POSTSCRIPTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 105, 4 May 1940, Page 10

POSTSCRIPTS

Chronicle and Comment

BY PERCY, FLAGE

Jake: My next-door neighbour has finished sowing his wild oats and is now growing sage. # * * The Messerschmitt seemingly gets the wind up and the tail down when it runs into one of those Hurricanes. » » * Saith X.: Take heart" Melisande. We will wake up when Adolf starts sinking our "schooners" and "squareriggers." ¥■ * # If most of our crack duck-shooters were lined up shoulder to shoulder they would cover considerable ground in Trentham Camp. #~ * * Henry: "All Hail, New Zealand" is the title of a fervid patriotic song which has just been published, but surely that's a libel—it does sometimes * rain, or even snow. . # # # RIFLE PRACTICE. * A party of recruits was taken to the shooting range for rifle practice for the first time. The men fired at the target five hundred yards away; no one hit it. They next tried a target two hundred yards away, and still everyone missed. They were at last tried at a hundred yards away, but no one scored a hit. ■••■" • ' "Attention!" thundered the drill sergeant. "Fix bayonets! Charge! It'i your only chance!" ♦ * * WRESTLING SEASON, 1940. The wrestlers are here again Our. martial youth to entertain; It is a' pleasant thing to sit And watch another man's ear bit; It thrills the tough guy's tepid blood To hear them landing with a thud; It is, it is a glorious thing To yell and jeer like anything. Great shows! Most gratifying gated Meanwhile, the N.Z.E.F. waits; For Britons never shall be slaves— The pioneers turn in their graves. LEO. * * # SYMPATHETIC FEELING. When the ice man came out of the house he found* a small boy sitting on one of his blocks of ice. " 'Ere," he roared, ."wot are yer a-sittin' on that fer? Git off of it!" The small boy, raised a tear-stained face. "Was you ever a boy?" he queried faintly. "Of course I was," said the ice man, fuming. "But " "And did you ever play truant?" cut in the youngster. • "Of course I did," snarled the ice man. "Now then you " "An' when you got home did yet father take a stick an' " "Sit where you are my little man,* the ice man said, gulping. "I under* stand." SCHOOL'S IN. Do you know that— (1) Epitaphs were inscribed on tombs by the Egyptians,. Jews, Greeks, and Romans? = v , ." . '""' (2V An average* tobacco'plant" produces 924,875 seeds—enough to set 68 ' acres of tobacco? (3) Africa, called Libya by the Greeks, was one of the three parts of the ancient world, and the greatest peninsula of the globe? (4) The game of tennis, brought from France, became fashionable in England in the reign of Charles 11, 1660-85? (5) The "Tearless Victory" was that won by Archidamus 111, king of Sparta, over the Arcadians and Argives, without losing a man, 367 8.C.? (6) The first recorded eclipse hap* ; pened March 19, 721 B.C. at 8.40 p.m^ according to Ptolemy, and was observed with accuracy at Babylon? (7) The Unlearned Parliament was the Parliament convened by Henry IV at Coventry in Warwickshire (1404), and was so called because lawyers were excluded from it? (8) According to the Chronicle of Winsenius, kissing was unknown in England until the Princess Rowena, the daughter of King Hengist, of Friesland, instructed the insular Vortigem in the art? (9) In the churchyard of Lambeth Parish Church is a tomb to the memory of two famous gardeners, the Tradescant, father and son, who, in the 17th century, supplied medicinal Herbs to doctors and apothecaries? " (10) The head porter of Lincoln's Inn, who lives in the house where Cromwell signed Charles I's death warrant, rings the curfew in his lodge every night at 9 o'clock? ~ * * ■#■ WAITING. For these would I wait . . . Gravely and patiently— The green unfolding of a leaf in spring, Stars ... a white petal from a blossom falling, ■. ■ The transient quiver of a grey moth's wing. Of these I have dreamed ... In the dusk tenderlyOne ripple on a locked and silent sea, A saffron-tinted cloud—a bird at twilight, ■ i ■ The haunting perfume of a lilac tree. Sad ghosts of summer on an autumn morning, A waterfall, the great grey pearl of dawn, A yellow winding road—a moreporlc calling, A dark-etched silhouette, one tree for* lorn, Snow peaks, a mirrored lake, and purple shadows, Sunlight on leaves, mist on the grey; sea's edge, A kowhai's shaken gold .spilt on the meadows, The vivid berries of a . hawthorn hedge. " , For these I wait ... Of these I go on dreaming, While Life beside me pulses on apace, All these are real . . . perchance they're worth my dreaming, Perchance one trembling rosebud knows your face. These verses came to us as the monthly letter (April) of the New Zealand Alpine and Rock Garden Society (Inc.). We think you will like them. « # * JOKE ON SOMEBODY. Peter the Great of Russia loved to play the dentist. He had a complete laboratory and, more than once, cured the toothache o>f his dignitaries. Once, a courtier tried to profit from, • the Tsar's hobby in rather strange circumstances. He found out that his wife had betrayed him, and having no high opinion of the Tsar's achievements as a dentist, wanted to punish his wife by sending her to him as a patient. So he asked for an audience during which he showed great distress, lamenti?^ that his wife suffered from severe toothache, but was ico sensitive to have her tooth pulledTsar Peter was glad of the opportunity to show his craftsmanship. He went personally to see the lady, made her open her mouth, and without much trouble removed one of her teeth which, he thought, looked decayed. But when, some time later, he learned that the husband had cheated him, he arrested him and had him knouted.