OBITUARY.
JAMES WILSON WILSON.
(Clutha Leader.)
The sudden death of Mr J. W. Wilson on Saturday morning camo as a sudden shock to the community, deceased being one of the best known men in the district, and indeed in Otago. Mr Wilson had been known to be suffering from a weak heart for years, but had been around about us usual the previous day, and, having several of his family on an Eastertide visit, had spent a pleasant evening with them. On Saturdav morning,, about 7.30, Mrs Wilson took him a glass of milk while he was still in bed, and left the room for a few seconds. On returning she noticed deceased lying in a somewhat constrained position, and called in her eldest daughter, who is a qualified nurse, who saw that her father had passed away. Deceased was the eldest son of Mr Richard Geo. Wilson, who settled at Lambourne in 1559 and who afterwards resided at Erlstoke, Port Molyneux. Mr J. W. Wilson was born at Lambourne Hall in Essex, England, in 1849, being educated at King's School, in Canterbury, and 'coming to the colony in 1862, settling on his father's farm at Lambourne. After a residence there of over 12 years he was appointed to manage the Otapiri Station in 1876. From there in 1878 he went into partnership with his brother John at Akatore, remaining there until setting up in the auctioneering business in Balclutha in 1887. Mr Wilson always took a very keen interest in public affairs and was at one time a member of the Bruce County Council for Waihola Riding, and during his lengthy residence in Balclutha served both on school committee and Borough Council, besides taking a leading part in the public life of the town. In his younger days he was a member of the Otago Hussars and in later years he was a leading spirit in the formation of the Clutha Mounted Rifles, being appointed first Sergt.-Major, and on his resignation being appointed an honorary member of the squadron. Hospitable and generous to a marked degree, Mr Wilson will greatly missed in the town and district. Much sympathy is felt for Mrs Wilson and family in their sudden bereavement.
The funeral, which was a private one, took place at the Puerua cemetery on Monday, the Rev. Mr Currie officiating,
A PERSONAL NOTE.
Dr W. A. Fleming sends us the following tribute: ~- Mr Wilson had started business in Balclutha about a year before I commenced practice there — now over 20 years ago. Then commenced a friendship between us which has never for one moment been broken. I knew his faults as well as, I trust, I know my own. They were all on the surface, and can be put in a sentence. He was impatient of control, and possessed a peculiar sort of temper which often got the bit between its teeth and bolted with him off the course of sound reason. When you say that you say everything. He was one of the most hospitable, kind-hearted men I have ever known. His house was like that one mentioned by Longfellow (modified):
Built in the old Colonial day
When men lived in a freer way
With ampler hospitality.
His horses (in those days he kept good horses), buggies, harness, etc., were freely lent to anybody who wanted them. He kept open house to all and sundry, rich and poor, and if he was occasionally victimised, as on one famous occasion when he entertained a ci-devant lord, an out-and-out adventurer, for months, he at any rate never regretted it, and always remarked that at any rate he behaved like a perfect gentleman when in his house. And when in later years one of his chief hobbies was growing vegetables (and such vegetables! I have never seen anything like them. I often used to remark, "Talk about Chinamen growing vegetables! Wilson can easily beat all the Chinamen who ever lived."), he just grew them to give away — bags of them to all and sundry. He was never so happy as when on a horse. With horses he didn't know what fear was, and even within the last year or two, when his heart was troubling him, I have seen him, when a young fellow couldn't get a horse over a stiff jump, take the horse from him, put off his coat, and get the horse over in great style. He lived in the adventurous early days of the colony, and his stories of hairbreadth escapes and mad adventures were worth listening to — how he rode out through the surf to the wreck at Wilsher Bay, how he and his horse went over a precipice and larded in the fork of a tree, how he and others loaded a vessel with wheat in the open sea at Akatore, etc. At first we doubted some of them, but we afterwards had them all corroborated by others. Mr Wilson, although not a literary man in the ordinary sense of the term, was well-read, and well-informed on almost every subject. And now his adventurous, restless, impulsive career is over. He rests appropriately in the lonely family burying ground near Romahapa, within sound of the booming surf, and in the centre of the country he has so often ridden over. To quote from his favourite recitation we have so often heard him give:
Should the sturdy station children pull the bush flowers on his grave,
He may chance to hear them romping overhead.
I can best picture him now, (and I am sure his faithful and devoted wife, a woman of strong Christian beliefs, will forgive me although she mightn't forgive anyone else — this semi-pagan flight of imagination), I can best picture him resting — for he was somewhat weary latterly, and needs a long rest — with one of his old-time favourite horses beside him, resting, but waiting for the trump to sound, when he will leap on his horse, and be away "cross-country," with his favourite author ringing in his ears:
No game was ever yet worth' a rap
For a rational man to play,
Into which no accident, no mishap,
Could possibly find its way.
But now we arc getting among the mysteries. Farewell, my old and faithful friend, farewell
"Till the dawn doth break." -Bruce Herald, 24/4/1911.
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