and sad gatherings, the many marriages and in the adjacent dining-house the many dances that echoed throughout its walls, and the feasts that were eaten there.

Our school house—now there was a place, a place where we first started to learn. When I went to school here, there were sixty or more pupils. We had two basketball teams, a football team and all sorts of competitive sports including competitive choir-singing. Oh. how my heart aches at the wealth of my memories!

As I grew older, the people turned to harvesting the sea, fishing and selling their catch to Pakehas from Auckland. From the forests, collecting of Jew's Ear fungus was started, to sell to the Chinese buyers. This was how it was.

I left home to go to college and during the school holidays I returned to find that the drift to the towns had begun. The houses and land were left there standing like empty shells with nothing inside and the drift continued until the number of inhabited houses dropped from seventeen to seven in Wainui, from eleven to three in Mahinepua and in Ngaere from twenty to two.

When I married, I went home to my village and Ngatiruamahoe, and I emerged from there a woman, leaving behind my friends, my parents and memories. Today, looking back from my home here in Wellington, I see that the school house is being closed after all these years, leaving an empty place. The electricity is in my village now, but I think it came too late.

Yes, the electric light shines brightly, but it shows up the dark corners in the houses of my people. Where are the singing voices of long ago, the teasing voices, the giggles of the young girls and the sly coughs of the young men, or the cries of pain? It is finished.

Tomorrow, when all the old folks including my own grand-parents have gone, what will become of us, my generation? Who will teach and show us the way? I can only end these thoughts with the words of the hymn: ‘There is a home, far more beautiful than this!’