PERSONALITY OF THE WEEK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 189, 12 August 1933, Page 8

PERSONALITY OF THE WEEK.

NO. 399. school musical work, have aided music in Auckland as it has never been helped before. Mr. Varley is the conductor Of the Municipal Choir and will conduct the Primary Schools Massed Chorus on Tuesday and on Thursday the ChOrAl and Orchestral Concert. H« was boin in Suffolk in the historic town of Bury-bt.-Edmunds, coming to New ZeaUnd in the sailin" ship Patala to Lyttelton in 1880. He is still very young in heart. He was edWed in Christchurc-h, becoming a teacher and subsequently headmaster of the Normal School at Auckland. He retired from teaching last September. Has lectured at the I raining Collece on speech training and voice production. "My hobby," lie says, "is music. In the old volunteer days Mr. Hudson was a lieutenant of the Napier Rifles and later captain of the Hastings Company and a major commanding school cadets "in Loveday s day. There are six in a grown-up family—four boys and two girls. "I am still a student," says [Mr. Hudson.

The Arabian Nights Ball, if it is not marked with a whittle stone or a redletter, mav in the years to be, tie indicated by a *' trifle dish, of which so THE MAGIC many disappeared, toBOWL, gether with their eontents, during that Prosperity function. Even Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, if they had eschewed, the use of magic, would have been put to it to remove through the crowds eight bowls wobbling with salad,' 3 and those revellers who achieved this remarkable sleight of hand may go far in the realms of magic. It is, of course, presumed that few Auckland citizens would get away with cups, saucers, knives, forks, and trifle, although it is on record that somebody —probably a stranger —once pinched a breech block from a navy gun, the tr&phy in this case being inedible. There have been former regrettable incidents at social functions in,the removal of crockery and food, it being even more regrettable to knows that this kind of social peculation is deemed rather funny in some circles. Perhaps the peculators are students of the classics, moved bv the boast of Autolycus, who, in "A WinteV's Tale." says: "My father named me Autolycus, who, being littered under Mercury, was iikewise a snapper up of unconsidered trifles." One wonders if when Mr. A. pinched thos£ unconsidered trifles he took the dish as well. Recently a confirmed Canterburian spoke words of wrath concerning the Christcliurch tramways and the board controlling then*, thus giving an exhilaratWHEELS • . ing fillip to any citizen WITHIN fortunate enough to WHEELS, travel by Auckland trams. (Cheers.) A member of the Cliristchurch Board had previously declared, that one of the problems-of the tramways in the Plains City was the fact that the're were fifty thousand bikes and that cyclists would all be tram riders if it were not for the fine flat roads—the inference being that the bikists ought to be jolly thankful that the public body had bought fine flat roads fit for bikes out of the fine fiat bicyclists' rates. The cure for bikes, therefore, would be coarse, cobblv roads, making it impossible for cyclists to ride, thus compelling fifty thousand bike owners and bike "borrowers to scrap their .wire steeds and flock to the trams. The war between bike and tram has, of course, been goino" on for some time, but it is Jiot so \eiy fong°ago that the Christcliurch trams carried an "excellent advertisement thus, "Buy a Bike. Sixpence a Day; Ride as You Pay." Presumably iniquitous citizens took the advice promulgated by a board that detests bikes.

Mentioned at a sitting of the Tariff Commission that the citizens of Wellington are hard marks to sell lawnmowers to because most of the lawns are THE small enough to be cut HOME LAWN, by hand shears—yet one is aware of pernickety landowners in the windy spot who, having a sward six feet by ten piled on the side of a young Himalaya, cut with sedulous care the few blades of grass with the very latest machine. And by the way, one notes a twelve-hundred-pound advertisdment in a London paper calling attention to lawnmowers (grass catcher and all) for a pound a time—though, of course, no Wellington machine needs a grass catcher, Boreas blowing tie cut stalks from Poneke to the Kaikouras. Bruising off grass per whirling blades is a comparatively newmethod of obtaining that velvet sward we all love so much—and even middle-aged people remember the time when scythe and roller had for centuries performed, the office. Allied with the grass-cutting machine are the, power field mower and the long list of machines with blades, combs and cutters if all kinds, engaged at present in reaping more tucker than ever before in a -world of people who haven't got enough cash to buy it. Yet, you know, if you were to suggest going back to the scythe and the sickle, the flail and the old horse whim, what a fathead humanity would think you! During the war a young lernleaf, visiting a nobleman's seat, was attracted bv the magnificent lawns. He went to «n old gardener who was snailing at the moment, 'flow do you get lawns to look like this?" he asked. "Well," said old Garge, "yon do cut 'un and you do cut 'un and you do roll 'un and roll 'un for 'underds an' 'underds of years—and you do cut 'un and roll 'un agen."