POSTSCRIPTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 151, 23 December 1938, Page 8

POSTSCRIPTS

Chronicle and Comment

BY PERCY FLAGE

Headline':. "Blows exchanged at Christmas party." The fistive season. * * * If meteorological- temperatures don't rise soon those of the Christmas campers will. And howt * « *■ In reply to "Horse's Mouth." —Personally we. have a hunch that Knight of Australia will show considerable Courtcraft at Ellerslie next week. • ■ , # * # WISECRACKS. It was P.ope who wrote these wise words: — Be not the first by whom the new is tried, ; . Nor yet the last to cast the old aside. Labour's sporting version of, this:— Yes? Be the first far anything untried, We can always blame George Forbes if we get fried. ROSENEATH. * • ■ ♦ ■ * HEARD THIS ONE? Irvin Cobb was spending a few weeks in the heart of Dixie, and one morning after a torrential storm- was walking down the road. The water stood in great puddles all over the road and Mr. Cobb was much surprised to find an old darky sitting in an easy chair . which he had pulled down to the road, fishing in a puddle of water. "What are you doing there?" Mr. Cobb asked. "Why, boss," replied the old darky, 'Tm jes" doin' a little fishin'." "You old fool," exclaimed Mr. Cobb in disgust. "Don't you know there's no fish in there?" "Yas, sun," said the old darky, "I know dat, but dis yere place is so handy." . * ■*■•», BRAIN-TEASER. & Dear Flage,— You'll excuse1 th,e familiarity— But herewith attached—with clarity? Story of man and eggs without charity. Scarce a''teaser at all this week, No "deep" solution for which to seek. ' He doesn't beg, he doesn't buy, Yet he has two eggs to fry. / : He doesn't hire or steal or borrow, Yet takes he no thought for the morrow. .'■ •' , ■ ' He doesn't exchange 'cm —doesn't find 'em; But still it's obvious he doesn't "mind" 'em. i '-.■'' .: "■ , Dear Percy, with an answer as simple as this, / Did you think that anyone could possibly miss? Sans hens, whence comes Bro. , Hilarious's friend's tuck? \ Elementary, my dear Watson, he keeps '"' ■ a duck! -:,- • ••"■■:' " ■ -'' -: .... ■ i Yours ever, ; . .■■., ...■ nu *un. P.S.—All the best wishes of the ; season; you do a lot to brighten tne ; gloom. ....'■'.: i ■ ■♦.■.■•■■■-*■■...*■'■ : APPOSITE. \ Dear Flage,—Pressure of work has r for a long time kept me out of your • envied list of contributors, but I hasten now to get in with one last touch before your station closes down for a well-earned vacation. Amongst all the instances of appropriate names furnished recently by Postscripters I am surprised'-that>:nobody seems: to have noticed the appellation of the Lambton Quay. Oriental laundryman who rejoices in the ,singularly apt nomenclature of Wah Shing. Let's soap his clothes are as white as they ! deserve' to be, though in this weather .he can hardly expect to keep his : laun-dry. v : Every good wish of the ? season, ■ Flage, to you and yours, and may you i enjoy the best conditions for your im- ; minent excursion among the far-flung i sylvan charms of picturesque ENZED. i Ah dew. and olive oilE Also eau I reservoir. " t L.D.A [•* ■ ■ • | ' : . NEWS ODDITIES. i Henry, VIII banned football and . placed a penalty on its being played, i but to no avail. Many years later-^-in • 1860—the faculty of Harvard banned [ football because , they considered it ; "foolish to run around after a bag. of i wind." Twelve years later the game was resumed at Harvard and has been. - played there ever since. I The Australian brush turkey, living I in the hot and steaming bush, gathers • a large heap of rubbish underneath I which it lays its eggs, leaving > them , to be hatched by the heat generated •, by the decaying vegetation. The young, ■ when, hatched, run off into the bush to • take care of themselves without any • parental assistance 'whatever. s We are all interested in the word. ! "salary" in more ways than one. It > comes from the Roman word/"sal," meaning salt In the days of the Roman Empire salt was not easily obtained, and as part of their pay the Roman soldiers received an allowance for salt, 1 called "salarium." Latex the word \ came to mean fixed wages, or, as we i say, "salary." , '' ■■ . LIMERICKS. [ "I cribbed these from an Australian : journal," confesses M. M, Stewart "I ', like 'em. Do you?" We do. ■ There was a young man of Torquay Who grumbled, "I don't like the suay; L How can I afford ; To throw overboard [ My dinner —or even my tuay?" ; There was an old maid of-Buccleuc i Who made a tremendous to-deuch; >. She'd lost, if you please, Her pet Pekinese, y And found its remains in the steuchl ; There was a young girl who said, ' "What • A bee-utiful skin I have ghat; . My school-girl complexion Bears closest inspexion, , And never comes off when it's hat! There was a young fellow of Alne Who put his best trousers in palne; He got 3/4, . . And might have got mour If only they hadn't been talne * • ■■•...-. LA GUARDIA. New York's Mayor, Fiorello Enrico La Guardia, who first fought an attacker the other day and licked' him, is in every respect a tough little bloke, ) writes Royce Brier. I When a Jewish mother and an Italian I father produced the ""Little Flower" in > New York's East Side, they gave him an inheritance of boundless energy. The East Side taught him to fight. He fought in the World War as a flyer , and major. He fought in Congress as a representative, and as New York's best Mayor he stuck a knife in the Tammany Tiger. In 1937, still Mayor, he clouted Germany's Adolf Hitler by suggesting to Grover A. Whalen, president of New York's World Fair, that Der Fuhrer's effigy be placed in a "chamber of horrors." This made the throaty Mayor a national figure, and - he has been reluctant to leave the stage i ever since. Outside of parading quietly about the country with 750 New; - York firemen and policemen, ruling . his city, and using freedom of speech - to assail "a brown-shirted fanatic," he ; has kept remarkably quiet for La Guardia.