RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 263, 2 August 1929, Page 10

RANDOM NOTES

SIDELIGHTS ON CURRENT EVENTS

LOCAL AND GENERAL

(By

Cosmos.)

People had fewer advantages fifty years ago, but they had more time ia which to enjoy those they possessed.

The great open spaces now consist largely of a strip of bitumen between two wails of billboards.

It is perfectly all right for a woman to want to hold on to her youth, but she should not do it while he is driving.

“A King by Night” is one of the sixpenny thrillers bought in London the other day by Queen Mary for the entertainment of King George during his convalescence. Probably its author did not expect that it would be submitted to a critic with such qualifications as an expert.

General Dawes, to whose musical composition reference was made yesterday, once wrote a symphony for piano and violin. Then he gave the manuscript to a well-known violinist, telling him that he had found it among the papers in an old piano-teacher’s desk. A year later he was listening to a concert by one of the most famous of living violinists, when he received a great surprise. < The orchestra struck up the strains of his own piece.

Lord Donegall received a surprise about two months ago when he received a cable from an American girl whom he knew five years previously, demanding the return of all her loveletters. He complied, and a week later received a letter saying that she was having them published with his. in book form. Later a cable reached him to say that a cheque for £45, portion of the advance royalties, was on its way to him. —Truly love on a commercial basis.

A quaint story surrounds the Budget, on which the minds of the Dominion’s taxpayers will dwell to-day. The term itself really means a small bag, sack or box. The British Budget derives its name from the dispatch box, green in the old days, red now, in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer carried his secrets to the table of the House of Commons. To this day he is said “to open the budget” as if it was a sack of surprises for a roomful of schoolboys. The budget, officially speaking, is the financial statement of the Minister of Finance. The Oxford Dictionary says that the phrase “to open one’s budget” means “to speak one’s mind.” Another authority states that the budget was once literally a sack of money, in various sums, apportioned to specific purposes.

Reference in the news to-day to the arrest of an Indian band of robbers recalls one of the world’s most remarkable organisations, the Union of the Criminal Tribes of India, which is said to have over cne million members. The criminal tribes are people who not only take up some particular form of crime as a profession, but do so as a caste and as a religion. They work under a strict code of tribal law, and recog nise grades of precedence between tribes. The special criminal occupation of tribes varies widely, from that of the pickpocket to the cattle thief. Among them is included that horrible tribe whose profession is to steal, deform and dwarf children and then use them for purposes of begging. Without a gun, pistol or sword, they frequently carry on a successful guerrilla warfare with all classes of society. They have limitless courage, ingenuity and enterprise, levying tribute on all classes of the community, yet well-known for their generosity and readiness to share plunder with their persecutors in return for promises of immunity.

Should the Defence Department take the AU Blacks in hand? Rugby and military training may appear to have little in common, but in Italy at least footballers appear to have decided opinions on the subject. The Rev. Herbert Dunnico, M.P., who has conducted a number of English football teams on Continental tours since the war, vouches for the truth of the following incident: —Dr. Bauwens, of Cologne, a really capable referee, was In charge of an international match between Italy and Austria. Among the spectators, and certainly not the least interested, was Mussolini. From the splendid isolation of his box the Italian Prime Minister saw that things were not going too well for Italy. He contrived to let the Italian players know that if they did not win every man Jack of them was in for two years’ military service. Italy won.

Scanning the English papers one comes across the usual crop of witty stories and happy retorts that are produced at a general election, particularly a British general election. At one rally where prominent speakers came in relays. Mr. Will Crooks made his audience rock with laughter at one particular story. Next came the late Mr. Stephen Walsh, and when he reached the point where most speakers say, “That reminds me of a good story.” the audience sat up expectantly. To their amazement Mr. Walsh proceeded to trot out exactly the same story as Mr. Crooks. The audience laughed courteously. But that was not all. The next sneaker was Keir Hardie, and he also remembered and told the same story at considerable length. This time it scarcely produced a ripple. Next followed Mr. Philip Snowden, and when he delivered the first sentence of the same story again the audience burst into’loud and uproarious laughter. In the belief that the audience were immensely tickled with a perfectly uew story, Mr. Snowden went blissfully ou to the bitter end.

Old books and manuscripts have always commanded high prices, although considerably lower than the £30,000 paid recently for the Lutrel Manuscript. As far back as A.D. 872, King Alfred gave a large estate for a book on cosmography. Copies of Macklin’s Bible were fetching anything from £4O to £30(10 even in A.D. 1400, whilst one keen collector bought a “Homily” for 200 sheep and five quarters of wheat. In 1884 certain rare Bibles fetched about £4OOO, whilst Milton’s “Paradise Lost” remained unsold at an offer of £4750 ten years later. In 1905 a unique copy of the first quarto edition of Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus” was sold for £2OOO, and Burns’s family Bible changed bands at £1560. In those days, however, prices did not necessarily rise as the years went by. For instance, a copy of Sir Philip Sidnev's “Countesse of Pembroke’s Arcadia” sold for £450 in 1884. and was resold for £ll ss. nine years later.