THINGS FROM THE EMPIRE CITY

New Zealand Graphic, Volume X, Issue 11, 18 March 1893, Page 243

THINGS FROM THE EMPIRE CITY

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THE AUTOCRATIC IDLER.

To take a good straight look at Governor Bowen on jj owenj one w ould conclude, quite wrongly, Bendigo. that theie , rigllt before one, stood a comfortable Devonshire farmer with not less than 200 acres of pasture land. One’s first impression was, that Bowen w'as intended by nature to be a British yeoman—a man quite unsophisticated in the crafts and cutenesses of my excellent friend Barbados. For some reason he did not go down the mine on that occasion. But he came out on the balcony of the celebrated Shamrock Hotel, at Bendigo, and showed his pleasant form and figure to, I should say, 10,000 people mostly miners and their families. In less than fifteen minutes he had all those people in ecstacies about him. He buttered up those horny-handed sons of toil to a nicety, and their wives and their dear little children (if they had any); and showed how titles and rank were next door to nothing at all, whilst honest labour—and especially mining labour—was everything in this world. What said the poet of the people Robert Burns ? Is there, for honest poverty That hangs his head, an’ a’ that The coward slave, we pass him by, We dare be poor lor a’ that; For a’ that, an’ a’ that. Our toils obscure, an’ a’ that; The rank is but the guinea stamp The man’s the gowd for a’ that! Cheers; cheers from ten thousand throats ; hat waving, excitement, exclamations of admiration from Cornish men from Newcastle men ; from Lancs, and Pats, and Sandies; while the women were in perfect raptures. And there stood the Governor smiling—never turning a hair ; beaming with pleasure and graciousness. He knew the sort of thing that poor humanity liked—and he gave it to the multitude. At an agricultural show in the Ballarat disBowen at , ... .. m , tnct I last met Sir George. There was an Barmghup. j mmenge crow j there, too —but an agricultural crowd. Sir George spoke, of course, to the great gathering—and he collared them, in fifteen minutes, all the same. He told them that rank and titles were of no account, that labour—bucolic labour, the ploughman’s labour ; the dairymaid’s labour —agricultural toil—was the only thing worth counting. What said the poet—Oliver Goldsmith, the poet of the villager ? Princes and lords may flourish or may fade. A breath can make them, as a breath has made; But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride. When once destroyed, can never be supplied. Cheers again, of course: Was there ever so splendid a Governor as this Governor—cheers ; applause ; congratulations ; excitement —and again Sir George smiled, and never turned a hair. Wherever he went, he was equal to the occasion, and didn’t he know how to lay it on ! _ When the show was over and the reception The Express done with I began to think how I was to get back to Maryborough. An express train, I was informed, would convey the Governor there at 5 p.m. So I took things easy, and about five strolled down to the station. There hissed the engine gaily decorated with gum branches. There was but one carriage —an immense thing, capable of seating 100 persons. I was about opening the door, when the guard interrupted me— * this way please,’ he said—and as he invited me down to the attached waggon, he told me that the carriage I was about entering was the Governor’s carriage—* but this is for the gentlemen of the press ’ he observed —and opened the door of the waggon. There were three rather dejected beings seated therein. Said I ‘This waggon was originally intended for cattle—it won’t suit me, nohow. There is plenty of room in the carriage—three men only don’t require all the space of 100? As for the Governor he himself says that rank is nothing whatever, but that labour—the labour of the pen man, of the press man—is everything.’ The guard said that Sir George Bowen only said those sort of things on

