POSTSCRIPTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 78, 1 April 1936, Page 10

POSTSCRIPTS

By Percy Flage.

Chronicle and Comment

We are strongly of the belief thai reform in education must logically begin with the educators. « « « With the Italians advancing, you may safely assume that no news from Addis Ababa is bad news. If there is anything in signs and portents, the Opposition will this session present a United front to tha serried ranks of Labour. Writes "Perplexed": Have just come across the enclosed-(a par in a local literary brochure):—" (a New Zealand author still in the prime of life) joined the Defence Stores in 1817." Good old Methuselah! REAL RECOVERY! As reported in a Midland (England) weekly: Men who arrived in the Antarctic with colds got over them, ha said, and one who had suffered from sinus trouble and colds all his life recovered, gained 404 pounds, and has never been bothered by his former afflictions since his return. «* . * BRAIN-TEASER. Dear Percy Flage,—You certainly | started something with your "brain- . teaser" tonight. Our telephone has been working overtime ever since "The Post" landed on the front verandah. My young son with a colleague thrashed the problem good and properly, whilst the head of the house waited in vain to get a chance at the telephone. Our answer is that the shoemaker loses £1 4s altogether. D» we pass? Regards. "ELSIE." Miramar. March 31, 1936. .Try again. It is not so simple as it looks.—F.F. « - ♦ • ANOTHER KING GEORGE STORY. Some of you may have heard this one before, but as one of our most veteran Postscripters, "Gran," has taken the trouble to cut it out and send it along, what could a gentleman, do! Listen. "I've a good story on you," said King George to United States Ambassador Walter Hines Page one day during the World War. "You Americana have a queer use of the word 'some* to express mere bigness or emphasis. Well, an Englishman and an American were riding in the same railway compartment. The American read his paper diligently—all the details of a big battle. When he finished he put the paper down and said, 'Some fight!' 'And some don't!' said the Englishman. Ha, ha, Mr. Ambassador-"^ good one on you!" And King George roared, slapping his knee. **.« , ■ . MUSICIANS AND HUMOUR. "Have musicians a sense of humour?" asks a caustic correspondent to a South Island provincial journal. Only; too rarely, in our experience. An exception to the general run was Rossini. Some one wanted his- opinion of a funeral march he (the someone) had written on the death of Meyerbeer. "There is only one thing I regret," said Rossini, after examining it, "and that is that it was not you who died and Meyerbeer.who had written the funeral,, march." In addition to being a composer and a wit, Rossini was also an. accomplished cook. He was particularly proud of his ability to prepare a dish of rice and macaroni. Once a social climber gushed to him, "Maestro, do you remember that famous dinner given you in Milan, when they served a gigantic macaroni? Well, I wa3 seated next to you." "So!" smiled Rossini. "I remember the macaroni perfectly, but I fail to recognise you # • * ' "A GIRL I KNEW." F.H. in "The Girl in Blue" (recently printed in your column) is most ungallant. Perhaps a revision of theme might even things up. I'm thinking of a little girl I knew— Not one of those encounters that befall us all When youth is past its prime and running through, When middle-age's grip must hold and thrall us all, When life and love are not exactly; new, And women don't inexorably call us Her radiant self was by bright smile 3 expressed, . And I remember I was most impressed. She beamed on me and started to converse; She brought to light some clevef thought to hand it and I said my zeal for her I would rehearse; I praised her looks—she said sno couldn't stand it and I wrote her bits of rather rakish verse, ■ And she replied she thought it tima she banned it and I still remember to this very day The pain she gave when she sent ma away. ; I felt that I was wholly in disgrace; I must have seemed a senile sort ol sir to her. I could not lose the memory of her face, Though mine caused but the ugliest sort of stir to her; And she is still a conflict in my case. For all the time I feel I BM«t At*** to tier— . .. Though she would still W fort «s «ipf as then If she refused to speak to me ag»*I am, therefore, ■ ' ' "REMAINING COURTEOUS." •» * ». NEWS ODDITIES. Red pyjamas—worn by the bridatf maid—caused a sensation at the first wedding ever held in Tennant Creek, a mushroom town formed in Central Australia by a recent gold rush. Tha wedding was between Joyce Gillies, a cook, and Lionel Brown, a carrier. The bridesmaid who broke convention was Margot Miles, a waitress. With her red pyjamas she wore a crean* blouse and a white beret. A "mass" wedding—in which widower and his three sons married widow and her three daughters—has taken place in a village in Nan On district, Kwangtung Province, China. Both the widow and the widower wera aged 40. "Mass" marriages are encouraged in China on the grounds ot economy, but this is believed to be tha first time a family has wed a family. Natives of the Upper Ramu, New Guinea, buy their wives for the equivalent of one shilling and shoot them* selves with bows and arrows when they get a headache, according to Mr. S. N. Gander, a missionary, who has arrived at Sydney, Australia. Tha natives have small bows and arrows, and when one of them gets a headache he fires arrows at his forehead until blood appears. They claim that v this is a certain method of relief. Sheila are used as currency. One shell ia worth about a shilling—but it is sufficient to buy a wife.