'
'If that is your view, Tawhiao, what words would you have for a man who
destroyed the happiness of a whole nation, and that his own?'
Tawhiao could not frame words for such a person, more especially as he
now began to realise that the parables were fitting himself. 'Yes, yes,'
was his exclamation, 'I understand, I understand!' Then he cried like a
baby.
What judgment would England pass upon King Tawhiao if, while a visitor
there, he gave way to drink? He would disgrace, not himself only, but the
whole Maori race.
'Alas, yes,' sobbed Tawhiao; 'what can be done?'
'I'll tell you,' said Sir George gently. 'We'll both sign a pledge,
agreeing to abstain from alcohol in any form. That pledge will mutually
bind us for a term of years, and there could be no more sacred contract.'
It was a bright contract for Tawhiao. And now here he was, at a New
Zealand wayside station, where there drew up the train carrying Sir
George Grey, on his last New Zealand journey, to the Plymouth-bound
liner. 'I wished him farewell,' Sir George described this parting, 'and
he wept. I was much touched, remembering that he had been all through a
Maori war against me.'
That was retrospect. The second Maori war afforded Sir John Gorst an
experience not without humour.
In Sir George Grey's phrase, Sir John Gorst went out to New Zealand to do
good and did it.
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