WISE AND OTHERWISE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 67, 18 March 1908, Page 6

WISE AND OTHERWISE.

, By OLD SALT.

" Sweet are the uses of advertising " is 3 j an adaptation oi an old proverb, and few r people perhaps appreciate its truth more ' than does the Premier of Victoria. .Mr. Bent, at one time, monarch of all —his 1 own cabbage patch, at another, .Speaker ' ! of the Legislative Parliament,; at an- "! other, and one more dearly remembered, 1 as a King of Finance and Champion 5 " Booseter "') (I refer to the lanj boom of 1 eighty-seven and eight) in any character, 1 in fajrt, Mr. Bent has always kept himself \ well in the limelight. The otiier day, 'however, this statesman (or politician) " : declared that the meanness of municipa-li--1 \ ties wheu charitable donations were un- ' J der discussion, must be seen to be be- ' I lieved, and the subscriptions were, as aj '[rule, too smail to be seen. " .No coin," 1 ! he stated, "of British currency is small, ! ! enough to repre.-ent the average eleenio- ; 'isynary effort; but the East Indian anna j \ j would be about the thing."' i Now, curiously enough, this man of ' ; such wide financial experience forgot tliat . the coinage of the East Indies U British j currency, and apparently is not aware 'that the anna is divisible into many more I parts than was ancient " Ga'.lia," the • names of the coins being " pice " and " pies." I wonder If the gentleman, I Who lovos to advertise. "Has mental Indigestion caused By "plums" from mauy "i>ies"! Tho problem which. Ta,sl week. 1 set ! before (that, too, is reminscent of I " pies," blackbirds and kings), my readers J had better now be solved. It was to take ■ —or deduct —nine from six, ten from nine :Rnd fifty from forty, leaving the sum of : six for remainder. ! Here, then, is the solution: — SIX — IX — S IX — X — I j XL — L — X And so-7-quod erat demonstrandum! Another, which, may amuse a leisure hour, is to_ find five odd numerals, the sum of ■which, added together will be feurteen. I

l- What a pity it is that our represent—- - live men should use such hyperbolical - figures ot speech in tho conduct oi official . correspondence. The presence of two i competitors from Australia at the recent - championship ride-shooting would. ?o our I Prime Minister is reported, irom the - - Trentham Range, do much " to cement -the existing bonds of kinship" between : the Dominion and the Commonwealth. How "bonds" are "cemented" this de- ■ ponent saycth not; but from that, it is - | merely a step to " the cementing of | friendly relations." My mother-in-law was once unto mc, The friendliest surt of relation. A Lobby had she, as p'rhaps yon have maybe. An absolute dread of cremation. With kindliest thought, with us she would To torment and perpetually harass: ! Notv I'll bet that she'll stay, lv an old- j fashioned way. • I She's buried iv plaster of Paris. • j Sporting men will perhaps sympathise' , with one of their brotherhood who, dis- ', carding the Turf Guide for a dictionary, j discovered that the definition of " Apo-' ! logue " is " a moral fable." After the race for the Australian Cup the industri- I ous student was disconsolate: but comlotted himself with the reflection that he l had not grasped the inward meaning of the. words—what he had accepted as a j j " moral " was only a fable. ! A verdant contemporary writes sympathising with the 'ministers oi religion; j who have to appear passing rich upon a stipend somewhere about live times as , large as that of the Vicar of WakeI field, and finishes his sympathetic raes- ! sage, with: "I am firmly convinced that j the reason why so many ministers are j i prohibitionists, is that they are too poor to buy a glass of beer!" It has so long been maintained that the indulgence in strong waters is the reason of poverty, that it is positively refreshing to read of this brilliant young gentleman's conviction—his first, it is"to be hoped, and his last. To think that until this discovery was made we have been confusing cause with effect; putting, as it were, the cart before the horse, and so fulfilling the desire of the poetical Bacchan- j alian, who sang: I 1 wish I were a brewer's horse. ! Three-quarters of a year; I'd put my bead where my tail should be Aad drink up all the beer! I Such sympathy, however, hurts more ihan it helps, its objects, and in this connection, I am reminded of the fable of "THE KINDLY ELEPHANT." Once, in travelling the spicy jungles of Ceylon, a she-elephant inadvertently trod upon a mother partridge, which was | seeking food for a newly-hatched brood. Filled with sympathy, the elephant at j , once sought the orphaned nest, and was I . so touched by the appearance of the I

helpless fledyelings that she determined to he a mother to them herself, and promptly sat upon them! The morals i contained in this fable are two in number, from which my readers may make a choice: il) What is home without a ■ mother! and (2) everybody is not equipped by Nature to run an orphan asylum. The only moral to be drawn from the preceding paragraph, is, that "convictions" which arc as illogical as absurd should be kept as private as if they ap- . peared in the Supreme Court records. A rejoicing was, upon at least one occasion, signalised by the killing of a fatted calf. The killing of a calf the other day, however, was not productive of much reI joicing, though a lot of interesting infor--Ima tion was elicited at the Police Court hearing of a charge of slaughtering an I animal under the statutory weight. Adam j Byers, the person penalised, will probably adapt an old nursery song when looking through his herds for the next victim: "Poddy." wait a little longer. Till you're heavier grown and stronger, Kre I ;urn ynu :nro gold. 8.-ircains are not ail to "buyers." That award of Mr Dyer's. | Simply saw the "Byers" sold! I The grains of wisdom to be gleaned | ; from contemporary fiction, disguised un- : j der the name of "News in Brief," grow j | more numerous (and humorous) week, jby week. Par example: "A clergyman I cannot legally marry himself.'' For that ; matter, neither can'he legally bury himself -, but as regards marriage, we all know that it takes two to make a bargain, so a clergyman will have to do as all the world and his wife do—marry somebody else. From the same column I quote: i "In the Sandwich Islands, widows nave the names of their departed husbands tattooed on their tongues." There is such a profusion of plurals in this news item that I can only hope polygamy is practised in a land "where at last they have found a use for "women's tongues." The only improvement 1 can suggest in this excellent practice, would be, to let the operation be performed, say, tne day before the wedding ceremony, and repeated at intervals of not more than a j month, save in the case of a Sand-witch-css being espoused to a Russian General, when the period might be extended to' six weeks. "Petroviehskevsky" would surely take that time to sw-aliow, while "that unruly little member" was bein-* carried around in a sling. "