dly have been seen
elsewhere. The second act of the comedy was supposed to take place in
the heart of the New Zealand bush. "That's a thing," said Sir George,
"which no scene-painter's brush can imitate; you must have the real
thing upon the boards." And straightway he gave me an order for the
cutting down of any number of forest trees I might require in his own
grounds at Cawai. How these were got into the theatre I do not remember,
but the scene produced by their aid was the most perfect and beautiful I
can remember to have seen. They were braced by invisible wires, and
the severed trunks were concealed behind mounds of real forest moss
and cart-loads of last year's withered leaves. There was an artificial
waterfall on a level with the upper entrance and the back cloth conveyed
the impression of an illimitable vista. As anybody may guess who has the
slightest knowledge of work behind the scenes, the preparation of this
spectacle and its removal necessitated two tediously protracted waits,
but the audience appeared to think that the show atoned for tedium, and
our only three performances in Auckland were an overwhelming popular
success. The author--good, easy man--naturally attributed that success
at the time to the charm of the comedy, but though that went well
enough in other places later on, it never afterwards secured the same
enthusiastic acceptance. It was the realism and originality of the
forest scene which did the trick. Its glories were evanescent, and on
the third night the characters, who had moved amidst all the splendours
of full summer, were straying under brown and withered autumn leaves.

There are few of us who have not discovered that the affability of a
distinguished man may be amongst the most disagreeable of all human
characteristics, though when one encounters the real thing which has
its root in nature and not in policy it is certainly amongst the
most delightful. In Sir George Grey one knew it instinctively to be
spontaneous; the man seemed to have been born out of his time; he was a
survival from another age, In South Africa, South Australia and in
New Zealand he proved himself almost an ideal manipulator of men, and
wherever he went he reaped a harvest of personal affection. Nobody
meeting him without a knowledge of his record would have guessed that
he was in the presence of a man distinguished alike as a diplomatist, a
soldier and a scholar; he would have been conscious only of a singularly