MY HYMN OF HATE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3136, 25 September 1922, Page 7

MY HYMN OF HATE.

(The writer is moved to fury—and io verse—by a plague of mosquitoes.) I do not like the Mosquito her habits do annoy me so; she's quite a stock of nasty tricks; she bits right through your thins and thicks; she gets at you through thick or thin and stabs you neatly in the skin. She has the ropier of a tongue and —like some women's — it is long. Now after just a day or so these habits of the mosquito annoy you till you vow that she no longer on this earth shall be. You watch her steadily by dav and sometimes take her life away; you stalk her stealthily by night and catch her—sometimes —in her flight. But oftener she gets away and lives to sting another day. Perhaps von ask why 1 write she? There's little doubt, so they tell me,

that stuug on iirm or loot or face there's e're a lady in the case. However that may be or no, fdo not like the Mosquito. You knock her senseless to the lloor; your hands are red with your own gore. You hear her sing, you strike —Imb hist! she's elsewhere, a ventriloquist whose voice sounds near, whose body stavs and it's the same always. She's not a sportsman all the same and scarcely ever plays the game according to'the rules laid down for ladies with the short suite gown. They sit and hope to be at ease on starlit nights 'neath silent trees. Then comes tlTe little wretch and pegs deep in their ankles and their—limbs. It looks quite funny when a, batch bend simultaneously to scratch; funny for those who 100k —ahem —but the poor victims, not for them. Who are those ancient seers who once, supreme'in wisdom as in bunce, proclaimed the clarion warrior cry. "Stop pilgrim, stop and swat that fly "Where are the maidens all aflasp who shrieked for aid at sight of wasp ? And where are they who to our glee fled much afraid of Humble Bee? Now let them come and have a go —bang for the dreaded Mosquito! No dress, no stockings, hankderchief afford the very least relief—the secret of the Mosquito is she knows just where sho can go. The man who can suppress the pest deserves a million of the best. What's to lie done? Just sit and grin and let the insect scar your skin or ho away some otherwhere and find them secent per scent worse there. But —as I may have told you so —I do no* liko the Mosquito. T'JGGf.NG A BIG SHIP HOME. (By Tarpaulin). Sho was late, and the night was falling when the pilot-tug thrust down Southampton Water. Night, a driving rain and a force 6 wind —with the 52,-UOO-ton Berengaria to swing, in a hare thousand feet of deep water, and to edge into the Cunard side of the Ocean Dock. A pretty prospect for the pilot. Wo had a glimpse of her through the squalls, away down in the Solent turning and twisting between the Brambles and Calshot Spit. Then, almost before we knew it, she was on us. We edged up to her, rubbing affectionately along her great side as a puppy rubs against your ankles. The pilot grasped the Jacob's ladder and jumped for it —and we were away again up the Water, chugging ahead of her to our place among the four other tugs that were to pull and push her into dock. They lay-to on either side of the 600-feet channel, ranged like a guard of honor. She came up with them, and in a scurry of churned water they closed on her. The great arc lamps gleamed red-dish-mauve against the inky sky above the dock as we edged and egged her into it. We were in the lee of her. so that nothing but the wrack of brown smoke torn from her high funnel tops by the swooping wind told of the pressure that was keeping her away from the quayside.. Two tugs could not overcome it. A stand-by slipped up astern, bumped her broad, rope-i'en-dered bow against the Lowering flank, and pushed. A fourth, the tow rope slipped, panted down the dock, turned on her heel, butted into place—and pushed. There was .3201) horse-power behind that combined push. The Berengaria moved inwards. Not by inches, but by sixteenths of inches we pushed her in. The outraged wind howled in her rigging and tore great clouds of evilsmelling smoke from her funnels. The water in the clock was churned to -andy cream as our propellers thrashed uid thrust. Thirty-live minutes long ive pushed. Then out of the darkness lbove came a megaphoned voice, secure." The tugs curtseyed away from her ■ide. A. humorist skipper cheeped a ■ nrt '"Pip, pip" from his siren. The i Berengaria was home.