AFTER THE BALL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 196, 21 August 1933, Page 5

AFTER THE BALL.

SOUVENIRS MISSING.

S.S. MOOLTAN IN MELBOURNE.

THE . ACQUISITIVE IMPtXI.SE.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

SYDNEY, August 17.

The other day at Melbourne a charity ball in aid of the Mission to Seamen was held on board the s.s. Mooltan. About 800 of the "nicest" people attended the ball, which was under the patronage of the lieutenant-Governor, Sir William Irvine, and Sir E. Clark, the new Governor of Tasmania, was one of the guests. Everything went off splendidly, but next day, when the stewards came to check over the effects in their charge, they were compelled to chronicle the following items as "missing": One hundred and fifteen spoons, 24 silver biftter knives, two richlyornamented entree dishes, and a large number of cocktail glasses and ash trays. The chief steward admitted that he had expected "a bit of souveniring," but this, he added reflectively, "had a touch of grand larceny about it. As an after-thought he mentioned that it had just occurred to him that it was a good thing that the anchors were not

silver-plated and did not bear the P. and O. crest imprinted on them.

Of course, a number of people in Sydney 'laughed consumedly" and wrote letters to the papers about "the flow social morale" of Melbourne. But one man* with a good memory reminded the letter writers that Melbourne probably had nothing in its records to match the tfreft of the Emden's bell or the "lifting" of the Australian flag from the topmost arch of the Harbour Bridge. Sydney Hotel Losses. And then another ingenious person bethought himself of interviewing the manager of one of Sydney's leading hotels. There ho gut all the information that !he needed. That hotel loses at least 1000 teaspoons every year; ash

trays "go in hundreds," and pieces of linen and small towels disappear "like hot cakes." Small coffee cups, it appears, are much in demand; "it is a fact that tourists collect them wherever they go, and fill china cabinets with them when they get home." Curiously enough, the hotels thus victimised often "get a little of their own back" in modified form. This manager told the interviewer: "We have" a collection of silverware, with the crests and names of hundreds of big "hotels, all over ■ the world—they have been left behind by forgetful guests." Psychologist Not Alarmed. It seems rather a disreputable business, but it may not be quite so bad as it 'looks. The journalist who had made these discoveries went on to interview Dr. Martin, who is head of the Bureau *f Industrial Psychology here, and from this unimpeachable source he learned that "souveniring" is merely a product of the instructive impulse toward "acquisitiveness"—of course, exaggerated, and "gone wrong." Dr. Mar.tfn does not. mean that it ought to be encouraged; but apparently he was not eo shocked as the interviewer, or the people who had written letters to the papers; and he offered a little consolation at the close of the visit t>y remarking that "it is worse in America than anywhere else."