It may be said briefly that "she looks like it".
Thanks to a good hull and good engines the vessel has escaped from what might otherwise have been "a close call". As it is, the light gear has been swept off the forecastle, two of the music-room ports were stove in, some of the deck cabins were drenched, and a great deal more water came aboard than was pleasant.
For nearly four days the steamer fought in the teeth of westerly gales, which reached a climax yesterday in a straight blow that sent seas over the Maheno in a deluge. Leaving Auckland at 9.56 p.m.
on Monday, she did not reach Sydney till 7 a.m. on Saturday. She was in fairly light trim, and the 200 passengers had the tossing of their lives. The worst day was Friday, approaching the Australian coast. The sea had piled up, and the vessel was several times swept from end to end. Other vessels on the coast report having a bad time, but the Maheno's was the worst; and everybody on board was glad when it ended.
• The pleasant corrective practice of ducking one's wife for obstreperous behaviour or for undue nagging was referred to (reports the New Zealand Herald) by Mr J. H. Upton in an address to the Auckland Institute. While in Warwick recently, he said, he had seen the old "ducking-stool" used for the purpose of administering the sentence.
It consisted of a rocking beam 18ft long, with a chair at one end. The lady would be strapped in the chair, and the affair having been harnessed to a horse, she would be driven through the town to the river. There the beam would be see-sawed the appointed number of times, dowsing the unfortunate misdemeanant each time. The barbarous punishment, in retrospect, impressed him strongly, and not being able to secure the large and bulky original "stool", he procured a one-inch scale model to present to the museum.
• During the hearing of a truancy case in the City Police Court on Saturday morning, a plea of illness on the part of a child was advanced as an excuse for its non-attendance at school. Mr H. Y.
Widdowson, in commenting on the frequency with which ill-health was put forward in mitigation of this particular offence, said he thought the time had arrived when the Education Department should employ a doctor.
From subsequent inquiries made into the matter we learned that a number of people are unable to afford the services of a doctor, and when summoned for not sending their children regularly to school they cannot, of course, produce the necessary medical exemption certificate.
- ODT, 19.6.1911.
