Page 4 Advertisements Column 1

Manawatu Times, Volume V, Issue 116, 12 February 1881, Page 4

. OUR EXHIBITION LETTER. 4 . BY GARNET WALCH. ..; < No. 8. - ' Ke'w ■T-bak's "Greeting— Goon Eesoltjtioss — As E.vfmaH Village— Waits . . — A Haunted House— I'eusonali ExFERJENC.B^— Lucrs A. KOJf— A .LITTLE Stoby — rus Tropessor's Mistake. " A happy new year" to you all, my good feadcra, from glacier-throned New Zealand to the torrid strand of Carpentaria ; may you all make— and keep — any amount of New Year resolutions, forgive any number of old grudges ; and, generally speaking, imitate that wily animal— the serpent, m sloughing the skin of 18S0 only to reveal a more gorgeous garment for 1881. For my own part, old and grizzled a$ I am growing, (my eldest daughter found grey hair No. 1 last week), I am to look with -a Bortfof patriarchal air upon these recurrent holidays. I mind me of the time, good gossip, when niy^Christmascs were passed m a little snow-clad village m Kent, whither I was borne by a realgenuinc four-horse coach, horn-blowing guard, Christmas- hamperloaded roof, genial hot-brnndy-and-water-drinking coachman, all complete ; and when to the sound of Christmas chimes pealing from the ivy-grown tower of a church built before the Christmas era had reached its' teeii3, I was dragged, unwillingly I must confess, to the Christmas morning service, leaving behind me the savoury odours of •' Halstcad House " kitchen, permeating all •partmentialiko, with a' noble democratic disregard of the proprieties. I remember also, good gossip, how I iaVariably over-ate me of that same Christmas dinner; encouraged m the act of indulgence by two maiden and two widowed aunts, all anxious to make the little Australian visitor happy, and each desirous of supplying the place of. his far-off, mother. Their blandishments alone were not sufficient, but I think the pndding succeeded m obliterating thoughts of distant kit and kin, while the hot elderberry wine at night certainly gave even the moonlit snow a ro9j hue. Night too was the time for those mysterious caterwaulers 'the "waits," composed of certain robust-villagers, who having partaken freely of the hospitality of several other mansions m the neighbourhood, were correspondingly void of time ;and tune. " Jack," I once heard one of these midnight carollers observe to kis. fellow howler, "I say, Jack, ■with my stomach full of beef and beer I'm dashed if .1 can't sing like an adjective Robin,"— whereupon they incontinently yelled forth "God rest your mercy, gentleman, &c.-," for the edification of those whose rest and merriment alike vanished at the sound of the awful discord — and the- " wait" by the way said . neither, ." stomac " nor •'dashed " but used expressions of a stronger texture "and moro suited to the bucolic mind. Night too, T godd, my gossip, brought something r else besides rusk- accompanied elderberry wine and: the " waits" — It brought a; 'creeping sensation down my juvenile backbone, a shuddering horror of •'going to bed," increasing as the night wore on, and Teaching its climax, when j found myself actually m my little chamber, and alone with the' moonlight and the consciousness of the trap»door overhead and the long dark lumber closest, running at right angles .with* one end of the room. For — jour ear close to mine, good gossip — now, whisper.—* h'e house was haunted ! — Aye Terilj,, l iauntod; — Had not Cousin Morrice, sitting up late smoking -his pipe m the big brick-floored kitchen, had he not, I say, heard a> long low shuddering sigh; had he not seen a lambent flame playing round the walls ; had not Aunt Ann rusheh speechlessly back one evening from her ' task of closing the front parlor shutters to fall back fainting into the arm-eluur — and .to refuse, — oh doubly-distilled horror of her eilenoe — torefuse ever after to give a name to what she had seen— and did not I myself, moi quivoysparle, did not I, upon a memorable night, just before returning to Denmark Hill Grammar School, did not I distinctly feet a hard slap on' my bare leg as I was springing into ' bed, and turning did I not find— nothing, absolutely nothing These and many ' other incidents, still fresh I guarantee, m. the minds of the survivors, all pro/c that Halstead House wag haunted — Ah ! well.haunted or not, it has passed from the possession of the good people who them are. or on'Eartih, as some still remain — can now ohlythink of it with regret, as the dear old home of man/-, manj: happy years. '' But what," says the reader, '* what m the name of. goodness has all this to do with the Exhibition,, with Melbourne, with our bright new year ?" Notliing whatever ; an' it please ye sweet reader, but at this festive season I 'elaini' privilege. Always discus i>e, I choose to be double so now, as the paleblue 'smoke rises (from my last 1880 pipi' and fades away. in air, much as all my 1 fondest hopes, Ac., &g. By the' wayj hare yon ever heard my story ©f the New Guinea Expedition? I can hardly* bring $his random, tnon sequitur of a letter to a more appropriate conclusion than by spinning the yarn. Know, then, that a former friend of mine, one Professor — or, as he styled himself, Brofessor— Holtzkopf, a Bhort-teinpered, long-worded German, arrived m Sydney ju3t when the first JUxpedi tion to New Guinea was being formed. He saw placards calling a meeting of citizens j favorable to the project, and lie took a great interest m ifc, and wishing to air some of his ponderous theories he trotted on the evening m question t6 ; the Town Hall, where the meeting was to be held. Now, -it,so 'happened, that instead of finding the room devoted to the sucking explorers, he wandered up-»tair3 and down~ etairs like the anserine he>«o of nursery story and finally into a chamber where a subcommittee on draining and sewerage, were debating, and examining witnesses. As innocent ;fls .an unfilled sa^suge-ekin, the .Brofessar— - congratulating himself on having at last found the object of his search— took a seat and listened. He heard Alderman A expatiating oh the value of nightsoil aa a.ma'nufe R enlarging on culverts ; Councillor C dancing a verbal II fling "■ amongst outlets and inlets, sluicevalves; gutters, stench-trap?, and suchlike little playthings. He heard a good deal about surface and underground drain*, mnin and suhsidary sewers, levels, flushings,, and bo on ; but the minuibesfiew by, and not one word met his ears concerning the topic wherewith he was primed to his fat lips. Nino o'clock came and went— the quarter the halF-bom, the three-qunrter3— and. still not a syllable of what. the Professorial soul thirsted for !' At last he could sit still no longer. /The eyenihg he might have devoted to " beer " and " Knaster " vat gone —had been frittered away m the most provoking manner. He arose, toweling m his wrath, fully five feet one, and, just as Alderman Q, was m the middle of a modern Cloaca Maxima, the' JBrofessor burst forth tpth-M">Ach ; ! vass fur Dumraheit ist dees ■—You calls de ceetezens to come und sohjpeak apout de Noo Geeny Egspeedeet*chenss.andrTendey. comes you dnlks, und dalks, und dalks, Ton trains und schloos es und coolvarts" und all B>dch schweinerei ! I v nM yoastr loike you to dell mo vot m der Teufel'e name has dies got to do mit de tf<ri<^nvEg«peed*>tecbens ; Potztauseud