RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29193, 2 May 1960, Page 20

RANDOM REMINDER

TURN OFF THE HEAT

Acts of kindness should be undertaken only after considerable periods have been given to a study of the possible implications. For experience has shown that the man who offers to help his neighbour erect a fence will very probably drive a nail through his hand and be out of work for weeks. The elderly spinster may ask no more of the man next door than that he come in and straighten a picture. The strong possibility is that he will fall from the steps, and on the way down collect and demolish a china dog given the wdman by her first and only sweet-

heart, at the age of nine. So many men are more willing than able; there is no denying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. A recent addition was made to the list of cynics in one of New Zealand’s larger centres of population. The man offered to remove a gas stove from the premises of his mother-in-law. He carefully assembled all the tools he thought might be required for the job, got there precisely at the arranged time, and obtained re-affirmation of the fact that the gas had been cut off.

He busied himself with his hacksaw, raising in the process fine beads of perspiration and a considerable thirst But creature comforts were forgotten in the hiss of escaping gas. Narrowly avoiding death from asphyxiation, he rushed to the telephone, but the gas company insisted the men had been out the previous day to cut off the supply. About the same time, the people next door were lodging a complaint w'th the company that they had been living on bread and jam since the inexplicable failure of the supply the previous evening.