CLOTHES AND THE BOY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 183, 4 August 1936, Page 6

CLOTHES AND THE BOY.

NATURE'S POINT OF VIEW. (To the Editor.) Your correspondent signing himself "Boy" is illogical. Also he seems to think there is 110 happy medium between the nakedness of the very primitive races and being "swaddled up to the neck in red flannel." And from his vast fund of travel experience (15 months abroad) he infers that Indians do not wear, clothes. Well, they do. True the early Maoris did not wear clothes. But why? Simply because they could not make them. But why confine our attention to the human race"? What has Nature to say about this question of clothes? Why do sheep, dogs, horses and cats have protective wool and hair? Is Nature wrong, and the schoolmaster right? Let "Boy" take a walk down Queen Street. What are those woollen garments he sees in the shop windows? Woollen vests? Yes! And woollen underpants, too! But surely boys don't wear those long pants? The littlo fellows would be lost in them. Good gracious, they must be meant for full-grown men—like schoolmasters. Now my gardener (being a sensible person) keeps the young plants in the glasshouse. When they are thoroughly hardened he plants them outside in the open. We should think him a fool if he put the hardened plants inside, and the young plants outside, shouldn't we? I have seen many a schoolboy, with scant pants and open shirt (buttonless) sittin" shivering in a tramcar. It's a strange world" my masters. But wouldn't it be funny to see those portly masters practising what they preach ? Fancy a row of masters in a crowded tram, 011 a wet, cold, windy day— all with very, very scant pants, dirty knees, and shirts open as far as they could £ro? SENSIBLE.