WITBOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 95, 16 January 1926, Page 6

WITBOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

Ice so thick in the Baltic Sea that it cannot be broken by heavy vessels is something of a rarity. Portions oi the Baltic such as the northern part of the Gulf of Bothnia and the Gulf of Finland are covered with available for traffic, but although the Gulf of Finland itself is closed to naviga, tiou by ice for about five months each year a channel is kept open by .the special ice-breaking ships of the Russian Government. Ice-breakers were first built as far back as 1851, and the Russian ships of. this class smash up very thick ice with ease. The flotilla of ice-breakers includes specially constructed vessels up to 8000 tons displacement with bows sloping up from below, so that they run up on to the ice and bring almost their whole weight to bear upon it. It looks as if the long-range weather forecaster who foretold a severe winter is coming into his own.

Dr. Henry van Dyke, the well-known American author, who visited New Zealand last year, has been writing amusingly and good-humouredly about us in “Scribners’ Magazine.” “A shrewd Yorkshireman whom I met in Wellington,” says Dr. van Dyke, “gave me his view of the different cities. ‘Dunedin,’ he said, ‘is worth twentysix shillings in the pound, Christchurch and Wellington are worth twenty shillings, and Auckland is worth twelve and six.’ ”... But just what did the Yorkshireman mean by that/

They are still much agitated over evolution in the United States. An American Associated Press message from Goshen, Indiana, reveals how firm is the opposition in some quarters to anv interference with the original plan of creation. This interesting dispatch is as follows:—“A. E. Hundred,' gladiolus grower of Goshen, has been banned from the strict orthodox church he attended. The church cast out Mr. Hundred because authorities decided that in hybridising his gladioli to produce new varieties he was interfering with the divine scheme of things.”

The Darwinian theory is thus having all sorts of unexpected results in the United States. Not only has it left Mr. Hundred, of Goshen, with nothing to do on Sundays now—the church elders evidently smelt out some atheistic evolution in the matter of those bulbs—but it has also recently caused a serious upset in a Los Angeles home, as revealed by a parent’s plaintive letter to the “Los Angeles Times.” This unhappy father, Mr. Jonathan Morton, sent the following to the editor of that journal:—“My daughter, Myrabel, until a year ago, was attending a private school where the biblical explanation of creation was taught. She was then a righteous and Christian maiden who had the highest ideals. She never smoked or swore.”

"Then,” continues Mr. Morton, "I sent Myrabel to one of our so-called ‘Christian colleges,’ where she was compelled to study biology and its attending theory of evolution. I should have known better than to send her to one of these iniquitous colleges. After Myrabel had been taught evolution she no longer had the ideals that wer« hers before. Her self-respect is shattered. She has bobbed her hair; she uses cosmetics; she smokes and swears* Yesterday she fell so completely, into the hands of the devil as to take liquor. I felt compelled to refuse her further admission to our home. So, Mr. Editor, can you not help in the spreading crusade to stamp out the evolution for ever, and guide the south-west in a return to a God-fearing righteousness?” . . There is no doubt about they will have put Mr. Scopes in gaol.

"G.W.N.” writes from Foxtpn: "Noticing a lew sheep yarns in your coluntil leuiinds me of an incident that happened when stationed at Sling Camp. A sheepfarmer of New Zealand came across an old man minding a few sheep out on Salisbury Plains, and he said to the old chap, ‘I see you have a cross of merino there'.’ The shepherd being a little deaf said, ‘Eh?‘ and upon the‘Digger’ repeating it, the old man replied, 'Oh, no, they’re Sheep.’ ”—We are Still waiting, however, tor the sheep story that Mr. Bean couldn't raise—a story of a sheep that had some glimmering of a character.

The soit of story that Mr. Bean was looking for when lie declared in his book that there was no sheep story was the kind of anecdote that a bullock driver once told about a mare. I had an old mare once that had a foal,” said this worthy, "and she was that jealous of it she Wouldn't allow any 'orse to come near it. You know how ’orses will always come up to a foaL Well, if they came anvwhere near her foal she lathered out at them quick and lively. She’d let the station children walk up to it and play withjit, but the scraggy stock ’orses she couldn’t bear —if they so much as looked at that foal she’d lay back her cars and charge ’em like a bull.

“Well, one day,” continued the bul-lock-driver, “there was some one comte along with a good sort of a ’orse—a beautiful, well-groomed, riding orse, and they let ’im out in the paddock with her. I was half-frightened what might happen to him, for I knew bed take notice of the foal. Right enough! He went straight up to him, and bent his neck over him and nosed him« I tell you, the old mare never winked an evelash. She just arched her neck —preened herself like you see an old parrot—fairlv flowing over with pleasure and pride. Tell me she didn’t know the difference between a handsome, uelL groomed feller aud a scraggy Yirse? ’Orses are just like umami, and so are bullocks, though you mightnT think it. ... But I never’card a story about a sheep yet.

As a philosopher remarks, a child 1* born crying for something he hopes to and an old man dies crying for something he hasn’t had. The interim is largely devoted to not knowing what one wants.

“Tedee vo’ Honah,” complained an irate colowed lady to the court in Ala. bama, “dis yeah no-’count husban o m '“YasSuh, jedge, vo’ Honah, Ah does driuk some,” admitted the husband. “But Jedge, dat woman don treat me right. Whv, Ah pawns de kit. chen stove f git a li’l money an’ she don* miss it fo* two weeks!

Willis: Have you met my beautiful wife vet ? Gillis: No. I didn’t know you were a bigamist.

Crawford: So you bought a radie set, hoping it would keep your chik dren home in the evening? Crabshaw: Yes. Now they don t go out until the broadcaster says “Good-night.”

IT COULDN’T BE DONE. There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done, There are thousands to prophesy

failure; There are thousands to point out to you one bv one, The'dangers that wait to assail you. But just buckle in with a bit of a

grin, Just take off jour coat and go to it; Just start in to sing as you tackle the thing That "cannot be done, and you 11 de it. —Eddie Guest