Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/238

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Our New Zealand Cousins.

After what I heard and saw in Dunedin, my heart was uplifted. Let no one tell me that the power of the pulpit is on the wane. The Word is "quick and powerful" still as ever it was, where properly presented. But oh, woe is me for the many that "sit at ease in Zion." Methinks there are too many "dumb dogs" and "hireling shepherds" in some of the churches nowadays.

Twenty years ago, I saw Dunedin, when it was a rambling collection of miserable wooden shanties. The cutting through Bell's Hill was not then finished. If I mistake not, it was of Dunedin mud in those days that the following satire was concocted:—

"A new chum, walking along the quaking morass that was then the street (so the story goes), espied a nice new hat on the surface of the treacherous mire. Presumably he was a web-footed stranger, for he sallied out to pick up the hat. To his surprise it was clutched firmly on both sides by two bunches of digits, and he perceived it was being held on the head of some subterranean wearer. 'Hallo!' shouted the N. C., making a speaking-trumpet of his hands, "You are surely in a bad way down there?' 'Oh, no! I'm all right,' came the muffled reply. 'I'm on the top of an omnibus.'"

The streets are very different now. Well paved, well scavengered, and with horse-trams running in all directions, they redound to the credit of the city management. They have not been idiotic enough to try and make the trains do the work of