By the Way

Evening Star, Issue 23497, 10 February 1940, Page 3

By the Way

(By X.Y.)

I got a little pussy cat Some time ago, ■Ostensibly to slay a rat Or so, And keep the wee marauding mouse, That least of quadrupeds, From overrunning all my house . And sheds.

The wretched son of roguery I got it from Declared that pussy cat to be .'A'Tom. My wife, of course, without demur, Believed the sorry tale, For women, choosing cats, prefer A male.

We had some lively argument Concerning names; Then fixed by mutual consent On “ James.” Diversified at times With “ Puss Or “ Kitty-cat ” or “ Jim ” We had a dozen names in use For “ him.”

At last a marvel came to light Which staggered us, For James, had kittens overnight, And thus Became anonymous once more, For who could then employ A name so.plainly destined for A boy ?

Those kittens —obviously “his” own— Suggested dark Ideas of “ Rosalind ” or " Joan Of Arc,” Or other fitting names devised By art’s or history’s pen, For Amazons who went disguised As men..

One day there wandered through the gate On plunder bent A cur of indeterminate Descent.. , . Part Borzoi, part Alsatian —hard . To guess the rest at sight, But, anyway, about a yard In height.

Ho came, he saw—and that was all That he could do, For Puss, with spit and swear- and squall; Just flew. A ball of fur and teeth and claws, Upon the monstrous foe, And gave him every valid cause Togo.

Ho «*utt-led yelping down the street With Puss in chase. Hi* tail between his legs—his feet Apace. Sn now we call our little cat “ Finlandia ” —to suit Hor gameriess in repulsing that . Big Lnite.

A strong infusion of new blood in this column last week has, we doubt not, improved its circulation; also we hope it will operate as a tonic all round.. When the Walrus (Lewis Carroll’s, not Bairnsfather’s creation; said the .time had come to talk .of many things he enumerated, amongst others, Cabbages. That familiar article of diet and of commerce was actually mentioned here on Saturday, February 3, the opcasion being a prosecution- for, Jalse packing. The defendant, needless to say, was a Celestial, and probably .nine housewives out of 10 who read ‘the case were full of wise saws and modern instances of their own experiences in the same line —greengrocery. Whose fault is it that not in Dunedin alone, but in neatly every sizeable town in New Zealand— Christchurch has not yet capitulated, but reports being hard pressed—the production and (especially) the distribution of garden truck is becoming a Chinese monopoly ? An, apt word that last! ,If persistent rumour is correct the organisation,, both financial and horticultural, • has nothing to learn from Aryan and non-Aryan concerns listed op the Stock Exchanges, with their holding companies, parent companies, and subsidiaries. The interlocking gear of the railway signal boxes is simplicity itself by comparison.

' Let us make an attempt at blood transfusion—from yellow to black. Bret Harte achieved immortality chiefly because of his ' announcement that for ways that are dark and tricks that are'vain (?) the heathen Chinee is peculiar. An ultra-modern author, Harold Robert Taylor, evidently found the West African black proximo accessit. if not superior. As a very young man Taylor went in 1913 from behind a Regent street counter to Liberia as a junior in. the service of a Liverpool trading company. Liberia, was founded as an outlet for American slaves emancipated by, the Civil' War, and from most points of view it must be reckoned a particularly its Departments of Justice and Tolice, is a combination of Tammanyism and slap-stick farce, with a good admixture' of alcoholism, etc. The book, ‘ Jungle Trader,’ may, in the lingo of the film world, be said, to be passed by the censor for adult appreciation. Taylor found the aboriginal natives in every way preferable to the town-dwelling Liberians who had made, contact with American culture, either.at first hand or,through repatriated ancestors., He, however, makes one exception, and .it will possibly grieve or infuriate a number of good people. The American missionary is part of ■ the Liberian landscape, and the mission-trained native is almost always a thorough-paced rascal.

But wfe are straying somewhat from the point, which is, tricks of the trade by various national standards, plus a refutation of the frequently emphasised exploitation of the uncivilised or semicivifised native by the unscrupulous white trader or his principals in Britain, France, Holland, Belgium, or Germany. What exploitation there was appears to have been rather of the junior agents by their Home employers, and this has practically disappeared since the smaller concerns have been mopped up by the big. Taylor writes of his earliest experience: “ The barter system of trading still survived at Garraway and as a training for a career which required a pirate’s outlook on buying and selling I would recommend it. When it comes to trade there is nothing simple about our black brother, and unless you are well versed in all his tricks he will win every time.” . • • And further (condensed for reasons of space) as an adept in the art of adulterating produce the African native is second to none. In those days wo purchased rubber which came to us in the form of black balls the size of billiard balls. Often we would discover _ a stone in the centre and the rubber impregnated with water, the ball eventually scaling 75 per cent, less than its original weight. So we fixed the scales to make 4cwt read as lewt. After a while the natives scented somethin" wrong and delivered their stones with a coat of rubber; trade in rubber then ceased altogether.’*

