NEWS FROM ALL QUARTERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 5, 6 January 1934, Page 4 (Supplement)

NEWS FROM ALL QUARTERS.

SHE MUST MARRY BEFORE FORTY. If Miss Rebecca Levin, of Elizabeth Street, Hightown, Manchester, does not marry a Jew before she is forty years of age, she will lose £300 which her father left in his will. Her father was Mr. Harris Levin, a Jewish minister, who died on August 11 last, leaving £J179. He stated in his will it was his wish that bis daughter Rebecca should marry an orothodox Jew. If she is still unmarried when she reaches the age of forty this money is to fall back into his estate. Miss Levin also shares in the. residue of her father's estate. 1 BY SCHOONER TO SOUTH SEAS. A 73-ton topsail schooner, the Mynonie B. Kirby, dropped down the river Thames from Millwall Dock last month on the start of a five-year adventure trip to Malaya, Australia and the South Sea Islands. Herr Karl Berkke, who, with Mr. W. Bryce Gibson, has organised the expedition, told a representative of the "Daily Telegraph" that the main purposes are hunting and filming. "We have plenty of guns with us, and we should get good sport in Malaya, Java and Sumatra. We should reach Sydney in about a year. After refitting there we go on to the South Sea Islands. I "A special compartment has been built forward for our two film men. It is proposed to make a series of short travel, I hunting, and shark-fishing films. Our ship is over 50 years old, and once spent four years in the Arctic. A small Diesel engine has been fitted." ROBERT BURNS' LETTER SOLD. A letter written by Robert Burns in 1789 was sold by auction in Glasgow by Messrs. J. and R. Edmiston's Mart. It was purchased for the Burns Cottage Trustees for £210. The letter, which w r as in extremely fine condition, was discovered iu Glasgow about six years ago. It * was addressed on the back to Mr. James Hamilton, grocer, Glasgow, and was as follows:—Ellisland, nr. Dumfries, 25th April, 178 S. My Dear Sir—l have written twice to my brother poet, Mr. Turnbull, but as I have had not a word in return from him I suspect that he has left Glasgow. I owe him some money for copies of his poems. He sent me 6; one of them I had paid before, and one of them is still on hand, so the price for four is ready for him if he will authorise anybody in Dumfries to receive it; or, as I shall be in Macuhline at Whitsunday, or thereabouts I shall then send it to you by John Ronald, for I am not acquainted with any of the carriers in this country. This country has nothing new. Mankind are the same everywhere. In this place, as in Glasgow, I suppose, too, of the men called honest and the women called chaste a number—supposed to be near the full half of them —are not what* they pretend to be, and of the remaining., half many of them are thought to have still worse faults. My rib sends her compliments to you.—l am, dear sir, Yours sincerely, Robert Burns.

"OH, WHAT A LOVELY MOON!"

When a Norwegian seaman was charged at Thames Court with being drunk, a policeman said he saw the man standing outside the police station and looking up at the lamp over the door and saying "Oh, what a lovely moon!" The magistrate (Mr. l'\ T. Harrington Ward): How did you come to mistake the police blue light for the moon? Defendant (through the olficial interpreter) replied, "I cannot tell exactly what happened, but 1 was not drunk." The magistrate: Did he take the West India Dock Road for a fjord? He was fined 5/ and another 5/ for the interpreter.

TRAGEDY AT TRIAL. During the first day's hearing of a manslaughter charge at the Gold Coast Assizes at Sekondi, against the Bristol man, Mr. Edwin George Ackland, counsel for the defence, Mr. A. J. Milne, was taken ill during the examination of and died a few hours later. Mr. Ackland' who is employed by a joint selling agencvj in which several English firms are interested, had been committed to the arizes on the charge of manslaughter, with negligence, of a native Kroobov watchman. He had been on bail pending the hearing of the case, which came on rather earlier than was expected, says a. Reuter message from Accra. MASEFI ELD HELPS TRAMPS. Mr. John Masefield, the Poet Laureate, has made a unique offer of help in an effort to raise £500 for equipping the Gloucestershire House for Young Wayfarers, now established at l'auntley Court, near Xewent. The purpose of the home is to rescue young men from the life of the roads. The home takes the lads from the roads, trains them, and gives them a chance to recover and start again. In order to raise the money needed llr! Masefield says lie is willing to do the following things:—(l) To give readings from my writings at places within 40 miles of my home, on the condition that for each such reading the sum of £25 be paid to the Treasurer of the Home. (2) To write a line of verse and my signature in any one of my books sent to me for the purpose, on the condition that 10/6 be enclosed for me with each book so sent. I wish it to be clearly understood that I will not write in what are called autograph books and birthday books, and that I will not make any reduction in my charge for signing many books. The charge will be half a guinea a volume, to be paid in advance. Mr. Masefield's address is Pinbury Park. Cirencester. EVERYBODY TO GO NAKED! ' Carlyle, greatly daring, in "Sartor Resartus," envisaged "a nakci Duke of Windlestraw addressing a naked House of Lords," but Professor J. C. Flugel, of London University, goes one better—or worse! He envisages the time when we shall all go about completely naked—lords and commons alike! And women, he suggests, will give the lead in this strange clotheless mode. It is the solemn conclusion Professor Flugel reaches after writing more than 2000 pages of "The Psychology of Clothes," published by the Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 21. Clothes, he says, are but "an episode \n the history of humanity." He instances the inhabitants of Terra del Fuego to show that "clothing is not essential even in a damp and chilly climate. Modesty, when its essential ambivalent nature is recognised, can interpose no reasonable obstacle to nudity, nor, in the long run, can economics. . . . Hygiene, too, applauds nakedness in many circumstances." The change from clothes to nakedness, the professor maintains, could be brought about with "but little commotion."

