Anglo-Saxophonionisms.

Believe me, dear reader, Multum in Parvo is not the birthplace of Bernard Sure, nor is it the nom de gargle of a Continental cocktail or a sonorific symbol synonymous with soap or Socialism. To be academically ambiloquous it represents one of those meaty and mellifluous maxims with which the Latin lingo is laced; translated romantically and with intoxication, it means “Baby's got a heart of Oak,” or “You can't keep a good man down.” But, according to Ad Absurdum and Isosceles, the Icicle, the term, when subjected to Anglo-Saxophonious strangulation, resolves itself into “much in little,” and can be applied to many things besides the interim of a pelican, and the infant Samuel after the party. In round terms, but strictly on the square, the phrase fits New Zealand like a saveloy's suit, for who can deny that, speaking with due humidity, New Zealand is merely a mole on the face of Nature? But—mark the “but,” dear reader—although certainly she is Parvo in proportions, she is majestically Multum in the multifariousness of her feathered fauna, fossiliferous fecundity, and thermal therapeutics. What other slab of solidified sediment can boast a bird possessing the parodoxical parking propensities of the mutton bird, who, although of the air airy, is also of the earth earthy; for at certain times of the year she contracts an irresistible golf complex and “holes out in one;” in other words, Nature lays her low with a rabbit hunch, and she parks herself underground for the duration of the sitting; but how many really understand or appreciate this boneheaded bird, who, despite its name, is neither mutt or mutton? How many of us ever pause in our pursuit of luck and lucre to consider the domestic problems of this fugitive fowl; how many of us are too little preoccupied to study “Queer Birds I Have Met,” by Oliver flutter? You, careless reader, regarding the mutton bird as a minor feature in the mural decorations of a fishmonger's mortuary—do you never shed a tear for this frustrated fowl, who flies three thousand miles just to dig a hole, and then flies back another three thousand miles to the Silly Isles or Shepherd's Bush, to spend the summer thinking up improvements for next year's hole?

I know of only one recorded instance of a mutton bird, in full possession of its faculties, being kept in captivity. Let us say it in stanzas.

Willie Had a Mutton Bird.
Willie had a mutton bird,
Its coat was soft and greasy,
His father caught it off its guard,
Which isn't very easy.

“You can't keep a good man down.”

e handed it to Willie, on
His birthday, which was Friday;
An inoffensive fowl indeed,
And always neat and tidy.
It followed Willie everywhere,
And Willie called it Hector—
It followed Willie's sister, too,
And never, NEVER pecked her—
Thus Willie loved his mutton bird,
Although it never “bleated,”
And Willie's mutton bird was glad,
But not a BIT conceited.
It slept in Willie's cot at night,
And Willie lay a d'oyley,
Beneath its form because t'was oily.
That Hector's form was oily.
Ah, Willie loved his mutton bird,
(Although its coat was greasy),
Until in March, I think it was,
The fowl became uneasy.
It looked sat Willie furtively—
An obvious deceiver—
And Willie when he kissed its cheek,
Found Hector in a fever.
Soon Willie missed his mutton bird;
Without a “beg your pardon,”
It wandered absent-mindedly.
And burrowed in the garden.
His ignorance of mutton birds,
Was utterly abysmal,
The truth is (never shirk the truth
However grim and dismal).
That Willie lost his mutton bird,
Because they'd never taught him
To read his “Book of Barmy Birds,”
His careful aunt had bought him.

Thermal Therapeutics.

But let us dry our tears and go with the girl guides to contemplate Nature in hysterics; verily, dear reader, Rotorua is the home-town of Messrs. Brimstone and Treacle; here Mother Nature steps on the gas and takes the corners on her curling pins; she simmers and burbles and boils and bursts; she abandons herself to the “vapours;” she throws her weight about, and is no lady; but she is shamelessly proud of it; she is wild and woolly and wonky; in Rotorua her real nature comes to the surface, and she wots not of the neighbours.

Rotorua, dear reader, had the whole world fried to a cinder. It is an incurable outbreak; a spot which makes Dante's dread-time stories read like a mere Joy-night at the Turkish Baths; compared with Rotorua, Vesuvius is a barber's rash, and Etna a mere wart on the Earth's epidermis. Assuredly the misguided guide who said “See Naples and die,” was indifferently acquainted with his thermaletics, else he would have substituted, “See Rotorua and save your skin.”

Let us linger at the porridge pots; how languidly they open their eyes and close them with a fat flop; hear how they sigh and sob and burble and blub—a minor melody in mud; enough porridge to cater for a thousand Highland

“Much in little.”

page 14

“The dry cleaner.”

Flings—a superlative example of the Scotsman's conception of the 'free breakfast table.” Surfeit your optic with jets of artesian ebullience, surpassing the best efforts of the worst plumber who ever burst a boiler; tune in to the streams which flow backwards, upwards, downwards and inside out. What a home for a land agent! Hot and cold water laid on regardless of the by-laws, steam heating with variations, hot points at all points, and the lid off generally.

Tinted Tubs.

But he baths, hygienic reader! In Rotorua, every night is Friday night; there are baths to burn but to scald; baths to blend with any local colour; even a chameleon could find no excuse for giving his bath a bye at Rotorua. There are blue baths for the melancholy, red baths for the ruddy, green baths for Erin's output, mud baths for muddlers, yellow baths for the yeller, hip baths, dip baths, and tubs for all temperaments, except that of the drycleaner. It Rotorua everything is curable, except enthusiasm. Rheumatism, pessimism, Bolshevism, dogmatism, rats, bats, and the abysmal blues-they are all dissolved and dissipated in the tinted tubs.

