WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 157, 30 March 1926, Page 6

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

(By

“Wi.’)

NOTES AT RANDOM

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

Now, for a fee, we will be able to ring up Dunedin. But will Dunedin ring us ? Another Rifft in the French lute may be expected. No doubt the cabled statement about Cambridge having won the boat race on brown sugar will set a new craze in training diet. Next to clothes the easiest thing to start a mass movement on is a new food slogan. “Food faddists are most aggressive persons,” Henry Labouchere once complained. “In my time I have known them preach that we should give up meat, tobacco, alcohol, soup, starch (including bread and potatoes), salt, tomatoes, bananas, strawberries, and bath buns. I have also witnessed movements for giving up boots, waistcoats, hats, overcoats, carpets, feather beds,. spring mattresses, cold baths, linen clothes, woollen clothes, sleeping more than six hours, sleeping less than nine hours, ana lighting fires at the bottom.”

It isn’t so long ago that Stefansson, the Arctic explorer, tried to break us off the salt habit. “It is as hard to break off the use of salt,” he declared, “as it is to stop the use of tobacco, but after you have been a month ’ x or so without salt you cease to long; for it, and after six months I have found the taste of meat boiled in salt water distinctly disagreeable.” This dislike of what most men deem indispensable may have been acquired from his Eskimo companions, whose objection to salt was so strong that a touch of saltness imperceptible to Europeans would prevent them, he records, from eating even when extremely hungry.

Somebody was bound sooner or later to make fun of the modern health food faddists. Here is one: Methuselah ate what he found on his plate, And never, as people do now, Did he note the amount of the caloric count— Fie ate it because it was chow.

He wasn’t disturbed, as at dinner he sat, Destroying a roast or a pie, To think it was lacking in granular fat, Or a co.uple of vitamines shy.

He cheerfully chewed every species of food, Untroubled by worries or fears Lest his health might be hurt by soma fancy dessert— And he lived over nine hundred years I

During the week-end I was listening to some records by American musichall artists (?). What- with “woids,” and “boids,” and the New York East Side “patois,” it was like listening to a "foteign language. “American speech,” devoted apparently to a national effort for the improvement of the great American language, tells tlie story of Ovinda, the Master Musician, who had a bad time on his first seasop put. He was playing the dulcimer, but his audiences “sat on their. hands” and acted always “as if they’d come in to get warm.” Even his attempts' at singing were' no use. In despair he adopted what the English halls know as the "eccentrics” tradition. He made up as a village idiot, and that greatly helped his show along. Then one n>ght he made his entrance with a stuffed dog —and that “brought the house down, as we English say. But hear Ovinda s own version of his trials and triumph:— . “I was playin’ the sticks . . . honky-tonks. ’I was a Johnny Newcomer an* I flopped. Even when I warbled, an’ my pipes are sweet, I couldn’t dent the old boilermaker s convention. ' , T “Then I dressed up my ac . . . 1 comes on rube, see? I gets me some good business an’ some props. “Jeez! Right o, she’s a wow. Its art. See? That’s what they-pay for. and it’s what they want. You gotta sheik ’em a little, an’ milk em dry. Then you take vour bends. . . . you’re on big time your second .season. Yu sed it, Ovinda.

The retirement at the age of 60 of Dame Nellie Melba has raised in England the question whether the day of the diva is departing, giving place to the day of the orchestra . The day of the diva began in Britain. with the famous Cantalim, who is said to have received as much as £2OOO for a single concert at the beginning of the nineteenth , century. There were plen y people in those days who asked why “a beastly foreigner” should be thus favoured. However, insularity soon vanished before the coming of a long sue cession of foreign singers, and the arrival of Jennv Lind in 1847 produced scenes of the wildest enthusiasm. From the forties on there -was generally at feast one “Queen of Song”-sometimes there were two, whose admirers wrangled furiouslv over their respec ive powers. But modern music makes less account of the voice. Magner began the reaction, and the moderns have carried it farther.

Dame Nellie herself expressed decided views to the c ? ntra 7’she “The dav of the diva is not over, she exclaimed. “Of course it r no use perfect voice if vonMiave.™ brains, personal magnetism, great will power, and strength and health and determination. But they will never find a woman to take mv place ««’ e!5S has all those qualities. Oh, yes,, t will get one—but thev can only gvt one in a century. ‘ I have, often tried to get a successor, but ... But me no Butts.

Prince Louis Windisch-Graetz, who ;s P a r ccused L °of being 'he head o th Magyar counterfeiting conspiracy, is E as "the Black Prince” because of his romantic adventures which include even a Visit to darkest New York w ere he was attacked by robbers in a saloon. During the Russo-Japanese war lie was military attache with the Russian army and was captured at Mukden After the war he sailed for Japan in a schooner which was caught in a typhoon; with the captain, the prince lashed himself to the mast and lived for several days on champagne and bhcuits. In Africa he hunted lions .and luring the World War he. organised the “Tiger” Brigade, which fought on the Rumanian front. Altogether he is a picturesque figure. , The class had received a lesson on the 'life of the Eskimos, and were asked to write an account of it. One bright youngster began: “The Eskimos are God’s frozen people.” knowledge. He who knows not, and. knows not that he knows not, he is a fool, Shun him! , He who knows not, and knows t.iat ne knows not, he Is teachable, Teach him! He who knows, and knows not that de knows, he. is asleep, Wake him! He who knows, and knows that he knows, be is wise, Follow hWI —fcntaown