers to the latter. Truly this is one of the, grandest, most royal gorges on record, and if the Russians who were present don’t always have a kindly remembrance of their generous French hosts they are the most ungrateful of Tartars.