POSTSCRIPTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 155, 29 December 1944, Page 4

POSTSCRIPTS

Chronicle and Comment

BY PERCY FLAGE

When the instalment jnan froni the furniture house calls again, just-tell him to take a chair. " BILL. * ' ♦ ♦ With time flying on as it does, why " do puny humanS think that. Christmas (instead of the whole year round) is the time for brotherly love and kindness? DON MACK. •* * ♦ ... In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, before the advent of the printing press, cover designs and decorations on Bibles were.so elaborate that it frequently required more than five years for a scribe to complete a single cover! » » ♦■... : CAPTURE OF PALOMPON. 8.8.C.: "The Americans took the Japanese by surprise in the rear." General Yamashita: "Yes, honourable- one—it was a kick in the pants!" ERNEST. * * * ARTIST. ' / Rex Whistler, a young artist, whose murals on the "Pursuit of Rare Meats" in .the refreshment room at the Tate Gallery so fascinated people that they forgot they had come ■to eat, was killed in action in Normandy. He decorated rooms in many great private houses and designed settings for jallet and other stage oroductions. His book jackets and illustrations adorned some of Britain's finest publications. 1•* * * . AN ABERDONIAN'S GREETING. Here's wishin' you the best o' health And a' yer herts desire, And a' the money in the warld That I do not require. With very best wishes for the festive season and holidays. Good luck to Column 8 for 1945. In appreciation from a Constant Reader. * * '.*'■'. INFORMATION. In reply to "W.T.0.": G.0.C.-in-C. Western Command since 1942, Lieut-General Schreiber, Malta's new Governor,, who js 54 r entered the Army at the age of 19, serving with the Royal Artillery. He served in the World/War I arid attained the rank of captain "in 1915. When the Armistice was signed he had risen to the rank of battalion major. * ■*..*•" MEDICINE ERROR. A six-month-old baby and her mother were awarded £80 damages at Manchester Assize against a firm of manufacturing chemists, who were held to have put camphorated oii in a bottle labelled castor oil. It was said that when the child—then fiveweeks old—was given the oil by the grandmother she gasped for breath and had a fit of choking and coughing. She went rigid and her hands went black. Mother* and daughter had claimed damages for personal injuries. * * * THE BIRD. Now, if Adolph Hitler were just a bit littler \ He'd do for a worm—or maybe a germ. A low type of vermin—this arrogant German With ideas far fetched and absurd. I liken this "pippin"—to one Doctor Crippen Who thought he was great, but met a just fate. Now Adolph is purely a madman—and surely Our Churchill will give him the "bird." LITTLE FRANK. *. * * '■ PREFERENCE. '/"'': . Prior to the war a traveller named E. G. Porter, M.A., read a paper be-, fore the American Antiquarian Society in which he said that, according to what he had discovered in Australia— and he had visited all the States except Western Australia—the aboriginal cannibal preferred the flesh of Chinese to that of white or black Australians. The reason given for this preference was that the flesh of the Chinese, with a diet of rice, was not so salty. I had not noticed the difference myself, but maybe it is due to the habit Australians have of putting salt in their beer to accelerate a thirst. W.A. CANNIBAL. * * • TO LAUGH. The Royal Academy (England) this year is agreeably provided with pictures of varying sizes.. The more enormous show a fine command of detail —particularly Mrs. Garavan's hundred-yard-high "Csrner of a Boiler-works" and Mr. Kempston's "300,000 Shrinros." In the latter each shrimp (and one can almost count their whiskers) is filled in with integrity and verve, and the massed effect of the middle distance recalls the earlier manner of Vaurien, or, perhaps, Nitouche. Mr. Goyle's tiny lime-wash of a pair of scissors shows a command of light which is unusual in such a medium, while the intensity of Miss Creadle's "Autumn at Nunhead" seems to lift the picture off the canvas and hurl it at the head of the beholder. Mrs. Vengeance's screamingly funny "Old General" gains by being hung crooked. BEACHCOMBER.