It comprehends for one thing a street procession conceived in a carnival spirit.
Confetti are not sold on this side of the world, nor endless ribands of coloured paper; as for flowers wherewith to pelt at this season there are not flowers enough in all Otago.
Lacking these indispensables, the university parade is less a carnival than a circus; it is just Seacliff loose for a holiday.
There are brigands on horseback and on foot, male and female; there are pierrots and pantaloons, Maoris and Highlanders, spirited up by bagpipes and tin whistles discoursing in concerts the "Rogue's March" and "The Campbells are coming", with adequate thumps on the big drum.
Take it all in all, this saturnalian-orgy implies a good deal of histrionic faculty, both native and cultivated.
Honour to whom honour is due! The hope of this Dominion as embodied in the Otago University student, and as I make him out, is a young fellow of rude health, high spirits, and abundant content with himself, his conditions, his prospects.
I wish him well, and make him my compliments.
Also I recommend him to put aside from the profits of his carnival, which must be considerable, as much as will buy him a cap and gown for everyday wear.
It is not well that in the streets we should be unable to distinguish him from an overgrown High School boy.
Let the student dress as a student, and Dunedin may begin to plume itself on looking something like a University town. - Civis.
• Christchurch: A Christchurch doctor who was fined £1 and costs last week for furious driving in a motor car appeared before the magistrate today to answer another charge of the same nature. A constable declared that the defendant was driving his car in the direction of Sumner at the rate of about 20 miles an hour.
There were two or three vehicles on the street and several pedestrians.
The doctor in his defence said he had received a telephone message to attend a case of extreme urgency.
He took particular care when he was driving, and did not go at a fast pace when he encountered other traffic.
The magistrate remarked that he did not want to unduly harass the medical profession, but on the other hand the safety of the public must be looked to.
As the case the doctor was called to attend was an urgent one, he would make an allowance and convict and discharge him. - ODT, 17.7.1909.
