Musings & Meditations

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XL, Issue 18, 29 April 1908, Page 5

Musings & Meditations

By

Dog Toby

A BUSH EDUCATION.

THE boat was slowly steaming away from the wharf, and the passengers were gradually settling down in their deck

chairs prepared to enjoy the last look at the magnificent harbour lit up with the golden light of the setting sun. My neighbour had taken a book out of his pocket, but after slowly turning over a few pages he put it down and gazed into the blue haze of the fast receding hills. He looked like the typical cultured travelled Englishman, and I wondered how he thought New Zealand compared- with other countries. By way of introducing myself, I offered him a copy of the paper, but he politely declined it saying he had already seen it. “I cannot understand,” he remarked, “why it is that you people are so fond of running down your own country. To read the correspondence in the papers, and still more the various resolutions passed by different bodies, religious and otherwise; a stranger might well imagine that the colony was wholly given up to drinking, gambling, and heathenism. You have been having a vigorous controversy as to whether you are alt pagans, and a pleasing interchange of compliments has taken place between some of your clergy in reference to this matter. Then you have your no-license fanatics denouncing your women as drunkards and your young men as bar loafers, while the different religious organisations are perpetually deploring what they call the wide-spread prevalence of gambling, immorality, and religious indifference. I have travelled much, and perhaps have seen more of the world than many of these pessimists, and I know of no country where the inhabitants possess so much real moral worth as they do in this colony. Talk of us converting your country settlers, we want a few of your country settlers to convert us.” He proceeded to talk of the wonderful beauty of our coast, and dwelt on the way in which their love for the AEgean Sea had influenced the Greek poets, and contrasted their appreciation of nature with the comparative indifference of the Latin writers. “You will wonder, perhaps,” he went on, “what I know about the country people in New Zealand, and you think I am like Alexander Pope, who used to describe a landscape with his back to the window. But I can assure you that I inwardly smiled when I read the diatribes of your city folk on the paganism of the bush, because I felt none of them really knew anything about the subject. I was brought up in the usual English style and learnt all about the kings of Israel and Judah, and could read the New Testament in Greek, and was slightly high church in my tendencies, as befitted a member of an old Tory family. I took a brilliant degree at Cambridge, and was elected a Fellow of my College. I did not take up any tutorial work, but devoted myself to travel, and a life of leisured culture. In due time I came out here, and wandered aimlessly round seeing the show places. Just when I was thinking of returning I met an old college chum who had settled out here, and he asked me to ride out to his place in the country and pay him a visit. I could not start just then, so I said I would go up later, and he left me explicit directions how to get there, and said I couldn’t possibly miss the way. But I contrived to miss it somehow, and 1 found myself at night, fall wandering disconsolately about a desolate region, and wondering where 1 was.”

I was not a very good horseman, and I suppose I was riding with too loose a rein, for the horse suddenly stumbled and fell and I was thrown heavily Io the ground. I was in great pain, and scarcely able to move, and I don’t know what I should have done if a trap had not happened to pass by just then, in which 1 was driven to a neighbouring cottage. I had to stay there several days, ns I had injured my ami rather badly, and it was during that visit that

I learnt to know what your people really are. The family consisted of the father and mother and three sons and three daughters, and they looked after me, thought I was a complete stranger in the true spirit of the good Samaritan. But what struck me most was the eager, ness the children showed to improve themselves in every way. They had had next to no advantages, and yet they had read more standard books than many a University man has read, and it was wonderful to me how shrewd many of their simple remarks on well-known works were. They seemed to live in an atmosphere of what Patmore calls duties beautifully done, and if their views on the dogmas of religion were very imperfect, they nevertheless possessed that trusting childlike faith in a heavenly Father that formed the very inmost heart of the gospel, as preached by the shores of Gennesareth. And now I know you will smile at what I am going to tell you. I had written a small volume of essays, of which I was very proud, but which the best critics' had stated to be brilliant and clever, but lacking in real knowledge of life. I had a copy with me and I lent it to the eldest girl to read. When slm returned it she said she had liked it very much, but she was afraid she had not been able to understand a good deal of it. She said she did so wish she could write. I told her to try, and I would give her advice on what she wrote. Very shyly she brought mo a few days later a little story she had written and asked me not to be too hard on it. I took it expecting to find some amusement, the grammar and spelling were far from perfect, and the style was very unformed. But underneath these things I saw something I had never seen before. I saw the pathos and the heroism of everyday life. I saw the courage that could bravely perform commonplace duties because they were duties, and the wistful longings for something higher and freer that were nevertheless put on one side as impossible of attainment, except at the cost of suffering to others. I saw it all, and with it came a deeper and truer knowledge of human goodness. My critics have never complained since that my work has shown an ignorance of life.”

He rose from his chair and apologised for leaving me, saying he felt a little chilly, and thought he would go below. As he turned to go he dropped an envelope from the book he had been reading. I stooped to pick it up to return it to him, and as I did so my eye caught th« name of one of the greatest of our living writers.