RANDOM SHOTS

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 76, 29 March 1924, Page 18

RANDOM SHOTS

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Some write a neighbour's name to lash, ! Some write —vain thought—for needless cash, ■ I ' Some write to please the country clash i : An<l raise a din ; For mc, an aim I never fash, I J I write for fim. j "Massey Avenue." The Liberals have always said so. < j I ■ I wonder what the children think of ! the relations between the teachers and j the Education Department. i "There is nothing more mysterious than a water-meter," remarked tho chairman of the Grammar School Board .of Governors at the last meeting. What, I not even a gas meter ? i According to an English profeseor New /£eal!!.nd just missed being a portion of the moon. The moon tore itself away from the Pacific and the northern portion of New Zealand was the last point of contact. Thus even in its earliest years was New Zealand's tenacity displayed. It is no wonder we have produced good footballers and soldiers. !It would not be justifiable to assume, adds the professor, that the man in the moon is a Maori. According to Maori legend, however, there is a Maori ! woman in the moon. A woman going for water one night for her crying child, I hurt her foot in the darkness and cursed the moon for not shining, whereupon the moon, for punishnent, drew her upward. j The woman seized a ngaio tree, but the tree broke, and she went sailing up to the moon. There she has sat ever since, with the ngaio tree and the gourd she carried. So the common idea that the man in the moon is Mr. Massey lis an error. Seeing that tho moon was our neighI bour once, the important question is, nave we any lurisdiction over her? I jam sure Mr. Massey will be only too j pleased to consider extending further the bounds of this Empire within an Empire. Perhaps the only thing that saved us j when the moon broke away was the i ' fact that Maui had just hooked us, and I was playing the biggest of fish in the biggest of fish etories. j In reading of the tuatara one is reminded of the modern profiteer. Listen. "This reptile is slow, sluggish, and rather lazy. It lives upon small living. j things. It chews its food like a cow. If threatened by a smaller animal (cay a rat) it grabs it in its jaws, then goes to sleep, leaving the smaller animal nothing to do but die." j One wonders upon what principle films are named. (Why is the title of the j original etory avoided?) Last year ! America produced "Eternal Flames," I "Embers of Remorse," "Coals of Agony," J and "Ashes of Vengeance." Hot stuff, ■ this! This year they have "Dust of • Desire," "Dust on the Doorstep," and J "Children of the Dust." I am quite I thirsty whilst quoting.

The other day a chip carrying liquid across the Atlantic ran out of coal and had to burn some of her cargo. When she reached St. John's the crew were starving and hardly able to stand. What! I thought alcohol wae a food.

An American scientific expedition 18 to be sent out in search of Sodom and Gomorrah, "now believed to be under water." It is curious, considering recent reports, that the campaign against many forms of wickedness now progressing in the U.S.A. should be co far extended. Dr. Kyle says he has explored the district, and the place where Lot and his wife made their tragic journey "has everything heavily encrusted with ealt." It would be wise for Dr. Kyle to accompany each of hie reports with a grain of it.

There is a good story behind Sir Maui Pomare's protest against the substitution for Maori place names of such ugly words as Uotrburn and Eweburn. When, long ago, this particular railway in Otngo was surveyed, the surveyor retained Maori names for the stations, but his chief—head surveyor of the province—said lie wouldn't have such "barbarous" words and returned the report. The exasperated surveyor had his revenge by dotting ugly names along the line—Pigburn, Eweburn, Hogburn, eta. It is complained that Maori names, which are redolent of the 6oil, are discarded, but what could be more redolent than Pigburn?

A few days ago Lady Frances Balfour delivered what 19 described as the most scathing attack on the modern girl that has ever been made. The curious thing iis that in spite of the modern girl's degeneration, the modern toy continues to get on with her. As some lines quoted in the phristchurch "Press" express it: The modern girl is full of sin; I lllse her. All paint withont. all vice within; T like her. ■She shores tho sober all she Pan, A Rilken. seentril foe r>f Man, A banvarmci bint on Nature's plan; I like her. I suppose the explanation is that the modern boy has degenerated too. It is all very sad, and the only comfort

lies in remembering that there was just ■ the same kind of talk about girls in tho middle of last century, and probably in the middle of all centuries. One of the oldest manuscripts in the world, dating some thousands of years ago, contains a lament that things were not, what they had been when the writer was young. It came as a surprise to learn that the widow of the authrr of "Silver Threads Among the Gold" had just diod. I hf-ard the eong when I «'as very small, and that is longer ago than I care to remember. It v.-aa very sentimental FTid very sad, and it affected mc much as did the warning of a Sunday school superintendent of those day 3 that we boys should bear in mind the possibi'ity that we might not be alive when next Sunday came round. It was a popular song for many years, and though no one would put it very high, it was much superior to say, "After the Ball." Now we learn that the fortune it brought broke up the author's home. He died in poverty, so did his widow, and the family quarrelled over the royalties. It sounds incredible, but it is not only in Ireland that the incredible happens. Thd most accomplished ironiet—Anatole France, for example—cannot compete with real life.