POSTSCRIPTS

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 30, 4 August 1931, Page 4

POSTSCRIPTS

Chronicle and Comment

BY PERCY FLAGE ,

Still, we like oia Shaw for this: "Do you know what a pessimist is? A man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself and hates them for it."

Talking of snobbishness—or swank. We pass on the veracious story of a man who was nominated for a golf club near London, his" social qualifications being that he was a jeweller and silversmith. The committee askod him most courteously to call himself a "pearl merchant," he complied, ana was immediately elected.

• lI—PHATIO" Dear P. . . .—How's this for aA. par? We heard it from a .farming enthusist the other day. 'Slike this— We arc very depressed And arc pining for rest., Although we're afraid that there'« not any; We're appalled with the tameness And unending sameness Of mud, mutton, milk, ana monotony. " ' Yours, tv the other side of tho roa^ RUPERT OF R.

SWANKS. How about those, ill. Wage?— A cockspai-row on the noble horst opposite ■.'the Government Buildings. A country bi-weekly journal which refers to " our contemporary," tho Loudon'Times'." Oxford bags on an office junior. Bill M'Clancy, Alma Lane, pricing the latest cocktail shaker. Making an appointment' with ilio dentist. A. postseriptcr jongleur trying to look like Rupert Brooke. Yourself, rcveied Flage, temporarily persuaded you aio a combination of llilairo Belloc and Arteinus Ward. Yours not disrespectfully,1 AMBULATING ANDY.

. FRENZIED FINANCE. Dear Perce,—lsit a fact that Mr. Harry Holland, M.P., intends .starting an iusuranco company in which any- | body can be insured against anything I without the bother of paying premiums t | Judging by his recent irresponsible re- , marks on the subject, he seems to think |it can be done. Yours, i- ' FREEPOLICY. "We think it could be managed by* Labour because Labour includes tha member for Waimarino, and, according to his colleague. Mr. M'Combs, M.P, the- member for Waimarino has nearly; completed his correspondence course oa high finance (not to say frenzied). Ona of the, features of the Langstone policy is a scheme which makes it possible (when Labour attains to power) for New Zealand to live upon the interest of what it owes. •

SHA(W)VING PAPERS. The "Morning Post" says that Shaw 'George B.)-"makes a practice of cul« tivating the unexpected." Bather, we suggest, the expected unexpected— after the manner of O. Henry's climaxes. ■ "We have a notion that if Bro. Shaw, being consistent, ever went to live in Russia, his book and talkie royalties would not' form part of his personal luggage. Shaw goes to Leningrad, is photographed, smirking astride a cannon, and returns home to assure the world that Bussia is all right. Similarly Sir Joim Foster Fraser used to race through Siberia or Argentine in a railwaytrain, and produce a 50,000 odd volume which sold well as a valuable social, economic, historical,, and political treatise on the country passed through. As if we, a newly-arrived, green "pommy," essayed to reveal New Zealand to tha rest of the universe from our adobe hut on the Kaiwarra dump. And finally: If Shaw isn't the still small voico of England's national conscience it is not because he hasn't tried hard enongh.

OPEN XETTEB. An open letter has this advantage that it doesn't require a stamp. Our most inexpensive means of reaching Mr, Forbes is through this column—the most widely-read, we understand, of all the "Post's" columns, with the exception of Houses and Plata to Let and the stop press. Here goes Dear Mr. Forbes.— " We'd like to sar One or two things to you this day. You haven't had the best of luck In the exacting job you've struck Of keeping our" fair ship of State Head on, until the gales abate. It seems to our mind clear enough You simply have to treat us rough In order to bo kind. . . but then, Can t—can't you ever smile again f

There was a king who lost a son Long, long before 1-9-3-1, And from that day he never smileai Remembering his lost loved chee-ild. But you have not been stricken so« That is, so far as people know. Then why the set and dour glance, Knight of the Rueful Countenance? It s we poor blighters who should fm And wear the look lugubrious

"Sn^id d~"n y °U ' smile!" the cockaqg To his lop-eared and faithful Nei That, when you'ro rather up a trc<y W^ "S 3? right Phil°sophy. i™* { 0T * then, Mr. Forbei Let cheerfulness fcnite your orbsT Be bright and brisk, and do not stojv Like surgeons on a ticklish op. * \ Kn'i4,°t r ,ff t?"^ 6', a sOng-'°'dances JSnight O f the Dolorous Countenance \

STILL, ALFONSO NEED NOT WALK; Alfonso has, and has not, purchased one of the de Kothschild mansions in Se ns"ll b ht,^ oE??Ublicans^CastU« aie still holding his, wonderful Stata coaches and horses. Whichis a pfty rather b«au, e beside these exotic velS t '- 6 andcrbilt four-in-hand which S.M i Was wont t0 Paralyse the field on big days at Ascot and Epsora re^t mbi c, S a flivver <*<*<* by jowl with Edward of Wales' new Ton. ster car. M. Bourbon's coaches are magnificent, and are accounted more splendul than nay in England, Belgium or pre-war Germany. One of them valued at £15,000, had its doors inlaid with mother-of-pearl and ivory and is decorated with gilt bronze figures and. paintings by Duran. One finely carved coach,_ the most sombre in the collection, is jet black, adorned with black onyx and jet plaques and inlaid with ebony. It was made in 1540 and used by "Crazy Jane" when sho drove about with the dead body of her has. band, King Philip lo Bel, enclosed in a black and silyer coffin. The late Jane had rather macabre tastes. She insisted on tho coach being drawn by eight jet black horses, while slie herself was dressed in black crepe, with window drapings to match. Some "Jane," aa a sophisticated Harvard sophomor* would put it, "* '