SLAP ON FACE ALLEGED. Miss Mary McCormick, the film actress, who was recently granted a divorce from her husband, Princt Serge Md'Vani, at Los Angeles, is being sued for a million dollars damage by Miss Grace "Williams, whose face she is alleged to have-slapped. The claim asks one dollar actual damages, and one million dollars "punitive" damages for "mental anguish, discomfort, humiliation, shame, and ridicule." Miss Williams, who is the biographer of Prince Serge Md'Vani, has also asked the city prosecutor's office to issue a complaint charging the "Fighting Kid McCormick," as the newspapers have dubbed Mary McCormick, with battery and with disturbing the peace. The episode is alleged to have occurred in a newspaper office, when Miss Williams attempted to sell the "secrets" of the property settlement with Prince Md'Vani. "You will, will you?" Miss McCormick is reported to have said, as she swung in with, a snappy left. PREMIER AND BOYHOOD FRIEND. The Prime Minister, who was accompanied by Miss Ishbel MacDonakl, visited the 11.M.V. factory at Hayes, Middlesex, recently, where he spent nearly an hour behind locked doors inspecting the secret developments in high definition ultra •short-wave television. He w?s walking through the department wh re gramophone records are made W/ien an employee called out: "Don't you know me now, Ramsay?" The Prime Minister paused and then exclaimed, "Well, well, it isn't Alex Shaw. Now, wasn't your old dad harbourmaster at Lossiemouth"He was, and he chased us two away from the harbour many times," Replied Mr. Shaw. "It must be over two soore years since we met last," said Mr. MaeDonald. "How is the world treating you?" "None too bad," was the response. "Plenty of work, and that's the main thing." "But J think T work harder than you," laughed the Premier. "And you get better paid, Ramsay," retorted his old friend. "And yov get more chances of seeing Lossiemouth than I do." The Premier invited Mr. Shaw to visit him at Downing Street.

STRATOSPHERE STAMPS.

Stamps of special design and character have been issued by the Soviet Post Office in commemoration of the successful assault upon liie altitude record by Russian aeronauts last September. The design, printed in blue for the five kopecs value, red for the 10 kopecs, and violet for the 20 kopecs, shows the aerostat "U.S.S.R," ascending into the stratosphere to a height of 19,000 metres indicated in figures at the top of the vignette, while vertically along either side of the upright rectangular panel extends the commemorative inscription, including the date of the ascent. September 30, 1033. Philatelists will recall that stamps or a similar nature were issued in Belgium some 12 months ago at the time of Professor Piccard's experiment. BOY'S SEARCH FOR FATHER. Joseph Keresztesi Kiss, a twenty-year-old Boy Scout, has set out from Budapest on a journey to China to search for his father, who disappeared there in the spring of last year. Joseph Kiss starts with no money, but with a free ticket to Shanghai (given to him by the Cidna Aeroplane Company) and letters of recommendation from General Baden-Powell, Count Teleki (the Hungarian Chief Scout), and from Herr von Papen (a friend of the lost man). In 1014 Mr. Keresztesi Kiss, the boy's father, finished his studies at Oxford arid returned to Hungary to enter one of the Ministries. The war found him at Ostende, and he was taken to London and interned. After a few weeks lie succeeded in securing permission to go to America, where he became barrister for several American banks and made friends with Herr von Papen, then Militarv Attache, in Washington. He was accused of attempting to circumvent the American orders with regard to the food blockade of Germany, and returned to Hungary to practice law in Debrecen. Later, he bought an estate in Bordighera, and settled there with his second wife, formerly IVliss Ida Robinson, the daughter of a British admiral.

ENCHANTED COCONUT

An Indian schoolboy has died in delirium after, it is alleged, he had been forced by his schoolmaster to touch an "enchanted" coconut. The authorities are investigating the circumstances of the tragedy, which took place in a village in the Bangalore district. The story, states a Reuter message, is as follows: A textbook was stolen from the school, and the master determined to discover the thief. Ho assembled his pupils in the school hall, and then placed on a table before them a coconut decorated with religious emblems. Having called upon the thief to own up, lest worse befall him, he ordered the boys to step up and lay. their hands upon the coconut. When the thief touched it, he said, something terrible would happen to liim. One boy appeared terrified to approach the table. The master is alleged to have dragged him forcibly to the coconut and made him touch it. Soon after Jie had reached his home the boy who had been forced to touch the coconut developed a high fever and fell into a delirium. About an hour later ho died.