WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 56, 30 November 1923, Page 6

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

Any fool can ask questions, but It takes a wise examiner to see the righi child answers them.

Doubt seems to exist whether ths Citv Council has been making by-laws or by-words.

The falling of one of London’s tubes is reminiscent of the series of collapses that occurred in New York’s subway* eight years back. Except for the Metropolitan, tho London tubes are deep below the surface, whereas New York’s are mostly just ■under the surface. and miles of that city’s streets are nothing but pits covered with planking with the subway trains running just below the ordinary street traffic. In September, 1915, four hundred feet of the roadway on Seventh Avenue suddenly fell in, and everything on it was shot down into the subway below. Eight people lost their lives on this occasion and scores were iniured in a wrecked tram-car that dropped into the hole. Three days later a section of Broadway caved in, dropping a motor-car down a fortj'-foot chasm on the tramway tracks. Since then they have been keeping .very heavv traffic off New York streets that are only roofs to subways.

The veteran Captain Gilbert Mair, whose death occurred at Tauranga yesterday, gave Mr. James Cowan much assistance in collecting data for his history of the Maori wars, the second volume of which is now being issued bv the Government Printing Office. Captain Mair was full of curious anecdotes about the Maoris, and one of these reprinted bv Mr. Cowan was about the way a chief in the far north was. lost as a friend to the British because of a pun. The Maoris of old rarely made puns. In 1844 when war feeling was abroad, the chiefs of the Ngapuhi held a meeting and decided to plant food to prov : de for a. general gathering of the tribes. Pene Taui, who had convened the meeting, sent a messenger to Tamati Waka Nene at Hokiano-a with the peremptory message “Koia he kai” (plant food). Waka resenting the abrupt message, repeated sotto voce after the messenger “Ko ia he kai” (lie shall be the food). The only difference from the original nhras°s was the accenting of the “ia” (him), but it made Pene furious, and he and all his tribe at once went oyer to Hone Heke and fought the British.

Knowsley Hall, which Lord Derby informed an election heckler he did not expect to be able to maintain much longer is one of the most_ splendid mansion houses in the vicinity of Liverpool. The Knowsley estate has been in the possess : on of the family ever since Lord Derby’s ancestor, Sir John Stanley, obtained it by marrying the heiress of the Lathoms nearly 550 years ago. It was. in consequence of a still earlier marriage that the Stanleys got their name. They were originally Aldithleys from a village, of that name in Normandy, and William the Conquerer gave them large possessions for their services in the Norman invasion. A descendant married a Joan Stanley and got more, valuable property in honour of his wife, who came of a very old and distinguished Saxon family that had counted for something in England long before the conquest took her home.

It was the twelfth Earl of Derby who founded the Derby the year after he founded the Oaks named after one of 1 his estates. The fourteenth Earl, grandfather of the present one, was three times Prime Minister of Britain, and both a scholar and sportsman. Th.e late Earl is said to have been offered the crown of Greece. He had to wait for the titlo until Ins elder brother died, and that elder brother was a kleptomaniac, who had to be restrained from pocketing silver forks, spoons and more valuable portable property, at the mansions of the inch and great. The emptying of his Lordship’s pockets of any stuff he collected ' and the restoring of it to its lawful owners was the job of his Lordship’s valet, but his near relations, if .they happened to be around, were expected to do their best to keep his itching fingers from picking up gold and silver that, didn’t belong to him. The kleptomaniac kink in the 15th Earl’s brain accounted for his being but a faint-hearted son of the fiery father whom he facially resembled. Yet it did not prevent him from serving as Foreign Secretary, and from even getting the refusal of the Premiership.

“L.E.” writes from New Plymouth! Can you or any of vour readers— or pcssibly our esteemed friemd “Liber” —solve a literary problem? Some time ago I was in that magnificent home of bodks. the Turnbull Library in Wellington, and in looking through one of the verv numerous “Swinburnes” I feund a letter from Swinburne, then at “The Pines,” replying to an invitation to attend the annual dinner of the “Omar Khayyam Club.” The poet regretted that he must decline the invitation, adding soSTe comments on the “Rubaiyat,” which he considered the finest piece of literature m t£at line, not excepting the Book of Job. He stated that he had once picked up a copy of the first edition in a second-hand bookshop for. 2d. now worth pounds—which contained a stanza, the core of the whole poem, which particular quatrain was, however, omitted in later editions. Can anyone say what stanza it is, and quote it?

That more people humbug themselves bv believing too little than too much was one of the contentions of P. T. Barnum. according to his latest biographer. As an illustration, the great American showman once quoted the case of a ladv who visited the Barnum Museum to see his whales. Barnum knew her personally, and after she had watched the whales she called at Barnum’s office. “Mr. 8.. it’s astonishing to what a number of ourposes the ingenuity of us Yankees has applied india rubber.” she said. lhe whales, in her opinion, were construct-o-l bv Barnum of india-rubber and compelled to rise to the surface at regular intervals bv means of a bellows puffing air into their bodies. Barnum realised that it would lie useless to argue against such an ingenious, conviction, ami he therefore begged Ins friend to keen tho secret to herself, assuring her that she had been the oniv Derson acute enough to discover it. Whenever he met tho ladV in later rears, she assured him that she never had revealed his secret, and never would do so as long as she lived.—The whales, however, were perfectly good whales. IF I HAD A BROOMSTICK. If I had a broomstick, and knew how to ride it, I’d fly t hrough the windows when J are goes to tea, And over the tops of the chimneys I <5 guide it. To lands where no children are cripples like me ; I’d run on the rocks with the crabs and the sea. Where soft red ancmoues close when you touch; If I had a broomstick, and knew how to ride it. If I .had a broomstick —instead of a crutch 1 —Patrick B. ChaJmws.