RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 201, 22 May 1931, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelight on Current

Events

LOCAL AND GENERAL

(By

Kickshaws.)

Yet another aviator has hopped off on an Australia-England, flight. If his flight follows a normal course he is confidently expected back at his starting point within the next few days. Professor S. Alexander says: “The electron’s last trick Is to hide itself in a nebula of probability waves, trimmed with quanta in front and with defraction patterns behind.” Fashion designers declare, angrily, that glaring piracy of this nature must cease forthwith.

Considering the publicity that Iras been given to confidence tricks, not only in this column, but elsewhere, it is unbelievable that in the last few months at least two New Zealanders have had to admit being caught. The only safe and sure safeguard for the visitor to England is to avoid, any temptation to get something for nothing, however plausible the circumstances. There are some forty million souls in England, which is about the size of New Zealand. In that over-populated country it is utterly impossible for a visitor to get something for nothing. The only people who manage to do so, after years of training, are the confidence tricksters themselves. England most definitely is not full of philanthropic strangers. Men who produce clippings from newspapers should be suspected from the start. This forms an important part in the “Rosary” and other stereotyped tricks. Clippings printed to look exactly like newspaper clippings may be obtained at very little cost

The actual confidence tricks are simplicity themselves. Simpler in fact than the people who fall for them. The methods employed by confidence tricksters should make their intentions obvious. Whatever the methods employed, whether It be the “Rosary trick,” the “Lost Treasure” trick, the “Spanish Prisoner” trick, the “cash your foreign money” trick, the “sure investment” trick, or any of the others, there are certain signposts that give warnings to those who have the shrewdness to recognise them. The general procedure is as follows: —A perfect stranger introduces himself. He is very affable. That in the first place is a warning. Very few sincere people in England are ever very affable to perfect strangers. In fact, it is rare for them to introduce themselves. After a little while either the stranger offers to show you round London or you offer to show him round; because, as he puts It, he has never been there before. On these excursions it will be obvious that the stranger is taking pains to show his scrupulous honesty. Very few genuine people make a parade of this failing.

Then there comes the inevitable day when someone drops something in front of the stranger and his victim—now bosom friends. It may be a rosary, a wallet, or a book. Whatever it be the result is the production of evidence to the fact that the man who dropped the thing is unexpectedly anxious that you should participate in the good fortune into which he has just come. More often than not he offers no better evidence of his good fortune than a clipping or a will tastefully done up to resemble the genuine article. This will be followed by suspiciously sincere efforts on the part of the stranger to prove his supreme confidence in his victim by inviting him to walk round alone with some hundreds of pounds of spurious banknotes in his pocket. A better proof would be a photograph of the affable stranger followed by a visit to the “rogues’ gallery,” Scotland Yard.

The fact that a husband has won a case at law regarding his liabilities for debts contracted by his wife will cause a thrill of optimism to run through other husbands of the Dominion. This victory can be considered to be a decidedly progressive step in the emancipation of man. For if the truth be known, married women, not only in New Zealand, but especially in England, are the pampered pets of the law. Some sympathisers argue that a husband has enough to put up with. The law at any rate is no help to. bun. When a wife contracts a debt it is the husband who is sued for payment, no matter whether the judge decides that he has to pay or not. Moreover, the poor man is also responsible for all damages for assault and slander on the part of his wife. Now and again one sees tucked away in the advertisement pages the last and final ultimatum of some indignant husband to the effect that he will not be responsible for his wife’s debts. His voice is but a voice crying in the wilderness. The woman has him trfissed and helpless. For such a warning to be effective the poor man must inform each individual tradesman separately.

A reader whose name cannot be deciphered sends the following amusing anecdote:—“Kickshaws” recently asked for any experience any reader of his column may have had of “Jacks of ail trades.” Many years ago the writer had some acquaintance with one. Tie was first brought under my notice by an advertisement in a provincial paper in Australia, in which he announced himself as an art teacher. By ingeniously abbreviating his first name of Arthur to the first three letters, he made it most appropriate to his’ profession. Shortly after this I met the man himself, who had by this time fallen to the level of a house painter. I lost sight of him for some time. On taking up residence in a Melbourne suburb I found him installed in a small doublefronted shop, one side of which was run as a sweet shop, the other for the sate and repair of watches and. clocks. The repairing work was done by himself. However, he met with an accident one night by falling over some, debris due to street repairing work. Being partially disabled, he compounded a claim against the city council by accepting a job as inspector of nuisances. After a short spell at this he took a job as nightwatchman. He told me one evening that for part of the day. for some time, he had been doing plumbing work. Before I left that same evening ho had a call from someone who came to see him about a bricklaying job he had agreed to do. The last I saw of this versatile individual he was seated in a small hooded cart driving a diminutive pony. This cart he had made himself and’ finished, even to the signs with which it was covered, announcing himself ns an artistic and landscape gardener.

The full sea rolls and thunders In glory and in glee. O, bury me not in the senseless earth, But in the living sea! —W. E. Henley.