POSTSCRIPTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 50, 27 August 1938, Page 8

POSTSCRIPTS

Chronicle and Comment BY PERCY FLAGB The Labour team should go well with Mr. Semple in the scrum and Mr. Nash as "fly"-half. # # * Yes, Melisande. There is some connection between a storm in a teacup and a cyclone over an inkwell. * # » G.C.H.—Perhaps it's better LATE than never, but really, had thought this TEAL business just a TALE. * ♦ ♦ jack Hobbs: "The final Test completely altered my views regarding limitless Tests." It certainly was the limit. * • « If one of the Labour MJP.s is to be believed, the Government laid the coping stone of the first arch of the bridge from squalor to security while on horseback. ♦ ♦ '# BRAIN-TEASER. A number of postscripters asked for "something harder" this week. Well, here it is. This digit-into-letters piece is not exactly brain-racking, but it is not as simple as Angelina was. Word of eleven letters —North Island town. 4, 2, 5, 8, 10, 3 .. eagles have them. 3, 7, 9, 10, 6 part of the body. 8, io, 6 a number. 5, 9, 8, 10 an animal. 8, 7, 2, 5 a precious stone. 7, 9, 2, 10, 8 ... musical instrument 7, 5, 2, 9, 1, 6 a fish. That's all for the moment. #* ' # A NUTSHELL SKETCH. Last week. Uncle :Bon jour. This week. Uncle summore. And what a sum! It was: 1788. James Watt plus Adam Smith. equals tut! tut! ' > 1938. James Watt minus Adam Smith plus Douglas Credit equals dear dear! By that we mean expensive—very. Looks a little complicated, my dear Watson, but it is really elementary. CAP. ♦ * * BOUTS RIMES. If we don't get some really lively jingles out of this one we shall want to know the reason why. There are at least two themes in these rhymeends, one, of course, being "whoppee." The other, too, is fairly obvious. Now stir up the old grey matter.

party \ bright hearty right busy drop dizzy flop. Away you got * * ♦ SCHOOL'S IN. Do you know that —> 1. Before 1925 the average life of a song hit was sixteen months, but today a song rarely retains its popularity for more than three months? 2. Indians in America were familiar with rubber before Columbus discovered the continent? : 3. A single wistaria vine covers one acre of ground at Wistaria Vine Gardens, Sierra Madre; California? ' 4. To an American "admirer who said he was pleased to meet him, the Duke of Wellington haughtily replied: "And so you damned well ought to be!"? 5. Charles Dickens, whose house was . filled with pictures of scenes and characters from his novels, was tot ever quoting from his own works, much to the annoyance of his friends? 6. To be read by persons while taking their bath, "newspapers" printed on rubber were published in Paris several years ago? 7. In China railroad time-tables are of little value, since arrivals and departures of trains are frequently recorded by the dispatcher merely by scribbling on the backs of old envelopes and placing them in his pocket? 8. One in every 14 persons in'Eng-.-land holds a licence to drive a motorcar? 9. On the sidewalk in front of their door saloonkeepers used to sprinkle beer, the aroma from which increased their business by luring inside passersby who could not resist it? 10. A is the first letter of all alphabets except in the Ethiopian? • # * THE GOOD WIFE OF MULL. These beautiful lines are from the pen of the late Jessie Mackay, doyen of New Zealand women poets and a singer deservedly acclaimed oversea. There was a good wife of Mull the brown — Old, old, and honeyed of heart, Never a babe her lot did crown, Giving and grace her only part. "Sore is my heart," quo' she, quo' she* "For sinless things with dool for dower; Sore for the babes* that breathe and be, But die before the chrissom hour. East o' the earth and west o' Heaven, 'Yond they lie in a bed of gloam— Never a cradle-croon for even Knee, nor mothering arms of home. The water o' life they missed it, they; ♦The water o' death is far to win. Dumb in the land o' glimmerless grey, There they lie that knew not sin. Christ of the Cross, Yourself did walk With prison folk forgot of time; Two nights and a day Yourself did talk With roodless. sinners of the prime. Take my harp and take my crown, My brightsome immortality! Bid me lay them warm in down All the days of eternity." Christ of the Cross He heard, He heard: — "Go, good wife; be mother and more, Till earth and sea have heard the word, And earth and sea their dead restore. Myself at Heaven's yett shall wait, Tell the good wife of Mull be come— . Never a nursling lost or late — To wear the crown of Christendom.** (With acknowledgment to "N.Z. Best Poems," 1933.) * * * . . HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF. Dear Mr. Flage,—Apropos the "shark-arm" story, retold in this week's cables, Lecky's "The King's Ships" records a somewhat similar amazing incident. In August, 1799, the Ferret, a 6-gun British naval schooner, commanded by Acting Lieutenant Fitton, was off San Domingo. A large shark was caught by the crew, and in its jaws was found a bundle of papers which, on being produced in the Vice Admiralty Court at Jamaica, led to the condemnation of the brig Nancy and her cargo. A few days previously the Nancy had been arrested, on a charge of Elicit trading, by Lieutenant Whylie, 3&i., of the cutter Sparrow, and was sent for trial at Jamaica, where the brig's captain (having thrown the real documents overboard) had handed in false papers. The jaws of the shark are to be seen in the Royal United Service Institution, London, and the "snake-papers" themselves are ott I view in the Institute of Jamaica. T.D.T.