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UP AND DOWN THE COAST. I -....-.-...,

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UP AND DOWN THE COAST. I PERRY WINKLE ON EDUCATION. It is n K. oft'n th it th J Winkles have troubled themselves wit) ma te s belonging to the sects, and un'ike some people, I have n tear that religion is a thing that can be got rid of. I b ie e that the Eternal Being is able to keep His own" now as in the past cycles but I am of opinion that men can I-lay the fulness of time they may even say that they will not have a certain blessing. As George Eliot makes one of h;3 characters remirk, When a man turns a bless- ing from his door it falls to them as takes it in," and if the men of this age will not take in the blessing of education, we know Him, with whom a thousand years is as one day, and education can wait till men are ready to take it in, and in the ineantinle- Thou spirit of sectarian hate, Go forth and do thy best to slay Be, as thou art, a gloomy fate < That shrouds in night the children's way. Be fair of face and smooth of tongue,— t Be coid as death and false as hell; And as thy hollow praise is sung, Each note shall sound the children s knell. By time-worn platitudes and cant. Persuade the people stones are bread Teach them the only thing they want Is power to follow where tbey're led. Lm'" creeds and dogmas may be wrong, And i et, again, they may be true PerpLexing cries confuse the throng, And hide the simple truth from view. But long as sun and stars give light, And long as earth its course shall roll,— It surely never can be right To damn a mind to save a soul. Truth still remains on earth, and when Church and Dissent nave fought out their miserable battle it will still be true that religion is the main thing after all, let it be taught when and how it may. PORTMADOC HARBOUR.. I have been at Portmadoc on more than one occasion, and it has always struck me that if the tradesmen and other inhabitants of that place had sufficient "go "in them, a good deal could be done towards improving the trade of the town. We all know that the harbour is not all that can be desired," considering the increased trade; indeed it is to be feared that due care is not taken to provide necessary accommodation. Since my experience of the Aberystwyth Harbour, I am allowed to know something about harbours in general, and as for general trade, the Winkles have always made trade their peculiar study, and one of their maxims has been "never let politics interfere with your busintss relations." Throughout Wales we want more manufacturing, for the simple reason that manufactures increase wealth. We have all heard that he is a benefactor who makes two blades of grass grow where only one grew before. Now, grass in this case is raw material, of which beef, mutton, hides and wool are the manufactured article. It does not require an Argus-a gentleman who has one hundred eyes-to see that towns where manufacturing is carried on have a better chance cf being wealthy than places whsre this is not the case. Again, all towns that have anything in the shape of a harbour have better chances of making wealth than places not possessing that advantage, because ports have the means of obtaining raw material on more favourable terms than inland towns. What we want is to get into the habit of making things instead of buying them from other towns ready made. This is by way of introduction, and I should advise the people to look out, ase we must all pull together and see if something cannot b done to get the harbour into a good state. TO JOHN JONES, TREGARON. When I read your letter I came to the conclusion that Tregaron, after all, is not hopeless; but there is a great deal to be done there. You have no Local Board, and a Board of Guardians, after all, is not the sort of body to direct the affairs of a town like Tregaron. I have no particular fault to find with the guardians, except perhaps that they do not sufficiently realize the great importance of their duties they are not as careful to act according to strict rules as they might be, and besides, my dear Jones, you may depend upon it that no town ever succeeds until there are a num- ber of men in it who are always thinking what they can do to promote its prosperity. We want more public spirit: men who will toil on year after year for the good of the public, repeating time after time the lessons thev wish to teach until somebody learns them. When you" were at Aberystwyth last week you must have noticed what a great improvement has been made in the footpaths, under the direction of Mr Vaughan, the town surveyor, who na- turally enough is proud of his work. Well, if I were to tell you all the struggling there has been to get Aberystwyth into its present condition you would be surprised. and we have a good deal to do yet. Block View must fall though the proprietor seems anxious to wait until his lease has nearly run out. He could get a decent price now but he unwisely think he will get more offered for it every year whereas the fact is he will get less. Then again we have a place called Piascrug which we intend to plant with trees and name the "Ladies'Walk." Then we are going to widen one of the entrances to the town, and we are going to build some baths, and there is some prospect of starting two or three new branches of trade, and we are going to build some nice houses for winter residents, to say nothing of completing the drainage, improving the water supply, completing the harbour and lots of other things. Y ou may depend upon it that in a few years you will require a guide to show you your way about, as we shall rebuild most of the town if we get the Bill we are now