here, and
the rest of the girls, a blooming band of native beauty, escorted by a
large contingent of their male relatives. All the married settlers round
had brought their wives, and--theme of all tongues!--there were actually
as many as four young single ladies! This was evidently going to be a
spree on a most superb scale. Dandy Jack fairly beamed with rapture, and
the gallant O'Gaygun almost burst with the overflow of his exuberant
feelings.

The scene of the spree was, of course, to be our Assembly Hall, although
every citizen of Te Pahi township kept open house that night. The
Assembly Hall has been already mentioned, but must now be more
particularly described.

Although the township is all parcelled out into town and suburban
allotments, yet, for the most part, it remains in its original
bush-covered condition. There is a piece of flat land round the base of
the bluff, and this is all under grass; the half-dozen houses of the
citizens, with their gardens and paddocks, being here. But all beyond is
bush, with a single road cut through it, that leads up and along the
range to Paparoa and Maungaturoto.

When it occurred to us as advisable to build a hall, and when we had
subscribed a sum for the purpose, a site was selected further along the
beach up the Pahi. Here there is a little cove or bend in the shore,
and, just above it, a quarter-acre lot was bought. This was cleared, and
the hall built upon it. All around the little patch of clearing the bush
remains untouched. A track connects it with the houses on the flat,
about a quarter of a mile off; and the beach just below is an admirable
landing-place for boats.

The hall is simply a plain, wooden structure, capable of containing two
or three hundred people. The Saint, when describing it in a letter home,
said it was "a big, wooden barn with a floor to it." However, we voted
this statement to be libellous, and cautioned the Saint on the misuse of
terms. The Pahi Town Hall is not to be rashly designated with
opprobrious epithets. Such as it is, it serves us well, by turns as
chapel, court-house, music-hall, and ball-room.

On the night in question the hall was brilliantly illuminated with
candles and kerosene lamps. The benches were filled with an eagerly
expectant audience, brown and white, who applauded loudly when the Pahi
Minstrels emerged from a little boarded room in one corner, and took up
their positions on the platform at the end of the hall. Then, f