WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 181, 26 April 1924, Page 4

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

The railway men are now talking darkly about other transport workers joining in their strike. —One seems to remember something about a certain fox who out off his tail entertaining similar dark ideas about getting the other foxes to cut theirs off too.

One of the advantages of belonging to the British Empire is that while the Hood and Repulse may not always be in Wellington. Harbour they are always in the background. —The shadow of their guns lends weight to even Mr. Ramsay MacDonald’s smooth words.

Observant people will have noticed that whereas some officers of the special service squadron use all four buttons in buttoning up their monkey jackets, others do not use the top riglit-hand one, but only the lower three. This little alteration was made a la mode by Admiral Beatty, and was particularly affected by officers of the battlecruiser force during the war, many of whom also adopted the rakish Beatty tilt in the set of their peaked caps. The disuse of the top button is not, or at any rate was not, strictly uniform, but was winked at by the authorities. who doubtless hesitated to inform the gallant Commander-ir.-Chief of the Grand Fleet that his dress was not in absolutely complete accord with the uniform regulations. As Shakespeare says, “Nice customs curtsey to great kings,” and thus it comes that by their buttons one picks in the fleet the particular admirers of the dashing Lo d Beatty—or, at least, such is the tale as told to T.D.H.

. Signor Mussolini’s raid on the ancient and most plentiful nobilitv of Italy recalls a similar purging of the French nobility by Louis XIII. Tired of the interminable quarrels as to precedence at his court, King Louis decreed that all persons possessing nobiliary dignities must register them by a given date with the Keeper of the Great Seal of the realm at Versailles, after proving their right thereto by documentary evidence. Furthenmore, the King laid it down that tho order of precedence in each degree should thereafter be determined by tho order of registration, so that the early bird in this case got tlie worm.

King Louis had great doubts as to the validity of many of the titles borne in France in bis day, but it does not appear that his decree made anything like the same holocaust as Signor Mussolini’s has done in Italy, where, we are told, it has inhumanly deprived no fewer than two hundred thousand persons of their ennobled blood. It is very hard work killing a nobility, of course. Republican France has tried to destroy hers, but although titles are entirely illegal in France, they arc still borne. American ladies of fortune are ever ready to endow their possessors with wealth, and even in the French Gov-: eminent official lists the illegal titles duly appear just as if they were still real.

It was in consequence of the decree of Louis XIII. that the Duke of Hzes became the premier Duke and noble of France. It was the Duke of Ilzes and the Duke of Luynes who had given the king most trouble by their endless wrangles as to precedence, and on the appointed day they both set out early in the morning to drive in their coaches ficir, Paris .to Versailles to register their titles with the Keeper of the Great Seal. It wa,s, in fact, a neck and neck race Towards the end of the journey the Duke of Ilzes, finding that the Duke of Luynes was likely to win the event, caused his coachman to drive deliberately into the De. Lttvnes equipage, upsetting it, with its horses and occupants, into the ditch. Then having bis own horses whipped up he reached the office of the Keeper, of the Great Seal in time to be registered as the premier Duke and nobleman of the realm, a position ever after held by his descendants as a reward for their ancestor’s gentlemanly behaviour. A bitter feud lasted between the two families right up to 1894, when it was ended by inter-marriage. The incident may be quoted as a leading case of noblesse oblige.

In a London daily paper Mrs. Kennedy Fraser tells of a seal “singing’ in reply to her own croon as she sat on the shore of the Isle of Barra. Everyone knows that the family dog will lift up its voice, more or less musically, in the drawing-room, when the vocalist reaches too high or powerful a note for its peace of mind, and one expert tells us that it seems not incredible that u seal may “sing” in the same —or a superior—way, when its emotions, pleasurable or otherwise, have been aroused. It has long been asserted that seals love musio and are attracted by it. Patrick Macdonald prints in his “Highland Airs a sweet and soothing tune used oy fishermen to attract the seals, and m Countv Donegal, in Ireland, it used to be believed that seals can be enticed to the shore by playing on a whistle.

Discussing a statement that tha phrase, “a tinker’s curse,” is re & rt a variant of “a tinker’s damn,” and that the damn of the tinker is not an oath but a “dam” used (and thrown awav afterwards) in order to keep his solder in position while he mends a leak, tlie Manchester “Guardian says this is one of those ingenious errors in derivation —like deriving th® vulgar intensive “bloody” f ro ®, '-“T Our Ladyl”—which nothing will now overtake' Ever since Elizabethan days the reputation of old-time tinkers in literature was for cursing and drinking, and that when people curse a Croat deal their oaths are naturally of Tittle significance. “A tinker’s curse„ is tho real phrase, tinker b damn, is a variant, and “a tinker’s dam is merely a baseless speculation for people who prefer a far-fetched explanation that is wrong to a simple one that » right. When the late Mr. W. T. Stead planning the “Review of Reviews he discussed it to Mr. John Murray, the publisher. After explaining how he proposed to take excerpts from all tho leading periodicals, Mr. Stead asked Mr. Murray what he thought of it. Mr. Murray, who happened to lie a proprietor of several review* which would naturally be laid under tribute, replied: “I can give you. a better name for it —The Magazine Rifle.’ ” THE HEIR. Now all his careful plans are buried And his’ affairs are in unskilful hands , Of one who greedily seeks love and sleep, Who eats and rides, but never understands Why this thing should go well or that go ill; But thinks the wind should gather in the crop, And onlv lifts a brimming cup to spill What some one else collected drop by drop. . . Now, power buried with him, tins man lies Unable to control the destiny Of anything he planned and brought to be, While one with no intelligence denies The worth of all he loved, and wastes what he Wrested from pain and watched with' tired eyes. —Louite Driscou.