WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 27, 27 October 1926, Page 10

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

Last month New Zealanders had a feeling that the climate was out of joint with snow falling in Wellington, and it is curious to note that in the Northern Hemisphere Jack Frost lias been creeping far south of his usual haunts, and an Atlantic iceberg this year has achieved the nearest yet to the Equator. The report of ' the British steamship Baxtergate of a small iceberg floating 125 miles south and 15 miles east of the Bermuda Island on June 25 is said by the Hydrographic Office of the United States Navy to mark the most southerly point at which ice has ever been found in the North Atlantic Ocean within its knowledge. The ice—a piece 50ft. long, 15ft. wide, and 3ft. above water, indicating that 24ft. was submerged—was seen ’in lat. 30.20 north, long. 62.32 west. Once before, the Hydrographic Office says, ice was found as far south as Bermuda, but never has it been found 125 miles south •of the islands. On June 5, 1907, ice was seen floating directly west of Bermuda. • * « If an iceberg were drift as far north from Antarctica as the above berg has drifted from- Greenland, it would end up about three hundred miles north of Cape Maria Van Diemen. As it is, the farthest north of icebergs off the New Zealand coasts seems to be the Chatham Islands, where on rare occasions bergs have been known to ground in the passage between the main island and Pitt Island. According to the latest maps the northern limit of drift ice in the Southern Hemisphere occurs , off the Cape of Good Hope to just about which point it reaches. The next" most northerly point is eastward of the Chatham Islands, where the ice line is shown as running up to about lat. 39—nearly as far north as Gisborne. The other day it was reported that a syndicate of Indian rajahs was putting up £1,000,000 to help along the British film industry. Papers to hand by yesterday’s mail throw some light on the origin of this unusual enterprise. It seems that the interest of these princes was aroused by the great success achieved in London by the film “The Light of Asia,” which has had a stcadv six months’ run at the Philharmonic Hall, and was still going strong when the mail left. This film tells the story of the Buddha’s early life and renunciation, and was produced by the Indian Players with the generous help of an Indian prince, who lent them his jewels, his royal elephants, and.a palace. « * * Other Tnd : an princes have been so much impressed by its success and possibilites that.’ they are arranging to establish a chain of 300 kinemas across India in which only British films will be sliown.’"'.Films will be produced dealing witli. the romance and culture of the Fast, and the idea is that six British films shall be shown in India in return for ■ the showing in England or the Empire of one. Indian film. At present, out. of 5,500,000 feej of film shown in India 5,000,000 come from America, and England supplies a very small proportion of the rest.. It will be interesting to hear that a British film has been produced capable of making a six months’ run before Indian audiences. , . 1 A correspondent of the London ’/Observer,” stirred into actuarial activity by the length of Mr. Wells’s three-vol-ume novel, has been calculating the lengths of certain classic work. ■ The average modern novel runs to about 80,000 words; the calculator makes out that “Tom Jones” is about 310,000 words in length, “Peregrine Pickle” about 320,000, and Richardson’s ‘‘Pamela” about 524,000! Scott seems to have worked to a definite scale; the Waverley novels average approximately 150,0i)0 each, but Dickens ranged from 156,000 in “A Tale of Two Cities” to 390,000 in “David Copperfield.” • I wish the statistician had given us estimates of “Don Quixote” and “War and Peace,” and had tackled those two wordy moderns, Marcel Proust and Theodore Dreiser. Nor is Mr. Sinclair Lewis, to be ignored as a longdistance writer.

Talking of Air. Wells, it is interesting to note that .his “Outline of History” has been publicly burned at the Baptist Church at Harlan, Kentucky, in the course of a religious service in which immoral literature was denounced. The service was opened by the .singing of the hymn “You must be a lover of "the Lord, or you won’t , go to Heaven when you die,” and sthe .congregation later on adjourned to the churchyard, where the Wells volumes were thrown into a bonfire kindled by the senior deacon. To keep them company, Air. Zane Grey’s “Io the Last Man” was also consigned to the flames, the pastor, the Rev. J. R- Black, declaring that this author was too spicy for good Baptists. A pack of cards also went in, and a perfectly good-copy of Hovle’s rules of card games, and finally'a Suiidav edition of the “Louisville ’Courier-Journal.” After the flames subsided the congregation again lifted their voices to the strains- of a cornet and a portable organ, and everybody is reported to have gone home feeling much uplifted in spirit.

What is the correct American pronunciation of the word “yes” ? An industrious ladv professor at the University of Nebraska has been endeavouring to arrive at good standard usage in this respect, and with the aid of a hundred students took a pronunciation census of the district. It seems that in Nebraska the population says “yes m the iollowing thirty-seven different ways: Yep. ' X al,ss ’ Yip- >.T’ Yap ahzz. Vop.‘ y e ; us - Yup. Vahp. c " ’i 1 ' Vurp. essir. vis Yeo bo. Yus’s. Yah. Vfivs. Ya’ ss . ’Es (baby talk). j.] va ,’ Yar (expressing Yaw. disbelief). Yczz. Yair (ditto). Chess. Eye-yah. Chass. Chow (the first Cliahss. element of the Chuss. diphthong like Chassm (yes the a of hat). ma’am). Yctli. % ■■ Shassm (ditto). Yum. YOUTH AND AGE. Crabbed age and youth cannot live togctlier, .Youth is full of pleasure, age is full of care; Youth like summer morn, age like winter weather; Youth like summer brave, age like winter bare. Youth is full of sport, age’s breath is short; Youth is nimble, age is latne; Youth is hot and bdd, age is weak and cold; Youth is wild, age is tame. Age, I do abhor thee; youth, I adore thee; O my love, mv love is young! Age,’l do defy thee: O, sweet shepherd, hie thee, Fo methinks thou stay’st too, long. , —Shakespeare.