WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 78, 27 December 1926, Page 8

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

Whatever may be said about the weather, we should remember that fires were' only a luxury, and not a necessity, this Christmas. A French doctor says that if Napoleon Bonaparte had come before him for medical examination he would have been obliged to reject him as unfit for military service.—Hard luck for Europe that he didn’t. A London professor has invented 1 medicine for detecting drunkenness.—\ Isn’t the motor-car considered effective enough? People who can see nothing in ‘ Christmas cards, should note from the news that Sir Adolf Tuck, of the Christmas card firm, has left over £300,000. A message to-day records that in the great Spanish Christmas lottery a charitable society in Madrid won half the second prize of £330,000, and a Cuban bank the third prize. This suggests that our local charitable and financial organisations leave a big field unexploited. How seldom is it that one reads in the annual report of any New Zealand home for cripples, etc., that the trustees have expen-' enced a most successful year with their investments of subscribers’ funds in Tattersall’s sweeps, or that the vestry of St. Brobdinag’s feel fully justified in continuing for another two years their policy of devoting the offertory to buying blocks of consecutive numbers in the Welcome Nugget and other art unions, feeling sure that ill the end the reward of perseverance will be reaped.

None of our financial institutions, so far as we can learn, gives particulars in its annual reports of the results of its bookmaking investments. Ths Spanish method, when one comes to think about it, has really a lot in its favour. In New Zealand the funds of. financial and other institutions, one gathers from the newspapers, are freely invested in this interesting form of speculation from time to time by members of the staffs, but the institutions participate in the result only when the venture shows a loss. Major Fitzurs# suggests that the moral condition of the country would be greatly improved if business houses, etc., gave their employees a substantial percentage on all the' good things at the race meetings that they put the firm on to.

Helvellyn, on the summit of which an aeroplane has made an emergency, landing, according to an item in this morning’s news, is not in Wales, as . one might suppose from its name, but in Cumberland. It is a flat-topped; mountain 3118 ft. high, cr about the same height as St. Matthews, the highest point in the furthermost ranges seen across Wellington Harbour behind 7 'Eastbourne. Thi£ modest elevation, however, makes it the third high- . est point in the English Lake District • With a level summit over a third of a mile long and a furlong in width, Helvellyn is quite an excellent aeroplane landing spot, as mountains go.

This mountain is about the most fra-' quently climbed in Britain. It is ac-. cessible on all sides from favourite places of resort, and a halo of romance has been cast over it by Wordsworth, Sir Walter* Scott, and other writers. Sir Walter Scott in one of his poemswrites of the top of Helvellyn as follows:— ‘'On the right Striding Edge round the Red Tarn was bending, And Catchedicam his left verge was defending; One huge nameless rock in the front was ascending, When I marked the sad. spot where the wanderer had died.” People who have been affected by Scott’s description of how Mr. Charles Gough perished through exposure on Helvellvn in 1805 have frequently tried to identify the spot as described above. But, alas, it can’t be done. Nothing fits in anywhere according to the narrative, from any viewpoint that may be tried, and there is no huge nameless rock in view at all. Sir Walter Scott was always, fond of ringing in details of topography in his writings, but as often as not they are upside down with care. As one geographical critic of him says, fie used "to make a incassee ot ms old impressions, and serve out the first morsels that got into the spoon.” This makes us feel more hopeful, about ourselves on the subject of millibars.

It is a curious thing that the dear old lady wlio feels most competent to tell other people how to bring up their children is the old lady who had ten children, sOven of whom died in infancy.

They dig into the past a goad deal in the law courts in Palestine. In a case heard at Jerusalem, in October, an interesting piece of evidence was adduced. It was the passage in Genesis (xxxv., 16-20) defining the location of Ephrath (Bethlehem), and was cited, m support of a Government land claim. The London “Observer” commented that “till the Question of the legitimacy of Ham comes into court, or the Anglo-Israelites take action in the matter of the Stone of Scone, we are not likely to go further back'for proof.”

Dry, orderly people are not the most hilarious company, but they usually have stamps when you want to borrow them.

“And how have you been getting on, Mrs. Mumble?” “Ah, miss, not too well. My poor ’usband ’ad a parallel stroke and we ve ’ad a ’ard time to make both' ends meet.”

A little girl whose family had been making entirely unsuccessful efforts to conceal the ante-Yuletide presence in the home of a walking doll came out with the whole history of the case. “Are von going to show her the walking’doll?” she asked wistfully, indicating a dinner guest as the “her” in question. Father and mother looked at each other aghast. Theoretically the little girl was not supposed to know there was a walking doll in the house until Santa Claus introduced them. Tactfully thev ignored the question. “Bed time, dear,” suggested mother sweetly. „ . , But the little girt had reached the end of her endurance. Desperately she turned to the guest: “They play with it every night after 1 go to bed,” she wailed.

HOW SLEEP THE BRAVE. How sleep the brave who sing to rest In upper berths just half. undrest, To spring, with eyelids weighted down, To greet next morn the old home town? We do essay a task more drear Than any other, that we fear. Bv crafty boards our heads are bumped, Bv forms unseen out legs are thumped. Then Porters come, sans noise, sans fuss, To steal the steps from under us. And infants shall all night combine I‘he weeping hermit to outshine. How sleep the brave? You said it, kid. How sleep? . . . We only wish we did. <—Rhss .lamefc. -