POSTSCRIPTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 133, 2 December 1944, Page 6

POSTSCRIPTS

Chronicle and Comment

BY PERCY FLAGE

Anyhow, Hitler was never a vie--tualler. ..:•-;. - * * - v *■ ■ ,'.?'■ I Seventy members of the New South Wales Oyster Farmers' Association ate , 3600 oysters at a luncheon, * '♦ •'■'-■.■ If a man's voice had the same carrying power in proportion to his weight as that of a canary, his whispers could be heard 800 miles away. ■■. i **• - _ * INFORMATION. We would like "Crowbar" to confirm this one: What is "Haggis"? • "Is it a brain fertiliser?". , . "ALBION R." * *' ' * ' ■ WELL-SINKER. "Why don't you show more enthusiasm in your work? Look at me. I throw myself into everything I undertake." "Wouldn't suit, me." "Why. not?" "I'm a well-sinker." * * ♦ GRANDMA BEATS THE DRUMS. I Mrs. Grace Kelton, of New . South Wales, was 60 arid a grandmother when she decided to become a jazz drummer. Now, after a year's training, she is a professional, and an expert on. the bass drum, kettle-drum, cymbals, cowbells, and all the other paraphernalia of the dance band drummer. * * * UNIVERSITY AT TWELVE. Youngest student ever to enter Yale University (U.S.A.) is 12-year-old Merril Kenneth Wolf, of Cleveland, Ohio. Both his parents are lawyers. On his first birthday he read through a reader designed for five-year-olds, and when 22 months old he picked out a Liszt melody o.n the piano. It was in June, 1760, that young Jeremy Bentham, who " became the great philosopher, entered Queen's College, Oxford, at the age of 12. In the following year he wrote - a Latin ode on the death of George II and accession of George 111. * * * ' '-. MORE. BEER. Britain has drunk more beer this year than ever, and before the end of the year brewers expect to have sold 200 pints for every man, woman, and child in the country. Reasons f«r the record sales are' that a shortage of wines and spirits swells the demand for beer, and women are drinking more of it. Beer and tobacco are almost the. only unrationed things on which money can be freely spent. Ten provincial^ brewers reported a profitincrease of nearly £500,000 in recent weeks, and they are representative of scores of other breweries throughout the country. * * ♦ SARDINES. As regards Scotch humour. Prior to import restrictions and war clouds, I purchased several tins of sardines in olive oil, knowing they would soon be off the market. ..Only a month ago I opened my last tin of sardines, - and was very jubilant when I found them in excellent condition after being stored so long. Strange to say, . the sardines were packed in Aberdeen; needless to say, they must have been too Scotch for the olive oil to turn rancid. Trusting what you have just read will raise a smile. CONSTANT READER. *■*'■* MR. "X."' There was an element of mystery in the sale of one of the largest diamonds ever sold in Sydney. It was bought " by a Mr. "X," who refused to give his name. The diamond weighed 16 carats,' and was mounted in a platinum ring. In the opinion of Miss Elsie - Morgan, typist/ at the auction room where the stone was sold; "It was too big and vulgar." The auctioneer, Mr. A. B. Coleman, Castlereagh Street, said he expected to get £2500 for the stone, but there were only two bids;' It opened at £2000, and the next bid was £2050. Dealers said the ring was worth £4000, but believed fear of a • taxation inquiry held back the bidding. * * * . STREET AT DUSK. Men go on quiet feet at dusk, Their footsteps as they pass' Coming mutedly as feet Come muted across grass. They fold the night about them, Like souls estranged, whose mood Demanding silence only, Makes its own solitude. They give no smile, no greeting, Lest pausing they should see Too deeply in some stranger's eyes And their drugged thoughts set free. They ponder over-darkly upon another's pain. And lose their peace, and nevermort Walk quietly again ... I watch them in the drowsy street-— ' Softly to and fro Between the little houses ■ - Their ceaseless shadows, go; Moving _ aloof, remotely t As wraiths or dreamers do, Quiet in the dusk as if Their hearts are quiet, too. RUTH GILBERT. * * *• • - KNOW THEM? This note—from "Studental": •A CONFERENCE is a group of men who, individually, can do nothing, but as a group can meet and decide that nothing can be done. . • - < ,A STATISTICIAN is a • man who draws a mathematically precise line from an unwarranted assumption to a foregone conclusion. A PROFESSOR is a man whose job is to tell students how to solve the problems of life which he himself has tried to avoid by becoming a professor. . ■ AN EFFICIENCY EXPERT is a man who knows less about your business than you do, and gets paid more fortelling you how to run it than you could possibly make out of it, even if you ran it right instead of the way he told you to. Contributor: "Bali," * * * PERILOUS JOURNEY. - For fifteen minutes, Mr. Churchill's " car was embedded in a snowdrift in the Jura Mountains, the zone of the First French Army, when he visited the forward area. His car had already been held up ten minutes when a tyre burst. Later the chains came off a wheel on a perilously slippery road, completing a series of mishaps that helped to make this journey one ,of the most exacting of the many he has made in this war in the cause of international good will. So worn out was Mr: Churchill when he returned at night to- the railhead which he had left at 10 o'clock in the morning to visit the troops, that he went straight to bed after standing a few minuteswith General de Gaulle in the little station square while the British; American, and French national anthems were played. But he was not too tired to make a typical Churchill gesture to the driver of the car who for several hours carried a great responsibility on the snowy, icy roads. * * ' * . YEAR TO REMEMBER. A century and a third ago men were following with bated breath the march of Napoleon, and waiting with feverish impatience for news of the wars. And all the while, in their own homes, babies were being born. In one year, almost midway between Trafalgar and Waterloo, there stole into the world a host of heroes. During 1809 Gladstone was born at Liverpool, Tennyson at Sommersby, and Oliver Wendell Holmes in Massachusetts, says the' "Ladies' Home Journal." On the very same day of that year, Darwin was born at Shrewsbury and Lincoln in old Kentucky. Music was enriched by the birth of Mendelssohn, at Hamburg ■ But nobody thought of babies: every- ' body was thinking of battles. Yet, viewing them each in the truer per- ''' spective which the distance of the ' years enables us to command, we may well ask: "Which of the battles of" TonL matter- more the babies of 1* Contributor: "Momma Bloom." '