WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 105, 19 January 1923, Page 4

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

. Formerly the Germans thought themselves clever in not paying, now they feel virtuous.

Thq telephone rates are to go up.— Another attack on free speech, wo shall probably be told.

Britain is expected to feel the effects of American interest in her affairs to quite a considerable extent.

A bequest of . £3OOO. for a. training college for spiritualistic mediums .is now being contested in the English courts. Hitherto the mediums have had. to train themselves Some of them seem to have made very good jobs of it unaided, but, with an internsive course past efforts ought to be made to look feeble. Even little girls with a hand camera at Cottingley, in England, have been taking photographs of fairies. and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has been so interested in their doings that he has written a whole book about how it is now incontestably proved that Hans Andersen is more accurate than the history books. No one besides the two little girls was ever present when they photographed the fairies. But the little girls say they saw them, and a grown-up person who was with them ono day when nobody had a camera rather thought he did, too. The fairies in the photographs are very beautiful —almost as beautiful as the dolls in the toy shops. It is not suggested that they were created out of ectoplasm, though some unkind people have suggested sawdust. If a first-class medium could take these little girls, in hand at the training college there is no knowing what they might not do.

Then there is the case of the spiritualistically untrained lady who travelled on the Makura eighteen months or so ago, and wrote a spirit message in strange hieroglyphics, which in November, 1921, the captain of the Makura showed to a famous professor or archaeology, who chanced to travel in the ship. The. professor was most excited, and declared the writing a form of “hier&tics” which prevailed up to about 5000 B.C. in Asia Minor. Only a handful of people now alive can read the script, and the professor did not think any one of them could have written it in the short time taken by the lady. The professor translated the Writing, and, according to the version published in tho London “Times” and other journals, said the message began by thanking the lady, for having got into communication, and went on to describe how differently people travelled now and then, giving a . quaint picture of the contrasted motions of a camel and a ship. At the end, an accurate description was given of the scene in the captain’s cabin and of the state of sky and sea.

It is fortunate that the professor happened to come, along to translate the mysterious script mentioned above. Without in any way wishing to disparage the authenticity of this strange occurrence I cannot help recalling a little storv which illustrates, the skill some people have in deciphering manuscripts. Horace Greeley, the famous founder of the JJpw York “Tribune, wrote a very difficult hand, which gave th© compositors great trouble when they came to set his leading articles. In fact, .there was only one aged man in the office who could make head or tail of the writing. It was commonly believed that there was no ‘‘copy ■ this compositor could not set.. To test the matter the printer’s devil one dav dipped a spider in the ink and guided its tracks in more or less straight lines across several sheets or paper. The sheets were handed to the venerable expert at the case as a leader by Mr. Greelev.. Without tho least hesitation he set it up in type I am wrong: ho did hesitate at ono stage, and went in to interview Mr. Greelev. “Generally make you out, sir,” he said to that awesome editor, “but you’ve beat me down tho bottom of that sheet—last line, but one.” “Let me look at it,” said Mr. Greeley, and casting his eye over the sheet he snapped out immediately, “ ‘Rhadamanthinc,’ you idiot.” “Thank you, sir,” said tho old man, who went back and finished the article. It was quite a good leading article, toe, I am told. This shows us thero is nothing so mysterious that no one can decipher it.

There still remains an opportunity for some celebrity to ' pop the question” with a battery of moving-camera men in attendance to rush the films off for the second half at the kinenia theatres.

Charles Meryon was not the only genius who got precious littl© encouragement in his youthful days. Tennyson, for instance, when about ten, was commissioned by his grandfather to write a poem on the death of his grandmother. The youthful poet did his best, and delivered the MS. to his grandfather, who read it, then gave him half a guinea. “Here is half a guinea,” he said, “the first money you nave ever earned by poetry, and, you may take it from me, the last.”

Headline from a contemporary: “Gliding Develops. High- Hills not Necessary. We understand, however, that 'some are to be preserved for scenic purposes.

Jests innumerablediave been showered upon the 100 portraits of alleged Scottish kings, with a strong family resemblance, which adorn Holyrood kings, as. Scott remarked, “who, if they ever flourished at all, lived several hundred years before the invention of painting in oil colours.” _ Perhaps the best story is that of a visitor who gravely inquired of the old charwoman who showed him over the palace, “Did you do these?”

Tho greatest money-making machine in the world is the human brain—but most of us find more interesting things Lo do with it.

At a popular London pantomime, tea attendants (known in. “the profession as “packers”) were busily engaged in marshalling mothers with their attendant progeny into the all eady. crowded seats of the pit with the adjuration: •‘Room for the women and children! Make room for the women and children!” A perspiring and plump Bluejacket, who began to feel a, sense of suffocation, exclaimed: “Blimey! 1 thought. Uiis was a panternumo, not a blooming shipwreck!”

THE LADY POVERTY. Tho Ladv Poverty was fair: But she has lost her looks of late, With change of times and'change of air. Ah, slattern; she neglects her hair, Her gown, her ahoes; she keeps no

state As once when her pure feet were bare. Or—almost worse, if worse can be— She scolds in parlours, dusts . and trims, . Watches and counts. Oh, is this she Whom Francis met, whose step was free, . „ , , Who with Obedience enrolled hymns, In Umbria walked with Chastity? Where is her ladyhood? Not bore, Not among modern kinds of men ; But in the stony .fields where clear Through the tJiii*. trees the skies appear, Li delicate spare sod and feu, And slender landscape and austere, —Alice Meynell.