One Thing and Another

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXV, Issue 12390, 30 July 1937, Page 8 (Supplement)

One Thing and Another

1 (In The Sydney “Sun”) I see that some papers refer to the 3 declining Birth-rate as “Race-Sui-cide:”. It seems a little harsh to accuse a man of suicide because he has not been born, particularly as he has so little say in the matter. And the Courts cannot debide it, since you cannot serve a .summons on a person ’ who is so exaggeratedly absent from home. It approaches more nearly to homil cide. But even there the verdict would be doubtful, as it is by no , means clear whether a life can be taken away before it has been lived. The question may be partly answered by the doctrine of reincarnation. By refusing to be a parent you may be side-tracking a life well on its way to Nivana. This is not cricket. How would you like it if, after having been a banana, a sardine, a wart-hog and a foreigner, you were prevented from rising to he an Englishman because your parents refused to decontrol your birth? * * * And talking of suicide, a coroner complains about newspapers reporting cases of it. If such report.? were omitted, he thinks,'- there would be fewer people taking their lives. By which we may conclude that if newspapers refrained from reporting the funny remarks of coroners, coroners would refrain from making funny remarks. And I shouldn’t like that at all. * * * Defence Programme: Latest Developements.—l am informed that every house in Britain is to be made bomb-proof by painting the Old Etonian tie on every roof. The idea is that no foreigner not even a Russian, would be so disrespectful as to throw anything at it. * * * A man with B.Sc. after his name writes to a daily paper protesting against smoking in theatres and cinemas, because he objects to breathing “air exhaled by others which contains 50 per cent, of nicotine.” And I, on my' part, object to breathing air, exhaled by others, which is not sterilised by the addition of that nicotine which ( as I have proved by 92 years’ experience, is the prevention and ,cure of every complaint, as well, as the consolation for every bad film. So, for both of us, film-going i.?.a dangerous sport. * * * As a matter of fact, a tame chemist in the office informs me that a pint of air weighs 11 grains, and half a grain of nicotine is a lethal dose. So that every pint of 50-50 mixture of air and nicotine is enough to bump off eleven people. From which we may infer that the gentleman I have quoted-is already - dead, but will not, apparently, lie down. ¥ ¥ ¥ A correspondent to a daily paper complains of the amount of ivy he sees all over the country. “The triumph maddens me,” he says. Steady on the parasites, old man. That way Bolshevism lies. ¥ V In a recent advertisement of a new book the following two comments by well-known critics appeared together:— “This volume contains some of the funniest verse that has been written in our time.” “There is hardly a writer now alive who is her equal at expressing a maximum of pain in a minimum of . words.” ( “In .short—l never laughed so ( much since ‘Grandpa broke his neck. ** * , “London Schools Rotten With Age,” I read. ( Yes, they’re pretty ripe, some of i them. At the School of Economics £ they are still teaching rules that went 1 out of date with the invention of ( steam-driven machinery. i

Two young men, I read, -t*-S oSl ’ , a grocer’s wife in her sh n „* *' ; ...e «»„ Tlier ni her eyes, kicked and Pu n 2Hrhe j beat her head with a san C , ed boiling water over her kIH , open her till, and fled. ’ > Tbeir booty, say; the r J| T , only five shillings. ’||| \j That, however, was high., .Bl . some rates of pay for the of work. Many of our young 1 are being trained to mutilate in foreign towns, and their jH * wage, as M.P.’s have recently JB plained, is still considerably i e LjB In five shillings. ’ : »’ agr Do you really mean to suggest sHp lent ‘Whatsit, that you regard the cases as comparable. wB t j ie Barely. They differ so much flr cul degrees of efficiency. The two y o J|| dea ] men I mentioned left the alive and her shop intact. And now run away and play ..JBmoe don’t interrupt me again. ” R a “39,000 NEW CARS RE6istEßqK°o IN BRITAIN.” Hffinest And . o the vulgar mob increa Alore and more of the common cram themselves, sprat-like, into tfHeal: ( tle boxes on wheels, which gmß es smaller year by year to match their ■shrinking’ dignity. But every age, however crude, hjjHfnce its favoured few, its exclusive class." And so, here and there, puKuiniSfcu their calm and leisurely way, aloof ■Hak< from the raucous and oil-smellinjSepl scum, may be seen the new arfetoc-«* p ®' . They are the people who do |Rer own cars. Look me over, girls. ll ST ‘ * * * : Opening someone else’s book at random I read this:— " ■Bin 1 “With a sky full of bright sun and |Hio rolling cloud-banks, hedges filled H with flowers, a well-made road, a lively engine, and the prospect of a B good corpse at the end of it, Lord ■ Peter’s cup of happiness was fall. B He was a man of simple pleasures!" B I know the feeling. At the end ol B a day in the country there’s nothing like a good steak. i ? Hi And when we have spent the - H £ 1,500,000,000, and are all armed I|| to the teeth from the toenails, papa, : H where do we go from there? HR Why, my son, then we go to the ill defence of Russia if it is attacked H by Holland. H * » « Ip A lawyer was defending a negro Eg in a brutal case of assault. Realis- Bj ing that the charge was undeniable, K he decided to try the mental-aberra- 1| tion plea. B “Surely,” he said to the accused, .|| “you were not yourself when you B kicked this man in the face? Surely ■ it was some devil within you that m prompted your action?” I “Guess youse right, bos.” 1 ‘And when you jumped on him. I and broke three of his ribs—surely I some evil power had taken control ot • I your senses, and you did not' know what you were doing?” ' “Yeah, guess dat’s so, boss. But —chewing de guy’s ear off —dat was. nia own ideah!” ' A delegate at the recent Teachers" ’ Conference deplored the passing of the village schoolmaster. He did not say where they passed to, but I notice another story in the same paper, headed. “Old Master Discovered In Store Room.” It ■ goes on to say that it had been left in the storeroom of a picture gallery : because it was thought to be a copy, but had turned out to be genuine. That could easily happen to an old master.. After a score or two years they get into the habit of repeating the same old stuff mechanically at certain hours o£ the day that they go on doing it mechanically wherever they are. ' I suppose the old boy had wandered into, the gallery by mistake, and been accidentally locked in. I should not be surprised to learn that when discovered he was still droningon—‘‘Now the whole of Gaul is divided into three parts...”