One plot consists of lobelias, calceolarias, French marigolds, geraniums, and antirrhinums, while in another are found apricot violas, pansies, sweet peas, roses, scabious, and cactus dahlias. Donations of plants were made by Lady Ferguson, Miss Benfell (Green Island) and Mr Bruce Rennie (Green Island), and the work of looking after the garden was undertaken by the station staff, assisted by Mr Lousley (ganger). The flowers have made a very pretty show since about the middle of January, and are likely to do so for a while yet.
High alert on the rails
The recent attempts at train wrecking in the Manawatu district have caused the police and railway authorities to be extremely vigilant. Every precaution is being taken over the various lines to see that the lines are clear before the arrival of expresses, and the panels of the cattle stops have been wired down. A report goes to show that the police are very wide awake, and an incident on Wednesday morning goes to show that no risks are being taken. It appears that a constable was on duty in the vicinity of Terrace End on the look-out for suspicious characters. It was not a particularly dark night, but it was dark enough to make the movements of a man at a distance indistinct. Seeing a person in close proximity to the railway line, and no doubt thinking that it was a queer time to be admiring the engineering skill expended on the New Zealand railways, the officer of the law promptly took steps to detain the man. Protests were unavailing. No doubt the officer remembered that guilty as well as innocent persons always say they are doing no wrong, and the prisoner had to wait until a superior officer in the police force was able to identify the suspect, and then it turned out that he was a railwayman who had been detailed for the duty of watching the lines to see that no further attempts were made to wreck trains.
Catholics: peculiar
In Presbyterian Dunedin it is with a wistful curiosity, rather, that we look on the unwanted spectacle of a Roman Catholic procession. For the Roman Catholics are a peculiar people, and their ways are not our ways. These Christian Brothers who were jubilating on Easter Monday, something more than laymen and something less than clergy, are a brotherhood of school teachers that work without pay — all for love and nothing for reward. That is very peculiar.
For the maintaining of their schools they draw nothing from the public purse; we do not allow them, reserving that privilege for ourselves; and so they have the amiable peculiarity of paying exclusively for their own children and partly for ours. On Good Friday, after shutting up shop and office like the rest of us because it is the anniversary of the Crucifixion, they do not give the day to junketing and jousting, nor spend it on the golf-links, nor arrange a dance for the evening. Quite a peculiar people, their uncomfortable virtues distress us. — by ‘Civis’
— ODT, 10.4.1926
