Burke Manuscript

Burke Manuscript: Page 154

Transcript

original cabs and cabmen of the city, now so numerous, and so smart. But there was then no rushing to the train, no necessity for haste, things went on gently, aye, hardly a telegraph wire, for only a short time before Mr Edmund Green, who, it may be, still lives in the St Albans district, had been specially imported to erect the first line of wires from Lyttelton, over the hill to Christchurch. The thing had previously been done without, a ship arrived, perhaps full of immigrants, its arrival reached town in due time. The monthly mail was in Port, a leisurely gun announced the fact. The mail reached the miniature Post Office, where now stands Mrs Pope’s shop in Market Place, and Dr Back, the Postmaster, Thompson his clerk, and Bill Moore, the Town Deliverer, put the concern through, but do not for a moment imagine that either of those gentlemen worked at the high pressure which Cathedral Square now exhibits. Oh dear no. The affair was done leisurely, and came to an end in due time. Those were not the days of unnecessary haste.

The death of Mr E.G. Griffiths so associated with horses and racing brings back to memory such items of the long days ago, when Canterbury could show in full force its pioneers, the Pilgrims of the early fifties. That gentleman was one of a merry band long since departed and their names almost forgotten in the land. Who knows anything of Dick Groome, or Tom Adams? Who thinks of Harry Poingdestre or Tom White or Freeland, and how many, many more of the first joyous crowd then in the heyday of vigorous young manhood? A few of their contemporaries, old and bent, some looking grey and withered, still remain – few and far between. Ah the old Royal then was gay, and the Avon without a willow or a tree, its banks in all the bareness of nature, sometimes resounded in the “wee sma’ hours” to the doings of the jolly crowd within its walls. Soldierly old Stewart, then mine host, and upon his death, Thomson, could have a tale unfolded of the high jinks of the merry band, of whom so few now remain. But it should never be forgotten, when tales are told of the doings of old, that then people were few, and amusements, such as now young blood enjoys, scanty, in fact was almost limited to hotel life and its surroundings. Now, variety is coming, monotony unknown, then the only hansom cab was idle