WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 155, 27 March 1926, Page 8

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

“Wi”)

[During the absence on holiday of T.D.H. this column is being conducted by his colleague “Wi.”J

Perhaps the United State* could settle the liquor argument by compromising on dry champagne.

It is a curious fact of history that Switzerland has always been the gallery in the theatre of war.

May be it was the effect of yesterday’s cold southerly that induced a Cuba Street mercer to suspend on a pair of socks in his window the card: “Try our neckwear, 4s. 6d.”

“Locarno to Geneva and After,” says a newspaper headline. The hereafter?

Have you heard the sad story of “Poor ole Bill,” who is working himself to death because he is so shortsighted “he can’t see when the boss ain’t looking, so ’e ’as to keep on shovelling all the time”?

It looks as if the day of the musical clitic is going. If we want to know whether a piece of- music is good or bad, all we have to do is take a flower with us to the concert, or when we put a record on the gramophone. Flowers, or at any rate, the more sensitive among them, turn away their heads from the modern discordant medleys. Experiments have shown, according to certain American journals, that if the sounds come to them from one direction for some time violets, carnations, and lilies turn away their blossom from the strains of a jazz band, and if they are artificially brought round to face the same direction again, after some time their backs'are again towards the “music.”

It might be a good idea if we sent Rose Home via Mexico, where he could have a look at the Tarahumare Indians and study their systems of diet and running. Some 15,000 of these Indians inhabit the Sierra Madre Range. They are cave-dwellers, and live mainlv upon beans and pimole (ground corn), varied on occasions with meat, eggs, and sweet potatoes. Ml the couriers employed by the Mexican Government and . the mining concerns of Chihuaha and Sonora are of the Tarahumare tribe. They cover on an average 170 miles a day, and in cases of special urgency have covered 600 miles in five successive days. The Tarahumares hold periodical contests among themselves, for which the competitors undergo a course of training. Fat and potatoes are eliminated from their diet, and they abstain from tesvino, their favourite intoxicating drink. Every day throughout the training period thev are massaged by a medicine man, and the night before the race all runners are "cured”—that is to say, they go through certain semireligious ceremonies, led by the medicine main, and sleep within sight of their tribal tokens or gods.

Perhaps one of the reasons for these empty pews nowadays is that the churches are not comfortable enough. No farther back than the eighteenth century it was customary in some of the English rural districts for the local magnates to have sherry and biscuits served in their pews during the service, and in one instance the squire used to have his newspaper and letters placed in his pew and read them during the sermon. In Cartmel Church there was preserved until a few years ago a curious pew, provided for the squire and his family, which was fitted with stout oak casters so that it could be moved to the most comfortable part of the building, according to the season —near the fire in winter and out of the heat of the sun in summer.

Another cherished illusion has been destroyed. Hitherto we have popularly imagined that chess -was a game only for great intellects, and that draughts was for children and old ladies. It now appears that it takes a better man to become a draughts champion than a chess world-beater. Comparing the “unostentatious game of draughts” with “the elaborate frivolity of chess,” Edgar Allan Poe remarks that in chess “what is only complex is mistaken (a not unusual error) for what is profound. In draughts .. . the probabilities of inadvertence are diminished, and the mere attention being left comparatively unemployed, what advantages are obtained by either party are obtained by superior acumen.” Mr. J. H. Blackburne has written in a similar strain; so has H. N. Pillsbury, the only player known to have been first-rate at both games. “Chess,” says Pillsbury, "is what you see, draughts is what yon know,” the inference being that a good memory and a deep analytical study of the game will help you more in draughts than in chess. Players of draughts have to calculate accurately many more moves ahead than chess players, and the mental strain of so doing is most exacting.

The Bible is the last place we wotild expect to find something to laugh at. But neither writers nor translators are infallible. The Book of Isaiah, xxxvii, 36 (Authorised Verskm), has this delightful "bull”: “Then the Angel of the Lord went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and four-score and five thousand; and when they arose early in the morning, behold they were all dead corpses.” That was a slip in translation. In the Revised Version the words are altered to: “And when men arose early in the morning. ...”

An expert of the American “movies” has been giving the world his conclu. sions about the tastes of his public. There are some things, he announces, at which people will not laugh. One of these' is a Shetland pony. They will laugh at any other kind of horse in a comic situation, but not at a pony. Moreover, they resent any kind of de. fortuity' on the screen except crossed eyes. They would be indignant if you made fun of a man with one arm; they would walk out of the theatre if you tried to provoke their laughter at a man ■with one leg; but a squint seems to be considered fair game. There are two characters on the screen that an audience likes to see ill-treated; in fact, the worse these characters are treated the more the audience is pleased. These are the policeman and the man in a top-hat. People feel they have been defrauded if vou let a matt in a top-hat escape unscathed. The reason, it is suggested, goes deeper than the mere fact that a 'top-hat looks funny when it falls off. The great joke of life is the collapse of di.gnitv. And .the tophat is the final symbol of dignitv. The Poet: “Dash it—l can't find that sonnet anywhere. Eustace must have thrown it into the fire.” His Wife: “Don’t be absurd, Algernon. The child can’t read.” THE GOLFER’S PRAYER. Out of the blight that covers me, Black as the day without a sun, I thank whatever gods there be If I can get a hole in one. It matters not liow short the hole. How charged with punishment it be, I’ll be the captain of my soul If I can sink one from the tee. —"New York Herald.."