Everybody is interested in everybody's welfare; there is no kind of business that does not issue somehow in "the compliments of the season"; messages of kindness choke the Post Office and weigh down the letter-carriers;-my own postman, staggering under his load and collecting his tips, is hours late.
In short, we are all agog with peace and good will, the forgiving of enemies, the remembering of friends.
Hope that springs eternal in the human breast never sprung with more vigour than just now, nor inspired with greater confidence the greetings in which we bestow happiness and an assured future.
The meaning of all this is that poor human nature tries pathetically to make the best of things. No one can pretend that circumstances are propitious. Look at the newspaper headings.
China is in revolution; Tripoli a scene of war and massacre; the Balkans are seething like a pot; the temper of Germany is that of a bear with a sore head.
In what is called ironically "the industrial world" industries are everywhere paralysed by strikes actual or imminent; here in New Zealand one-half the population is feloniously bent on stopping the other half's grog.
Peace and good will!-there isn't enough to go round. For all that our talk is still of a merry Christmas and a happy New Year, let the world wag as it chooses. I recall Gilbert's "Address to the Terrestrial Globe, by a Miserable Wretch":
Roll on, thou ball, roll on!
Through pathless realms of space
Roll on!
What though I'm in a sorry case?
What though I cannot meet my bills?
What though I suffer toothache's ills?
What though I swallow countless pills?
Never you mind!
Roll on! - Civis
The Primate (Bishop Nevill) has now completed his consultations with the architects, Messrs Sedding and Wheatly, of Plymouth, regarding the plans for the proposed Cathedral in Dunedin, and the plans, as approved by him, will go forward immediately to the Cathedral Building Board in Dunedin.
Until they are approved by that body it is, of course (says our London correspondent) premature to say anything about the proposed plans. Generally speaking, they provide for an edifice something after the style of Bath Abbey, with a central tower, but no spire. - ODT, 23.12.1911.
