AROUND THE TEA TABLE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 161, 10 July 1928, Page 11

AROUND THE TEA TABLE.

MATTERS OF GENERAL INTEREST.

(By SHIRLEY.)

Mrs. Holinan, wife of the ex-Premier of New South Weles, has been made president of the Feminist Club, of Sydney. She is a lady of strong artistic tastes, and her elevation never cost her her sense of humour. New Zealand was glad to receive her some ten years ago, though she did say in unsolemn mood that she liked Christchurch best because when you wrote to people there you could put

"Chtth" on the envelope, ana save time. Another lady of a different type, certain to come here, one would thinK, is Miss Agatha Christie, the writer of mystery yarns. She states that she ie very fond of swimming, but cannot get water hot enough. One would fancy, after the trouble about her disappearance, she had had enough of hot water, but since that is her desire, she is certain to leara, sooner or later, that Rotorua swimming pools exist. Our land is the place for adventure, and adventure is her line.

Wonderful words, beautiful words, wonderful words of love! An officialminded person wants the right to make out a case of contributory negligence if a small child is lured away by a scoundrel. The contributory negligence is, of course, to be against that unfortunate parent, the mother. A few years ago, almost every mother was accustomed every now and then to emit a loud honk and rush to get her offspring inside when a stranger approached. There was a scare on then. We will have those days back again when Mr. Wrong notices, in the papers, that mother is going to be blamed as well as himself. But the officially-minded ones know what they are doing. Scientists say there can be no new instinct in humanity, but there is a new one—to be more against the vcitm than the one who victimises.

There is one quite new occupation, in which, if it spreads, there will never be a strike. This is a way of earning money being practised now in Pittsburg, by sleeping. Certain persons thus spend their time so that scientists may make observations aB to the degree of their slumber the reactions on the brain. I don't know whether these new "workers" have an eight-hour day or not, or if they are jmid extra if they sleep overtime, but it must be rather interesting for them to be roused by their wives: "There's the siren going, John; just time to get to the work place for your day's sleep!" or, when he arrives home: "Did you do a good day's slumber? Don't shirk; it isn't playing the game, you know." And John, of course, doesn't shirk. As yet slumbering for wages is a man's preserve. I think some New Zealand housewives wouldn't mind trying it for a while; perhaps lady scientists will also start an observation place of this kind for us.

There are going to be strikes one hundred years hence when we have machine men. So, at Jpast, we judge by a recent cinema. The great master man of that period orders to be created a Robot, and the Robot, being soulless, instead of preaching endurance as he tells it to do, goes round inciting the workers who aren't robots to pull down everything. Perhaps, however, this is because the master man was foolish enough to create the first Robot female, and naturally she reversed his commands. Anyway, there was a grand old time. So far as I can see, in the coming machine age, our work will consist in clinging on to a sort of dial —all the men do this— and moving hands around for ten hours, causing flames of electricity to appear all over the town, and do the work. This

will certainly be rather monotonous. What the women workers do is not re-

vealed. One touch of genius in the film is the fact that men a hundred years hence are still wearing stiff collars. They would. Some of us are wondering about those nightingales that were let loose in New Zealand in the spring. Have they resisted the impulse to fly away for the winter, which has certainly, so far, been somewhat tempered to their brown wings? Nobody, I think, has composed verses to them. Women poets, in any case, I notice, are not as partial to the small brown bird as are men. A certain New Zealand poetess considers her inferior to our own bell bird, and others consider her song a good deal moonlight, human imagination, and people in love. Mrs. Browning, good woman, is quite savage to Philomel. She seems to have had a grouch. She tells in three verses how the people scoffed at a certain poet because his song was inferior to the nightingale's, how the poet went out "weeping, and died abroad, bereft there," but how, later, it was discovered that the "music left there was only the poet's song, and not the nightingale's." However, perhaps she was just standing up for her Robert, just as we more prosaic women get huffy if anyone runs down our husbands' carpentry, or method of hanging up pictures—except, of course, ourselves.

The children's court is now "closed to reporters." Eliminate the last two words, and you will please one oldfashioned lady, who agrees with Chesterton that the children's court should be the home, admittedly not very practicable, except for that writer, who has a mania for going about in taxicabs. Anyway, reporters are to keep off the grass after this. It seems that in other cities, except Auckland, they have delicately refrained from intruding. Where policemen have rushed in, they have feared to , tread. The Auckland band, however, have not shown this tactful consideration. So now they stand outside, like so many Peris—but not outside Paradise.