POSTSCRIPTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 100, 30 April 1938, Page 8

POSTSCRIPTS

Chronicle and Comment

BY PERCY FLAGB

Then there was the popular medico who named his out-of-town house "Bed-side Manor." '. » • • .News note: "Flower-pots must be removed from balconies and windows because they might fall on Hitler's head." Or as precaution against skullduggery? * » ■ # We shall not worry about the pheasants on Monday next because of Mr. Parry's assurance that shooting game' birds is a big factor in character building. * # * COINCIDENTAL. A prominent notice displayed on a State Department building—which is generally associated with extractionis not wanting in frankness. To wit:— INCOME TAX DEPARTMENT. DENTAL CLINIC. The Arbitration Court just opposite completes the interesting habitat, where even 'one's eye-teeth do not escape. DNGO. * • • GUESTS . . . The oddest things seemed to show up in the Milwaukee home of a Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd Barber. Mrs. Barber, 27 years old, told the Court that when she returned from the hospital recently what do you think she found in her home?—a woman's slip and strange face powder. But husband Lloyd also had his side of the story. He told the Court he came home one day and found a man's belt—that it was several inches too short for him. The Judge awarded Mrs. Barber the divorce, and told her husband to give her 60 dollars a month. * ♦ » BEAUTY OUT OP" SEASON. "Gemini" rang us up to say that 1 Cox's Orange Pippin and a pear tree in her Belmont garden are showing bloom again. Also, that a rata is burgeoning as though it were the heart of summer. By the way, one of our azaleas is still flowering on the new shoots, there are one or two pink buds or^ the daphne bush, and on one of our foremost rhododendrons we discovered the other day a touch of pallid red. Maybe the unusual warmth and gentle rains of last summer are responsible for these floral phenomena. * * * BRAIN-TEASER. Though the problem this week ii another letter-changing business, the old title (see above) still stands. Anyhow, your job over the weekend is to turn BREAD into TOAST in eight moves^—or less, if it can be managed. This is one of our very own, and we warn you that if you fail to start off on the right foot it may trouble you (in an interesting way, of. course) somewhat. On the other hand, if you get away well, you will strike an in? triguing (if you will permit the use of that term) series of words unusual in these mental exercises. Now'1 go to it. ■ ' * * * SCHOOL'S IN. Do you know that 1. The Potala Palace, in Lhasa, which was built 1200 years ago as the home of Dalai Lamas, has 490 rooms filled with Buddhist idols and works of art? 2. George Washington's monument on Mt. Rushmore, when completed, will be seven and a half times larger than the Sphinx? 3. Doris Duke Cromwell, reputed to be the world's wealthiest woman, inherited £7,000,000 from her father, a tobacco magnate? 4. The men of Dalheida, in the Rhon Mountains, Germany, are alone in the village from Monday morning to Saturday afternoon while their wives visit neighbouring towns to sell the wood carvings their husbands make? ' 5. Primo Camera, who was robbed of much of the 800,000 dollars paid him for fights, was at last advices wrestling in an Italian circus for small money? 6. Helen Keller, 57, deaf and blind since the age of 19 months, "listens" to the radio by feeling the vibrations. of the cabinet? 7. In the latest ultra-streamline German motor-cycle, which recently attained a speed of 169 m.p.h., the driver lies flat on his stomach? 8. Falling bodies drop 32ft the first second, 64ft the next second, and 96ft the third? 9. Alaska has a number of industries, among the main ones being fishing, gold mining, fur farming, and trying to drink one's self to death? 10. Grosse, a mathematician and clergyman, condemned spectacles, and insisted that the use of them was immoral? *"* # . GALLEONS. CThis poem is asked for by A. Tennant.) Yours was no store of gleaming silks, Of yellow birds and Indian spice— Your ships were loaded with a freight Of purely English merchandise. Such quiet English hopes and dreams As slowly widen into flower When faint and mellow sunshine strikes Against the tall cathedral tower. And English hopes that blossom when Spring runs barefoot through Arden. All England's sweet brooks of laughter, and Her silences where blackbirds call. So that when tropic nights have seen Your small and steadfast pennants pass Their silken winds have sudden known The little scent of English grass. Such cargo yours as set the world To whispering Devon fairy tales, And loosened in the phoenix woods The song of English nightingales. ROBIN HYDE. * # . .* ALL ON A MONDAY MORNING. Dear Percy Flage,—l know you are a man o' parts, and have tried many things once. But I don't suppose you have ever been on the first shift of a P.W.D. railway job that starts at 4 a.m. pr ( onto (not a quarter past):— Sitting in a cold (unresponsive?) papa cutting, the summit of which rises some 150 ft behind you, waiting to be blasted away, shutting out any chance of the early morning sun until about 9 a.m. As the stars of an October morning being to pale, and the Southern Cross, fades away, waiting and wondering where the Sam Hill the Trucker and "Black Beauty. have got to, Arnold, the singer of the party, breaks into an operatic tenor—very effective on the low notes: "Go bring him to me with all his faults AND TELL HIM I LOVE HIM STILL." No; no one aska Kelly what happened till smoke-o, knowing full well that 8.8. has sidestepped him and back-tracked hell for leather back to her stable a mile or more away—all on a Monday morning, WILL GEE. P.S.—Local notes, although not likely to set the Tiber on fire. Still, since thi rain set in we've got water'to burn a| Erua.