balconies, addressing large audiences. Anyway I refused point blank to enter the waggon and in a few seconds I was standing on the platform and the train with the Governor was moving on, at the rate of 60 miles an hour. There was no other available mode of conveyance so I had to walk about 18 miles—and to be with the Governor all the time—a feat which I accomplished quite easily as you may learn when I finish this story. Provided one does not stand right in front of A Vice-regal it, an express train, travelling along the rails Barnum. at over sixty miles an hour, with a governor like Sir George Bowen aboard, is a suggestive object for contemplation. It’s (the engine’s) long stream of steam and of vapour, accompanied by sparks and glares from the roaring furnaces make one think, when darkness gathers in, of the fiery tail of Donati’s comet, the exact length of which even the Editor of the Wellington Post cannot measure to an inch. There was the train bearing His Excellency away to Palaver Land and Happiness ; and there was I, a solitary being, on the platform ; and whether to laugh at Bowen, or at myself, or at the general plan on which things are constructed in this world—l really didn’t know, nor indeed care much. For the Queen’s highway was quite close at hand, and it was the privilege of any subject who could not command carriage of any sort, nor yet dog cart, to walk upon it. I watched the train till it disappeared altogether ; the snorting and the puffing of the iron horse grew fainter and fainter, and soon the clouds of smoke were lost in darkness. Perhaps no train in this world ever carried, or will ever carry, a greater prince than the express carried, just then. He did not, exteriorally, resemble a prince of any sort very greatly—but he was a great prince all the same—a viceregal Prince Barnum—and not a bad fellow at all, but only a hem ! That I was an idiot for not taking a seat in The Morning the waggon will, I dare say, be patent to everybody but myself. And for even pretending to take Governor Bowen seriously, 1 was a still greater ass. There is no doubt whatever that the three rather dejected ones in the waggon, representing the Melbourne Argus, the Ballarat Star, and the Muddy Gully Trombone, concluded I was a fool before the train was out of sight. They had as much comfort as men could wish for : plenty of champagne and other coarser liquors ; and the wing of a turkey was available in one of the hampers provided for that occasion, in the waggon. Then the Governor of Victoria was actually within a few feet of them—separated from them only by a board, and by that admirable contrivance called a railway buffer. Quite another sort of buffer sent me tramping on the dusty high road through bush country : noting the gnarled trunks of ancient gum trees assume all sorts of fantastic shapes in the dark, ness : listening to silence and to solitude, and fancying that the stars had something pregnant to divulge to humanity, and would not be allowed to utter one word, but only to wink ! Somewhere about midnight a sharp moaning wind —a sudden and sad rustling of the leaves in the trees, is invariably heard in the Australian forest. That mournful, melancholy, rapid breath of nature strikes the hour in those lonely regions ; and one can quite depend on its accuracy. It is the herald of the new day : it whispers through ten million billion leaves, that another morning is born to the weary, toiling, struggling children of men ! I heard the whisper, and passed on. When I paced through the High street of Dark Suns. ~ , , ” , , Maryborough, there were the usual two or three persons whom one always observes talaing mysteriously at street corners in the early morning, in all towns, but with that exception, not a soul was to be seen. At the Mclvor Hotel, His Excellency was, no doubt, fast asleep by this time ; but by the aid of the street lamps I could see that the balcony of that establishment had been recently the scene of loyal demonstration, and the Union Jack still fluttered there. As for the office of the Maryborough Ad-

vertiser it was in total darkness outside, and very little light was there, therein. This was the journal that Sir Julius Vogel for a considerable period conducted ; but it is a fact that he was totally unable to get to the front and to shine, either at Maryborough or anywhere else in Victoria, and nobody thought much of his ability in the township mentioned —nor yet in any other township, till he came to New Zealand. This present writer filled, for three years, the place on the Advertiser previously occupied by Vogel. He—-this present writer—didn’t shine, any more than Vogel did, in the colony of Victoria. Nor does he shine—as Vogel did—in New Zealand. In the structure of the Universe (it is somewhat of a consolation to know) there are suns -and some of them gigantic suns—which never shine. No mortal recognises any light in them ; for they haven’t got any. But they occupy space; and go on revolving—and filling some purpose or another in the awful and tethereal regions beyond Neptune—all the same. What that purpose is. Heaven only knows. Sometimes a dark sun presents a wonderful phenomenon to mankind. It begins to shed light, and to brighten. It goes on, shedding more and more light (just as Vogel did), and brightening more and more, finally glittering with an effulgence equal to that of Sirius. Then it goes out utterly like a rocket : like Aspinall the greatest genius that ever landed on these southern shores ; or like Buckle whose brilliant dazzling light was snuffed out so suddenly and so disastrously.

a Radical Thepowerfulestablishmentwasin gloom. The B proprietor had gone home (after waiting for hours) in a towering rage, (as I hadn’t turned up) ; and nearlv everybody else belonging to the premises had gone also. The editor was resting his weary brain between his hands, with his elbows on the table—and he hadn’t the common courtesy even to look up as I entered. I had some trouble in getting things in train, and set going, for everybody thought it was useless to attempt starting at that hour to tell the story of the Governor’s progress. But a friendly and sagacious and nil desperanduni foreman was in charge, and soon enough between us (and he did the most of the work), copy poured into the composing room faster almost than they could take it away. We said very little about the Agricultural Show, for that was not pressing, and we knew all about it. About the Governor’s progress and reception—about which we knew very little—we said ever so much. The express journey was fully described ; and even a Radical bull, which ran in a large paddock along the line, and which rushed to the railway fence in a very infuriated manner, as the train approached, was mentioned, and the gross democracy of the animal duly condemned, while it was suggested that the owner of the bull was to some extent responsible for his conduct and want of manners, as well as for his too evident political basis. Rural Carls between Baringhup and Maryborough there is a rural district called Carisbrook, where, brook. ’ as we knew, a halt was to be made to enable His Excellency to be seen, and to speak a few words from the balcony of the Wheatsheaf Inn to the farmers and settlers of that district. We didn’t hear the speech, but we made it—made it quite easily for His Excellency—all the same. It was, in fact, the rural speech of Sir George Bowen. His Excellency complimented the farmers and the farmers’ wives and children—if they had any—on their happy and contented, and prosperous appearance; and referred, in feeling terms, to the dignity of their industrial avocations, which, after all, was the only dignity in this world worth thinking about. What were titles and rank, compared with yeomanry or yeowomanry ; what so grandly musical as the whistle of the ploughman, or the song of the churn, making butter? The poet of the rural people of Ireland had answered the question, and Oliver Goldsmith himself had said :— Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade ; A breath etui make them, as a breath has made; But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride When once destroyed, can never be supplied. And so amid cheers and huzzas and applause, and cries of ‘That’s the sort of Governor we like!’ His Excellency descends from the balcony ; and smiles, and shakes hands with His Worship the Mayor and a few others—and the journey is resumed. ... , Although the distance between Carisbrook Mining " and Maryborough is only a few miles, the Maryborough. , , two places are very ditlerent, as also are the populations. This latter is a once-celebrated mining district ; indeed Kong Meng, the wealthy Chinese merchant who recently died in Melbourne, got his first start there ; and there is a well known quartz mine, and indeed a line of reef called after him, to this day ! Keeping these matters in view, and remembering that the population were mostly miners, it was easy enough to get on here quite as well as at Carisbrook. The Mayor of Maryborough happened, at that time, to be an undertaker; and we had to make a speech for him also. Now there isn’t the slightest difficulty about an ordinary

