POSTSCRIPTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 18, 23 January 1939, Page 8

POSTSCRIPTS

Chronicle and Comment

BY PERCY FLAGE

Waikare Moana? Why not?—if she is a nice gal. * « * The Spanish republicans seem to be of a retiring sort. *' * * Today's taradiddle. The girl: "I have never loved anybody as I love you." * # * ■ Up north there is a business man by the name of Bygum. Sounds like a go-getter to us. * * * If, as someone has • said, music accurately reflects a- nation's feelings, Americans must feel simply awful. « ' » * Nowadays some of the alimonies run. to figures that make separations look like reparations. *' # # There are one or two Ministers who hold that co-operation means doing what I tell you to do and doing it quick. * * * JUST FUN. Poster bill on the back of a smart trailer which pulled into,a motor camp • up the East Coast: . (Unclassified Ad.) VACANCIES FOR TWO LADIES (UNENCUMBERED.) They were bright lads, too. * # ■», . SUMPIN' MISSIN.' I take my. "Evening Post" and ther« peruse A medley of the very latest news. I flit about and scan the cable head--1 ings, I read of fires, of funerals,, of wed-. dings, And on . . . and on . . , and on ... ad infinitum, But having now read each and every item, Definitely, and fdr this I hope you listen, From colunin eight of late there* Sumpin', MissinV • ./ ROSENEATH. » ■ *,■■.■♦_ ■ '■ .. ■ PRISON GOVERNOR'S STORY. From "The Times" weekly edition, via Chanticleer. , In the debate on penal reform Mr.. Geoffrey Lloyd, Parliamentary Undersecretary to the Home Office, told the House of Commons a story of a young offender. The governor of one of our prisons recently received into prison a young man whose special form of crime- was the stealing of motor-bicycles. The governor very much liked this young man, who had, in fact, many rather endearing qualities. The governor was responsible for getting him a job when he left prison. The governor himself possessed a motor-bicycle, and a little time after his young protege had, left prison his motor-bicy.cle disappeared. A short time after that the young man came back to prison convicted of his usual offence of stealing a motorbicycle.' One day the governor sftid to him, "I suppose you did not have anything to do with stealing '' my motor-bicycle,.did you?";; The y.oung man's face fell and he said, "Why, sir, wasn't it insured?" The governor said, "No, as a matter of fact it was not insured for theft. I thought that being the governor of a prison it was not necessary for ( me to insure it,for theft." The young man thought for a bit and then said, "I will tell you what. You buy a new motor-bike and insure it with two companies, I will get it pinched, and then we will be all square." • . ♦ • ♦ HO HUM! Wejl, here we are at the same old dump, Lashed to the same old wheel, And the same old, darned old Monday hump Has us from head to heel. We're doing our best to concentrate On the job, but it's more than hard, For our thoughts will wing where the tuis singIn the backblocks' big back yard. The mind harks back to Morere And the nikau palms, and the lights ' I. . Which at man's command unake a fairy land Of the bush on windless nights; And waters of healing soothe, and the dusk /' In the valley is strangely still, And dreams are sweet till the dawn's red feet Gome tripping over the hill. Once more we travel the roads that run Through the lonely countryside Where quaint little houses, one by one, Regard us with humble pride, And we wonder at times how they will fare - When the winter shroud descends, And the ridges and plains are blind j with rains, And friends, they are far from friends. -' ' . Bold heights capped with midsummer snOw — Lakes on the mountain crest— Stock on the highway moving slow, North, east, south, and west — , But strive as we may to concentrate On the job, thoughts will fly back To the endless thrills of the bush and hills And the beauty along the track. * * * EN ROUTE. A Maori breve in the Te Aute region who sank twelve "handles" of beer before breakfast to give him an appetite ... an ancient four-wheel buggy,' two horse-power, one piebald, the other grey, driven by a gentleman who lifted his hat to us ... a twinkling-eyed Irish pub-owner who never drinks his own liquors—or anybody else's ... a ravaging gale in the tragic Esk Valley piling up humps of pumice grit three and four feet high along a breathless roadside . . . a quarter of a mile of restless mixed beef on foot crowding the car. in a narrow gorge, with an eighty-foot drop to perdition ... a backblocks hostelry where you have a choice of thirty-eight liqueurs, and can purchase (given the money) double magnums for £6 15s, or six at £6 10s -apiece . . . splashes of wistaria in and about Wairoa latitudes ... a huge concrete culvert at the foot of the Devil's Elbow torn from its moorings by a flood to lie like a short tunnel in the stream's bed . . . a towering poplar which had crashed across the road but three minutes before the car turned the corner . .a most elegant caravan which looked as though the driver had brought everything along except the grand piano ... three pork sausages each at. 7 o'clock tea, with a posset of tinned pears to follow . . . sky-raking timber on the track up to the Waikare-Iti lake and always a tui calling ... a motor camp on the run to Napier where you need gelignite to get the tent pegs down . . . "Joe" (a lady) and her boy frien<J playing the . good Samaritan (an<| how!) on the road edge beside M uprooted car . , .