Arnold enjoyed writing in school and went on to work in journalism at the Hawke’s Bay Daily Mail.
Below are couple of pieces written for The Scindian for Napier Boys’ High School, Vol XLV in December, 1937.
Pegasus
A.G.C.
I went round to see Henry the other day, and found him underneath what, at first sight, I took to be a pile of extremely rusty kerosene tins. He crawled out in answer to my plaintive wall of distress.
“What-oh, what is this?” I cried.
“Oh, this?” said Henry. “This is Pegasus.”
“Is what?” said I. “What on earth or elsewhere is Pegasus?”
Henry looked injured. “It’s a car,” he said, “a motor-car – an automobile – you know them. Iit goes along on wheels, and when you crank it up it goes ‘Put-put.’”
(“Put-put” as a description of Pegasus in motion I later found to be nothing less than understatement of an inexcusable order.)
“Oh, yes,” said I. “I’ve seen them in pictures occasionally.” (This was sarcasm.)
Henry looked sorrowfully at me.
“I’ll show you,” he said. “Clamp your personage to that crank-handle, and turn it. I’ll switch on”
I should have known Henry better, but unwisely, I obeyed, and set down with more haste and force than might be considered strictly consistent with dignity.
I spent a good five minutes telling Henry what I thought about him, about cars in general, and Pegasus in particular.
“Where did you get such a fiendish contrivance?” I said finally (or words to that effect, anyway).
Henry perked up at once.
“You remember my old Grandpa?” he said. “He left me this in his will when he died, on condition that I didn’t use it until I was of age. I went down to collect it yesterday, and brought it back on a truck. Our family tradition states that Noah made the thing in the first place, but Nebuchadnezzar is known to have used it, and I personally believe that Abel invented it, and Cain bumped him off out of jealousy. Anyway, you try again.” I simply looked at him, and he wilted perceptibly.
“All right,” he said. “Watch me!” And, believe it or not, that thing roared into life like an overgrown hippopotamus. (Henry says they don’t roar, but I told him not to display his ignorance.)
We climbed into the spluttering machine, and sat on a seat which had never known springs. Henry pressed a pedal, and we jerked backwards over his father’s pet cabbage plot. He frantically pressed another, and we pulled out on to the lawn, and sauntered down the drive.
“Fine!!” bellowed Henry. But that wasn’t what he said when Pegasus coyly embraced the off-side gatepost—
(I omit some painful intermediate details.)
Undoubtedly, there is something wildly exhilarating about rushing along the road at five miles per hour, and perhaps that was what made Pegasus zig-zag from one side of the road to the other. I tried to tell Henry this, but Pegasus roared the louder. Henry saw my agonised face, however and turned to smile reassuringly. It was a fatal moment. Pegasus gave way somewhere, careered gaily across the road, charged down the weak opposition put up by an ancient fence, and in a moment was galloping in delirious abandon over a paddock, charging cows and sheep with strict impartiality. Henry sat as one paralysed. We charged down the final slope, and Pegasus halted with lady-like precision in the middle of the pond at the bottom…. Henry said he wouldn’t be seen dead in the blessed thing, and when I told him he nearly was dead in it, he said a lot of other things.
He didn’t go to Sunday school enough when he was young, I fear.
Fear
A.G.C.
What is it that, since the beginning of time, has accelerated the progress of man towards civilization? Chiefly it must have been fear. Fear of the strength of prehistoric monsters led man to devise weapons to defend himself, and weapons gave him a superiority which to this day he retains.
At the same time, down through the ages it was been fear which has prevented man from adventuring too far beyond the seas. Fear of the unknown – the nameless but none the less terrible unknown – fear of legendary monsters – fear of all that superstition and hereditary dread of the mysterious could lead man to expect, kept always the great mass in ignorance of half the world. Not until men who scarce knew fear began their hardy ventures did the world learn a little about itself.
Who can fear? Who can hold it, weigh and examine it? Fear defies calm inspect, and terrorises the spirit of the boldest by the threat of its shadow.
Fear strikes in many ways; by the unknown, as by the known; by night, as by day; in all countries and in all places from pole to pole fear lies in wait to seize all corners. But most of all, fear victimises those who fear they may become afraid. The stronger minds, in reaction, go out to do or die; the weaker, die, mentally or physically.
Fear, therefore, is the chief blight upon the flower of our existence; for who can cope with an influence which is nothing tangible – an ephemeral, but none the less all-powerful Something? The most civilized of the civilized cannot defy fear; all man’s inventions for conquering the elements hinder rather than help him to conquer fear, for each invention seems to call for yet a greater toll of lives.
Let those, therefore, who say that civilization has banished superstition, think carefully; for deep in the heart of every man is some small hereditary superstitious seed; and superstition and fear are one and the same, unconquerable both, save by the greatest will-power.