RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 54, 27 November 1930, Page 10

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events LOCAL AND GENERAL

(By

Kickshaws.)

There’s no telling how good bnstnee® might be if all the people studying unemployment would go to work. —'‘Nashville Lumberman.” The report that the average family spends ninety dollars a year for cosmetics and beauty treatment is indicative of either a complexion complex or a complex complexion.—“ Weston Leader." • » • “Scullin is like a bulldog with a bone, once he has got hold of a principle," says an archbishop. Australians want to know what will happen if Sculin insists on following this simile to its natural conclusion, and eats the bone.

It has been pointed out that the recent great gale In Britain raged on the anniversary of the storm of 1703. This disastrous storm began In' the last week of November, 1703, and Increased in violence each day up to the twenty-sixth. The number of persons drowned in the floods of the Severn and Thames added to those lost round the coasts exceeded 8000. Twelve men-of-war sank off shore with 1800 men, including Rear-Admiral Beaumont. The Eddystone lighthouse was destroyed. Winstanley, the designer, was in the lighthouse at the time. He and a number of friends with him were lost with the lighthouse. Over £2,000,000 worth of damage was done in London, and nearly 20,000 trees were torn up by their roots in Kent alone.

Besides the “Storm Sermon,” preached annually at St. Giles In accordance with a bookseller’s thank-offering, Queen Anne was sufficiently terrified to order a general fast after the storm of 1703. "Whereas by the late most terrible and dreadful storms of wind,” she starts, "with which it hath pleased God to afflict the greatest part of this our kingdom,” and wanders on through several columns, finally coming to the point at the end with the words: “The like has not been seen or felt in the memory of any living in this our kingdom, and which loudly calls for the deepest and most solemn humiliation of us and our people, therefore out of a deep and pious sense of what we and all our people have suffered by the said dreadful wind and storms (which we most humbly acknowledge to be a token of the Divine displeasure), we have resolved and do hereby command that a general fast be observed."

Storms seem to have taken a fiendish liking to British Royalty in olden days. Queen Anne was not the only august person to have been incommoded by them. A storm in 1215 wiped out Hugh de Beauvais with his thousands of followers who were crossing the Channel to help King John. During a violent thunder-storm a flash of lightning passed between Edward I and his Queen who were talking in a room. A violent hailstorm in France so shattered the army of Edward 111 in 1339 he was obliged to conclude peace. When the Queen of Richard II set foot on British soil a storm arose, destroyed her ship and a number of others. Richard's second bride also brought a terrible storm with her. Indeed she lost all her luggage in it. While on the day that Cromwell died a hurricane swept England, doing enormous damage.

The Irish Civil servant who won a share in the recent Dublin sweep says that he will resign his job because “I cannot go to the office and receive the boss’s orders when I am a £4O a week man.” One would imagine that this gentleman, by some freak of Providence, Is a better man now he is rich than when he was a£4 a week man. Let us hope his good fortune teaches him commonsense in a hard school of experience. Fortunately the abrupt arrival of good fortune does not knock every recipient off his feet in this manner. Actually many big sweep winners are still living happy, unspoiled lives in spite of their money.

Air. James Carew, a, Liverpool ship repairer, won a large share of £90,000 in the 1925 Calcutta sweep. He still lives in the very house that was being built for him when he heard of his luck. “I still have work to do," he says, "and work very hard. I was building up my business when I won the sweep. I could not bear all my efforts to go to seed just because I had this good luck.” In 1928 Miss Annie Helm won £125,000 in the London Stock Exchange sweep. At the time she was a confidential clerk to a Barrow-in-Fur-ness wine firm. She still holds the same job. Her luck has not unbalanced her outlook on the existing standards of her life. She continues to live modestly with her aged mother and father, and she says, “As, far as I am aware, I am going to stay where I am.”

One cannot overthrow existing standards of life just because fortune smiles. Efforts to do so tend toward unhappiness—and loneliness. Take the case of William Kilpatrick, the Cape Town ■dental mechanic, who won £BO,OOO in a sweep two years ago. He suddenly discovered that he had thousands of “friends.” All the pretty girls who had previously turned him down suddenly took an immense interest in—his good fortune. Aboard the ship bound for England lie found himself a celebrity, in England he bought his mother an endowed house and motor-car. He gave a tea to the Infirm and paid a handsome donation to the local nursing association.

in a few months Kilpatrick was back at Cape Town—unhappy. He was found by a real friend sitting all alone in a little cinema in the suburbs. "Do you know,” he said, “I wish I could find a job.” . . . “Yes—yes, I know—but I’ve got too much time ou my hands now. I live in a little Hotel. AU day my friends —my real friends —are at work. I only see them in the evenings. Even then thev hesitate to go about with me. They think people will think they are sponging on me. If I had some work to do it would keep me occupied. As it is 1 just loaf about—alone.” The fact is it takes generations of selective breeding for man to acquire the knack of doing nothing all day, for ever and over. Even then the results, more often than not. may be found in the Divorce Court, proceedings of the older countries of the world. Who is it loves the sea, And the salt sea spray on his face? Come, let him sail with me And flee from the land for a space. Let us leave the long stretches of road, Hemmed In by hedges nnd walls. And turn where the limitless tides have (lowed And the voice of the sea bird calls. —Anon.