undertaker’s speech, on any occasion. He is always ready to speak about giving vent—giving vent to feelings : the many virtues of—of the dear departed : and doing honour to the solemn occasion—he, the undertaker (all the time talking thus), having a tear in one eye as a tribute to sorrow, and a merry twinkle in the other, in recognition of business. Taking out a word here and there from the above train of thought, and substituting other words therefor, a very appropriate speech is ready to hand to be used at any joyful ceremony or celebration whatever, by any mayoral undertaker. Then came Governor Bowen. He, surely, there could be no mistake about the dignity of labour—mining labour especially—the hard, but on the whole, enviable life of the miner; the emptiness of lank, the hollowness of titles as compared with pick and shovel work and dynamite blasting underground—all these would be insisted on. For what said the poet Robert Burns’ Is there, for honest poverty That hangs his head, and a’ that The coward slave, we pass him by We dare be poor, for a’ that; For a’ that, and a’ that. Our toils obscure, and a’ that. The rank is but the guinea stamp The man’s the gowd, for a’ that. _.. , The Australian summer sun, hot, and fiercely Satin and red and as if angry at what was going on, rose and looked over our nefarious proceeedings befoie we had quite concluded His Excellency’s remarks ; and we cut other people down to next to nothing—and then the Advertiser went to press. A thousand extra copies were struck off. The proprietor of the newspaper apologised to his wife for some rude and rather out of place remarks he had made to her (as he could not get at me) before retiling to rest. The composing room cat, which had been kicked out of the office with barbarous cruelty the night befoie at 1 30 a tn., for looking at the printer’s boy, was allowed to steal back into the premises in a furtive sort of way, at about 9 a.m. I had thoughts, myself, of getting down some adjacent shaft for 24 hours, to escape the honourable mention showered upon me. A copy of the journal, printed in gold, on white satin, was presented to His Excellency in the early forenoon. He received the gift in the most gracious manner possible; complimented everybody and every department that had a hand in its production—and never let on. In fact he couldn’t—and, besides the whole affair was right into bis hand.

However let us say no more about Bowen Another just now, and I hope I have said no unkind thing of him, anyhow. He kissed the blarney stone, very early in life, to be sure; and there is no doubt that icy performance served his purpose, and came in very handy, and sealed his destiny for life, as warmer, burning kisses sometimes do. If his object in..embracing the celebrated stone, was simply to get on in life there is no doubt he accomplished it ; and if his ambition was to become a popular Governor he did not quite fail, even in that; for although the people, in various colonies, soon saw through and .through him as clearly as one recognizes a pretty face disfigured by the hideous hood of a Sister of Charity, no one actually disliked him, while countless numbers excused him on account of the flavour of genial and genuine humour pervading the whole business. Besides which, one must remember that the Governor of a colony is somewhat of an All Alone man, in his dominions; and, whether he speaks exactly as he thinks ; or dissembles a little ; or says nothing, good bad or indifferent, in a half hour’s speech, he is equally liable to be found fault with. Only yesterdayjthis present writer saw a letter from Lord Onslow to a gentleman in this city ; and, really one felt sorry for Lord Onslow on reading it. Our late Governor had, in referring to New Zealand in England spoken in praiseworthy terms of our present Ministers, who, by industry and talent had raised themselves from various positions, to the highest offices in the state ; and the exGovernor had advised young men at Home, no matter what their present position in life was, to bear in mind that New Zealand was a country in which a man might rise from miner to Minister—if talent, worth, and perseverance were in the man. These very commendable and liberal remarks of Lord Onslow were totally misunderstood in various places, and he, naturally, was altogether surprised, and quite disappointed at such result. But really things are going on so progressively throughout the world that it is very probable the whole arrangement of things as they now are will be turned upside down, or inside out by the year .2001 —the year already decided on by the New Zealand Tinies for shifting the axis of the earth. When that period arrives we shall hear a peer of the realm say ‘.Once I was an earl, and bad a coat of arms. Now, thank Heaven I’m a miner, and have the pleasure of carrying my own pick and shovel I’