RANDOM SHOTS BY ZAMIEL

Auckland Star, Volume 55, Issue 64, 15 March 1924, Page 18

RANDOM SHOTS BY ZAMIEL

; If one of the patients of a doctor : attending the conference had died ; : during his absnce, could he be said to i j have died a natural death? i The Education Department is busy ■ J applying intelligence tests to children. ! What would be much more interesting [ would be the application by children of . i intelligence tests to politicians. 1 j By the way, how would an intelligence test answer in such a case as that of Sir Isaac Newton (I think), of whom it is said that when he built a house for his I cats he made a big door for the mother j cat and a small door for the kittens ? Would Newton have been told that the only thing he was fit for was nawying? "On February 27, to Mr. and Mrs. , Hairdresser, Street, a eon. j Another little barber." I like this professional pride, but I am disappointed that it did not rise to the uae of the ! term "tousorial artist." ! "Tlfere should be school and college i orchestras and bands, Rotary boys' 1 hands. ]>oy Scout bands, Y.M. and I Y.W.C.A. orchestras and 'bands, police I bands, and bands from the fire brigades, i and even newsboys." So said Mr. L. A. Eady at the Rotary Club. But if all those orchestras and bands are formed, will the music shops be able to supply them with tlie necessary instruments and music? It might involve a good deal of overtime, and that would be a pity. . i i Another thought. If we are going 'to have all these bands, where is all the learning to be done? With innumerable boys and young men searching for lost chords on quavering cor- , nets and trombones, there won't be a quiet street in the city, and some of us will be driven to the Waitakeres. No, ' don't quote mc, "The man that bath Ino music in his soul. . ." To begin with, learning isn't music, and some of the best of men have no taste for I music at all. I The Athenaeum, which has just opened : its doors to Mr. Ramsay Mac Donald, is a difficult club to get into. It has a high j intellectual entrance test, and is the resort of bishops and serious writers, on which account it is popularly supposed jto be rather dull I have read that in ! spite of its high order of respectability i umbrellas have been known to disappear I from its stands. For real social exclui siveness you have to go to other clubs. ! The Travellers' Club blackballed Cecil ' Rhodes at the height of his fame (or notoriety), but that was not so remarkable as the fact that it turned down a i candidate proposed by the Prince of Wales (afterwards King Edward) and seconded by a duke. The taint of a card I scandal hung round the gentleman. ' Gladstone was blackballed at Biarritz, j the resort on the Bay of Biscay, the ' objectors being Englishmen who thought j his Irish policy damnable. Those were j the days when in the minds of some ! people about the worst tiling you could I say of a man was that he was a Gladstonian Liberal. The Grocers' Conference has been the most interesting local happening of the ■ week. We grow accustomed to regard i the grocer's as a homely trade, and it lis quite exciting to think of the grocers i having a Dominion conference and talki ing of registration and examinations — '■ generally behaving, in fact, with some- ' thing approaching the professional dig- ! nity°of plumbers. The business, if you i come to think of it, has romantic aspects. I may confess that when 1 was young, when 1 had passed through the stages of wishing to be a bus-driver I and a sailor, I had serious leanings I towards a grocer's shop. It seemed to Ime thrilling to be tying up parcels of I all kinds of goods and writing "Try j Our Best Butter, No One Can Touch It," in white letters on your windows. Whether I was wise in passing the business by and choosing another calling is not for mc to say. No less an authori ity than Mr. Chesterton has written ! about gTOcers, in both a hostile and a I friendly spirit. In "The Flying Inn" ,he contrasts the inn-keeper with the grocer: The righteous minds or innkeepers Induce them now and then. To crack a bottle with n friend, Or treat unmoneyea men. But who hath seen the grocer Treat housemaids to his teas. Or crack a bottle o£ fish sauce. Or stand a iimn n cheese? In "The Napoleon of Notting Hill," ! however, Mr. Chesterton makes amends ; fur this. 1 wonder how many delegates ;to this week's conference know '■ the delightful scene whero Adam ' Wayne goes iuto the grocer's I shop and appeals to his patriotism, j" - I know tiie temptations which a ! grocer has in a tto cosmopolitan ' philosophy,' says Wayne. '1 can imagine I what it must be to sit all day, as you ido surrounded with wares from all the ■ ends of the earth, from strange seas we ' have never sailed, and strange forests I that we could not even picture. No ', Eastern king ever had such argosies or : such cargoes coming from the sunrise and ; the sunset, and Solomon in all his jrlory was not enriched like one of you. India jis at your elbow,' he cried, lifting his i voice and pointing his stick at a drawer !of rice, the grocer making a movement of some alarm. 'China is before you, ■ Demerara is behind you, America is ! above your head, and at this very 1 moment, like some Spanish admiral, ! you hold Tunis in your hands' (the ' "Tocer was holding a box of dates)." And !at the end of the oration: '" 'Your dates may come from the tall palnw of Bar- ! bary, your sugar from the strange ' islands'of the tropics, your tea from the [ secret villages of the Empire of the i Dragon. That this room might be furnished, forests may have been spoiled under the Southern Cross, and leviathans speared under the Polar Star. But you Yourself — surely no inconsiderable treasure —you yourself, at least have grown to "strength and wisdom between these grey houses and under thia rainy sky. This city which made you, and thus made your fortunes, is threatened with war. Come forth and tell to the ends of the earth this lesson. Oil is frpm the North and fruits from the South: rices are from India and spices from Ceylon; sheep are from New Zealand and men from Notling Hill." The grocer, however, was not moved —save to pity. " 'What a nice fellow he is,' said he. 'It's odd how often they are nice. Much nicer i than those as are all right.'"