promoting in Par- liament. I don't tell you these things to dishearten you, but to give you courage, because a long while ago Aberys- twyth was almost as bad as Tregaron in some respects. ASSISTING THE WELL-TO-DO. Some time ago a Ratepayer" asked a few questions respecting the Grammar School Buildings which have been occupied rent free for some years on the understanding that anumber ofitown boys were to be educated gratuitously. Put- ting the rent at jElOa year, a very moderate sum,and allowing that the building has been occupied seven years, the town has lost £70 which it can ill spare, especially as the build- ing is not occupied, I presume, by a pauper. There are jobs of all siz-s, and this is a little job, but we don't want jobbery of any sort, and the sooner we have a satisfactory clearing up of this question the more pleased I shall be and the sooner I can turn to afftirs of greater moment. Why on earth should Mr A, B, or C have possession of publie property for nothing unless he has a right to it, and if he has a right to it why does he not say so ? Now, there are gentlemen in the Town Council who are not afraid of either this man or that, and I should like to know how soon we are to have the JE70, because the educating of town boys for nothing is all a farce, and the elO a year would pay a deserving lad's fees at College. These little affairs make me exclaim with the poet 'Tis a very good world to live in To lend or to spend or to give in, But to beg, or to borrow, or get a man's own, 'Tis the very worst world that ever was known. There seems to be a class of people like the daughters of the horseleach who are always crying "give, give" but it is some satisfaction to know that Great fleas have little fleas, Upon their legs to bite ,em And little fleas have lesser fleas, And so ad infinitum. When I read lines like the foregoing I am thankful that the world has been blessed with poets. TO BE A1 TENDED TO AT ONCE. A correspondent writes :—Dear Sir,—The trees in North Parade have some very nice iron guards round them but the trees have in some cases outgrown the guards and the lesult is that if something is not done before long some of the largest trees will be utterly spoiled. If you will look at them tile next time you visit Aberystwyth, perhaps you will he able to suggest something."—I have seen the trees and they are being ruined rapidly in two or three cases I question whether the wood is not permanently injured already. Five minutes would settle this matter if some one would please to remember it at the next Council meeting. It would be indeed a pity if the trees in North Parade should get to look as bare and desolate as that poor post of mine a little higher up. One post may be borne, but a row of them would drive me mad. A SAD FAREWELL. I humbly confess that at one time I was weak enough to think that we should have a reading room in the town, but the hope has become fainter and fainter, until at last it has died out altogether and all that is left for me to do is to bid the memorialists who attended the council meetings on several occasions a Ion,, and sad farewell. As men who nrofess the Christian religion and throng to churches and ch&P^;? Sundays it is a melancholy fact that a reading room is more than the continued efforts of the inhabitants of the town can accomplish. Let us beoutspoken at once and. confess that we do not care a rap either for the souls, minds, or bodies of anyone who is not a member of our little Zoar, or Hermon, or Ebenezer, or Zion. or whatever other name we may have chosen. It is all very well to pray for the re- demption of mankind and leave their education in the hands of the Devil and his ministers. A very small amount of prac- tical work is worth a lot of talk even when that same talk assumes the form of a prayer. The Devil works and Chris- tians talk: that is all the difference. One reading room for the town is beyond the combined power of all the well. meaning men in it. Oh, we love our fellow men and we she. — tiu<± of ignorance and wickedness, but the work must be done by wishing or else it must re- main undone. I bid the reading room farewell and will wait until a more convenient season. THE M A.RKET8. Step by step—slowly, but surely, we are approaching the completion of the long-talked-of market question. The stalls are yet in the streets and hawking U still allowed • but this is a matter that appeals to the pocket, and there. fore it will be done depend upon it, we shall have the streets cleared, for in this eminently religious age busi. ness has the best of it, by a long way. I hope no- body will think that I am raring a single word against re- ligion—I am only regretting, as every thoughtful man must regret, that there ;s so little of it. Somebody once wished that he had a forty-parson power to chant the praise of hypocrisy, and if he had lived in this age he might reamna.b!y have wished for hi.: power to be doubled. THE OPEN DRAIN ON LEWIS TERRACE. An Afflicted Father says he has had to lish his little boy out of this drain on two occasions. There are three ways in which the nuisance can be got rid of. 1st. Let two or three children get drowned there. 2nd. Catch a member of the Town COULCU, tie his feet together, and drag him from the top of the dram to the bottom: this is sure to have effect »t once, especially if an alderman should be operated upon. 3r<?. 1 ru e to present a memorial « £ ting at iVe;v Town Co«ncl. Rmember

CARNARVON.

FFESTINIOG.

PENRHYNDEUDRAETH-

PORTMADOC.

BORTH NEAR PORTMADOC.

PWLLHELI.

DOLGELLEY.

BORTH-

ABERYSTWYTH

TALSARN-

MACHYNLLETH.

LOCAL AND DISTRICT-

THE DEATH OF THE REV. WILLIAM…

[No title]

LLANRHAIADR)

:LLANFYLLIN

[HOPE, NEAR WELSHPOOL