A gloomy, gusty day. I should press on and do all sorts of things but I am just feeling, what? Down? Washed out? I spent yesterday in my room, and the morning today. Made myself go out and get the newspaper. I am in a boarding house nearby a cricket ground called the Basin Reserve. While this is a peculiar name, it is nice to be near the cricket.
Basin Reserve, 1905 (Alexander Turnbull Library)
The German I reported on in my last entry is still in the paper defending himself for saying New Zealanders dress badly and talk with a "twang". His criticisms seem to have touched a rather raw nerve. I am surprised that the people here care so much about the thoughts of a solitary European. Aggrieved letters have been pouring in telling the unfortunate Dr. Herz to go home although one paper has quite amusingly defended the doctor: "the New Zealander [has] a profound disinclination to have any of his faults pointed out to him." "The average tourist humours this national weakness to the top of its vainglorious, swollen-headed bent, and tells the colonial that he is the salt of the earth, and that the Almighty never made anything like him, and that his manly character and the physical beauty are too entrancingly magnificent for the English language to describe, and that his country is absolutely unparalleled and that J. G. Ward and R. J. Seddon are the two most flabbergasting politicans in the world." I had better hesitate before criticising my new home too harshly.
My landlady is threatening to take me to a show. She was bustling out the door as I came back into the hall with a paper and asked me if I had ever seen the "moving pictures" before. Fatally I said that I had not. She crinkled her nose at me as if about to sneeze, I have come to realise through observation that this is her expression when thinking, and then announced that I would be going with her to see this amazing event next week. Actually I am curious, and she seems an open soul who is being kind to me so I shan't try and wriggle off that hook. Where was she going? I asked to be polite. To post a letter to "her cripple" she replied! I must have looked surprised for she went on to state that she was a member of the Crutch and Kindness League, and it was her job to write a cheery letter to her assigned cripple every month! I think I managed to conceal my amazement with a fit of coughing.
J
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"Sir, I apologise for how we parted company, and fear I may have given offense to your lovely wife, and guests. One day I hope that you will read my little diary and forgive me. Let my punishment be banishment to this miserable, little edge of the Empire called Wellington, while you continue to thrive in your splendid house at the centre of it all."
J
Have you been to Wellington Zoo recently? I know it is within walking distance of your lodgings and, in any case, it is a short distance to the tram. Personally, I think that the way they confine the animals, in such small enclosures, is abhorant! When I was last there I took time to regard an old bear. A young lady approached his cage and offered him a tit bit of affection; or something similar. He growled twice. One could easily observe that he had only a few teeth remaining and that his time in captivity had long ago taken care of any real ferociousness that he might once have possessed. Why even someone like a music master in an elementary school would have a brighter future than this old incarcerated specimen of a noble mammalian species! If I could approach the young lady, impossible as such a thing would be, I would apologise for this sad old beast and remind her that he is, after all, a lower form of life in God's eternal plan.
R
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