PERSONALITY OF THE WEEK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 233, 1 October 1932, Page 8

PERSONALITY OF THE WEEK.

The Conciliation Commissioner before you is known as "Pat" Bally from the North Cape to the Bluff. Mr. Hally was the first man bom in Dunedin to be NO. 359. elected a city councillor there. Mr. Seddon, with a genius for selecting from the ranks of Labour leaders officers for the La>bour Department, selected Mr. Hally, who was an influence in the settlement of industrial disputes before the legislation now governing them was enacted. Hβ was the first inspector of awards to be appointed under the Act, and was promoted to be officer in charge of the Labour Department in Dunedin. During the war years he was invited by Mr. Ma&sey to membership of the New Zealand Board of Trade, and sat on it until its necessity ceased. He contested a by-election for the Caversham seat in Parliament in 1901, being well and truly beaten by Mr. T. K. Sidey (since knighted). Mr. Hally admits that his defeat did him much good, as he has "always regarded political life as bad. medicine." Dear M.A.T., —The chief sanitary inspector at Littlehampton, England, discussing the manufacture and sale of ice-cream in England, stated that twenty times THE ae much was being sold VANILLA CONE, to-day as ten years ago. Don't know what statistics are regarding same here, but would hazard a guess that the proportion ■is even larger, due to our larger proportion of warm, sunny days per annum, which conduces to icecream eating. Ice-cream was first known at , a banquet given by Charles 1., but the substance as we know it to-day was introduced into England aibout 1860 by an Italian named Carlo Gatti, who, when vending it, used to call out "Gelati ecco un poco" ("Frozen milk, behold a little"), and it was an adaptation of this phrase which gave it the name it was ■first known by, namely, "Hokey-pokey." Mention of ice-cream reminds one of the two little London street arabs gazing wistfully at a newspaper placard bearing the caption "Death From Eating Ice-cream," and one saying in , an awed whisper, "Struth, wot a lovely death!" —Jem. Mr. E. B. Ellenm is amongst those who continue to dispel the ilfusion that the intelligentsia at the close of a gruelling day of brain work rush gladly to SOME BOOKS, the pages of Gibbon's "History," the British Cyclopaedia and the "Decline and Fall" instead of to Wodehouse, Edgar Wallace and those clever people who take one out of oneself and leave no studious taste in the mouth. One remembers a New Zealand judge whose habit of recreative reading was typical of a large class of brain workers. His Honor freely admitted that in his spare time he read "penny dreadfuls," many of the writers of which used, to do a better job o£ work than do the modern manufacturers of sexy or problem works (the basis of which is the married man and the ether fellow's wife, or vice versa). The judge rejoiced not only in the dashing cowboy, but in a series of imaginative little works containing the life story of Frank Reade and his desperate and scientific doings. One remembers an Auckland barrister of comparative eminence who could pass any examination that depended on "swatting" the conclusions come to iby other men, although lie freely admitted that to have ideas of one's own was foreign to him. In the intervals of "swat" Hariy used to read intensely anything the unlettered would designate " trash." He explained that it rested him, because, unlike his "swat" books, he could revel in "dreadfuls" ,and then forget them—forgetfulness being a pearl of great price. An examination of the intelligentsia in "Sweeny Todd the Demon Barber" or any similar literature would floor them, on the basis that forgetfulness is part of the charm of recreative reading. You only dare to forget "swat" books when the examination is passed. Lakes loved, extolled, treasured and written of by most communities in the world merely represent draining problems to the more advanced cognosWAIATARUA. centi of Auckland. There used to be one near St. John's College. It appeared to be repellent to the leaders of thought in the community that wild fowl —ducks, black swans and so forth—should find a home here. Then, of course, on suitable nights the moon used to make silver tracts and write fairy stories on it, and young couples read these stories —sentimental asses! Something had to be done about this nonsense, even though other fools in the world kept Lake Maggiore and Lake Killarney and Lake Constance and all those damp places filled with water. So the cognoscenti drained the intrusive water off and made a road all round it, eliminating with ■the water the said birds, the moonlight tracery, Nature's plan, and all that sort of sentimental rubbish. The delighted eye of ■the practical observed that this silly bit of Nature's handiwork became a eedgy swamp unsafe to walk on, the threat being that when it was less swampy there would be a sports ground there and everything in the garden lovely. Tlie cognoscenti now find that after making a swamp out of a lake a little sum of seventy-five thousand pounds is necessary to make a sports ground out of a sw-anip, and there is a hiatus about this beauty scheme. What to do? Well, if the door of the drainage tunnel is opened the water will flow back and make a lake of the swamp. What about it? The people who have gazed on Maggiore would come along and say, "Good heavens! There's a lake in Auckland! Well, I never!" THOUGHTS FOR TO-DAY. Nothing is achieved before it be thoroughly attempted.—Sir Philip Sidney. We live ruins amidst ruins.—Emerson.