Wanganui Chronicle., and TURAKINA & RANGITIKEI MESSENGER. SATURDAY, 1ST FEBRUARY, 1868.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XII, Issue 825, 1 February 1868, Page 2

Wanganui Chronicle., and TURAKINA & RANGITIKEI MESSENGER. SATURDAY, IST FEBRUARY, 1868.

The month of January may be considered our harvest month, and it has been one of almost unbroken sunshine —no weather more pleasant could have been expected, —- and the consequence is that the crops for the most part are secured in first-rate condition. Not large crops —no wide fields of waving grain—no heavy wains creaking under their loads—but little as yet of the harvest sights and sounds of the home country, where Wealth hangs in each tangled nook

In the gleamin' o’ the year. Little of all this, at least, in the province of Wellington ; but, festina lente, we shall go increasingthe area of cultivated land from on year to year. Meantime, our settlers are rich in flocks and herds, which grow and increase until here and there the unwelcome and puzzling question is forced upon us — Where shall we find an outlet and a market for our surplus stock ? At present prices are low and likely to be so for some time to come, and the aforesaid question in consequence does keep coming up, but circumstances will answer it ere long perhaps more favourably than persons can bring themselves to believe.

Wool is shorn, and the clip has turned out good ; the price alone is objectionable, being much lower than the flockmasters like or can well afford. But the wool must be sold, and it is being rapidly shipped off from the various ports of the colon} 7 . The fact of its being harvest time is sufficient to account for its being also a time in which there is little or nothing of a public kind stirring. Existence at this period of the year eschews excitement and seeks the shade. Even shade is not always procurable. Poets indeed tells us that Life is a shadow ; but though the statement appears unobjectionable in winter, in the heat of the summer it seems wild —very wild. “ Oh, for some boundless contiguity of shade away from the contradictory inconceivables of certain men in our midst who will make martyrs of themselves to their own spites and unveracities. The thing would be bad enough at any time ; with the thermometer at 80, it is, according to Dogberry, “ most tolerable and not to be endured Hot and discontented as thou art, O Sole, tliou miglitest yet be hotter and unhappier -thou miglitest be —a W(h)at ! Readers at home will readily understand that we have our small squabbles and our little faction fights in this remote corner of the world as elsewhere ; foolish people will occasionally wander to the ends of the earth ; but we do no more than hint at the fact. Napoleon was wise in his generation when he urged his brothers and generals to wash their dirty linen at home. We don’t mean to trouble the public at a distance with the colonial wash.

In one feature of our public contests we are decidedly behind the home country. There are persons amongst us who will keep coming to the surface who do not think it inconsistent with their position to substitute the coarseness and scurrility of the rowdy for the decencies and amenities of general intercourse. We wish there was some way of abating what is really a nuisance, but looking at the materials to be dealt with, the prospect is not hopeful. In other countries and ordinarly, men of all shades of opinion—men of different and differing ways of thinking—can meet and commingle together in commercial circles and frequently at social gatherings with the utmost comfort. Honest men are not mealymouthed and never untruthful, but they never think of carrying their differences into private life, far less of parading them in offensive language, and if they did, such conduct would be treated as an impertinence. Some of us most likely are not what we pretend to be, but as a general rule there is assuredly nothing that ought to lead journalists or even people who take it upon them to speak at public meetings to behave otherwise than as gentleman by making false charges or fomenting a spirit of uncharitableness entirely destructive of all friendly and neighbourly feeling. But this is by the way.

Politics have gone to sleep. We have onr Montagues and Capulets (“ a plague on both your houses”) as well as other countries, but people at a distance do not understand the difference between the one and the other, and do not care to understand it. Many of ourselves do not understand the difference. They take a side— But which Pretender is, and which is King, God bless them both ! that’s quite another thing.