How could Hinemoa help pulling off the prize as New Zealand's earliest bathing beauty?

Even those simple souls who have devoted their lives to the belief that water was invented as an excuse to drink whisky, have been know to fall for hydraulic at Rotorua.

Rotorua is the plumber's purgatory; what plumber, viewing such an orgy of unleashed emotion, such eruptive ructions, such aqueous alacrity, could do nought but bow his head in shame at the contemplation of his own paltry efforts at destructive analysis; doubtless, before he plumbed the depths of devastation at Rotorua, he boasted of his calaphontic cataclysms, his masterpieces of metallurgical misanthropy, his fires, floods and pestilences; but Rotorua holds before his gaze the blow-lamp of truth, and he sees himself as a mere dabbler in hydraulic hysteria and domestic disaster.

Pioneer of the Rag-wash Movement.

Permit me, fatigued reader, with unbecoming immodesty, to file my claim as the pioneer of the rag-wash movement in New Zealand, with head-waters at Rotorua. In my garden on the fringe of Ohinemutu there lurked a simmering pool in comparative captivity. It was so deep that if it were turned upside down it probably would be as high as it was deep, and perhaps

“A mere dabbler in domestic disaster.”

page 15 more so, for it disappeared in a cleft of rock and left its antecedents open to conjecture. At becoming intervals I was wont to tie all my spare parts of physical furniture at the end of a long string, and whirling the consignment round my head like a fishing line, to lob it into the centre of the laundry, where it sank with a sigh of sensuous satisfaction into the heart of Nature. Ah, would that my shirts had been loud enough to speak; what tails they might have borne to me when I hauled them to safety and applied artificial inspiration—experiences, I doubt not, even more fearful than those a shirt faces in the average laundry.

Is it strange that their adventures undermined their fibre after three or four sulphurous immersions and excursions, so deeply that they came to the parting of the ways, and parted all ways at once in more ways than one, and were only fit to cut up for cigarette papers.

I claim no great credit for the rag-wash idea; like all such discoveries, it arose from a natural human indisposition to subject the physiology to unnecessary strains and distresses.

The Railway Nights.

There are several methods of reaching Rotorua, but the only real way is the railway. It you are unable to travel by “Daylight Limited” and follow the sun, you have the option of hitching your wagon to a star and making a night of it. The delights of the Arabian Nights have nothing on railway nights. Nights. Night, dear reader, is the time for travel. There is a time and place for everything: for travel, the night is the time, and the train is the place, for at night the mind is mellow and the soul is soothed; the liver is in lambent mood, and the hand of peace rests lightly and love the consciousness; the fonts of charity and love are uncorked, and harmony occupies the whole interior.

As the train bores a hole through the night your will observe the nocturnal modifications of humanity on the nocturnal modifications of humanity on the hoof. Meanwhile lights flash past your window—swift splashes of illumination hurled at you out of the night; a noble roar tells you that a bridge has been met and conquered; another roar like giants pounding muffled drums, tells you that the earth has flung open its gates to let the flying giant pass under; the brakes exert their powerful but gentle restraint, like the careful pressing of a gargantuan hand; a splash of light rushes to meet you, and stops; out of the night there comes a lonely cry, and you know that you are at a country station. Here a small boy with a large head and a tin trunk as big as a submarine boards the train as proudly as if he were mounting the carcase of a victim dragon. The honeymoon couple under the tartan rug stir, and rush out the eats again; the dear old lady who has been sleeping with her head on her life-mate's chest, like a fatigued cherub, stirs and fumbles for her somehow pathetic hat on her lap; the hearty old gentleman, the baby girl with the plump pink legs, the whole happy band of nocturnal migrants, are transported by the magic of the wheels whirring under the excellent rolling stock of the Railways to New Zealand's wonderful garden of geysers.

“The pioneer if the ray-wash movement.”

X-Cellent Rolling Stock On The Railway

page 16

Inspection Of Hillside Workshops.
At the invitation of the General Manager of Railways Mr. H. H. Sterling, over 100 members of the Dunedin Chamber of Commerce recently paid a visit of inspection to the Department's new workshops at Hillside, Dunedin. The visitors were accompanied by Mr. Sterling, Mr. E. T. Spidey (Superintendent of Workshops), Mr. C. Graham (Workshops Manager), Mr. G. Baird (General Foreman), and other members of the official staff at Hillside, who acted as guides and demonstrators. Commencing with the Steel Wagon Shop a thorough inspection was made of the entire works, the visitors being much impressed alike by their magnitude and modern equipment. Especially interesting to them was the fact that the principal raw materials in use at Hillside were of New Zealand production—the Otago Iron Rolling Mills at Green Island, supplying large quantities of rolled iron and steel, whilst Onakaka pig Iron was used exclusively for iron castings. After the inspection, the visitors were entertained by the Department at afternoon tea in the dining room of the Social Hall, in the course of which they were addressed by Mr. Sterling, who briefly outlined the policy of the Department in regard to the workshops generally. The illustrations shew: (1) The visitors outside the Workshops Manager's office; (2) inspecting shop layout work; (3) watching cold-flanging of boiler plates; and (4) the visitors at afternoon tea.