'.'The time has come,*' the Walrus said; "To lalfc of many things

Not everyone knows the difference between “ live ” and“ dead ” ivory. The test with an elephant’s tusk is simple. The trader behaves like a child at the sea-shore holding a small conch-shaped shell to its ear to hear the song of the sea. If the reverberation is there the ivory is “ live ” and of value. Not only for its- intrinsic excellence, but for its allegorical applicability to some phases of New- Zealand’s political adventures, we further test the reader’s patience with one final Tayloresque business transaction. In the course of an inland tour the trader visited a village. with whose chief he was on very friendly terms. Two sacred huts were stacked to the roof with tusks, and for months Taylor had tried to persuade the chief to forsake the outworn belief that the ivory was “ju-ju.” Finally Taylor made a convert to a more modern outlook and examined the ivory. Almost every tusk was “ dead,” and therefore unmarketable. Ho had a ticklish job in getting out of the deal, for his original line of argument had sunk deeprivers of gin and mountains of tobacco in exchange for a few old elephant bones taking a Jot of erasing from the native mind. ‘ “ Some week later a young Scotch assistant from a rival firm arrived from a trading tour with his. boats laden with ivory. Ho had_ bought the lot from my friend the chief, and was quite jubilant over the scoop he had made u'nder our noses. But we did'not disillusion him. The next I heard of him was that he had been transferred from the trading side of the business and put to keeping the books.”

There is a peculiar redundancy in the latest incursion of Government into business. It is going to commandeer and control hides. Has it not enough already?,. “ Hide enough for anything ” is a familiar sayiilg, which need not be stressed in this mournful month of FebrUary. To us it seems that enterprise •is developing into foolhardiness. For calfskins come under the’ category of hides, and who in this land of Jerseys and Holsteins and dairy factories ;has not heard of bobby calves, the foundation of baby.veal? The calfskins, it seems, are the perquisite, of the women folk of the dairy farmers. i;he women s vote has been a big factor in Labbur s success at the polls, and it was the dairy farming constituencies of- the North Island that turned the balance at the 1935 elections. Destruction ot the bridge that has carried one over-is the recognised practice of oh army in full retreat. The possession of that confirmed addict in bridge-building. Mr Semple, will not compensate for this rashness, nor even the invention by a New Zealander of a nine-piece-emer-gency bridge, approved by the British War Office, and claimed to be capable of lightning speed construction. * * * Teh Stalins mustered .in a row Before.the puzzled medico, A neutral summoned from afar To tend the Lord High Commissar . Because a Russian, put in charge, Might well resort to sabotage^ Leave scalpels: in the Leader’s turn, To slit his peritoneum, " - , Or tickle up some vital gland. With little particles of saiid.

Ten Stalins, each the self-same size, With hair brushed backward .from their

.eyes. - , .. : •: - With sombre brows and upper-lips In nutch-moustachio’d eclipse. With tunics belted round the waist And feet in out-size boots- encased, Enoh featuring the hungry smile, Of some expectant crocodile Who waits beside the river’s brim ; For everything that comes ,fo him. Ten Stalins there, and each one Said He felt a buzzing in his head ( ' ; They all complained of giddiness And sundry signals of distress, . Which indicated that their hearts.

Were functioning in fits and starts. When someone mentioned “ Manner-

hcim ” , They shivered at the selfsame time; At “ Ttotsky,” each and every .one Would palpitate in unison. •

That doctor from the Netherlands Encircled all their arms with bands To find how hard ,their blood had pressed. ■ 1 , He tapped each Stalin’s burly chest, Examined pulses, hearts, and lungs, And looked at 10 protruded tongues, Inquired about their food and drink, And then withdrew awhile to think. Dafoe might pity poor Mynheer With double lots of “ quins ” to rear.

He numbered them, from one to ten, Ticked off their divers symptoms, then Eliminated those he found Approximately whole and sound. Four sturdy specimens, he said. Had obviously ‘‘swung the lead.” The matter with another four. Was “ jitters ’’--through the Finnish

war. A dose of vodka would be quite Enough to set these latter right;

Two now remained, a sorry pair, Decidedly the worse for wear, . With hearts completely petrified—’Twas chunks of stone they had inside. Their pressure, none the less for that, Was up as high as Ararat. “ Your hearts are stone,” the doctor

swore, “ You shouldn’t have one drop of gore, It’s other people’s blood, I see, That makes this pressure. Q.E.D. So Josef Stalin, while you can, Go home and be a better man.” i

One of the two was Josef S.; The other, nobody could guess. He must have been a perfect double Afflicted with the selfsame trouble. Addicted to the selfsame, use • Of other people’s vital juice. I hope the couple will be wise And follow Dr ’s advice, For if thev don’t they’ll surely choke With blood purloined from other folk!

The spirit of adventure is not lacking in the Government. It proposes to run, per medium of a commission, the waferside industry. -Why not? Turn about is fair play. The able pen of Mr James Roberts, editor of the ‘ New Zealand Transport Worker,’ is discernible in the angelic article describing the patient waiting of the watersider for bare justice at the hands of the Arbitration Court and the. shipowners. The Waterside workers of this country, says their official mouthpiece, “ have played a patient game, not for the benefit of the shipowners, but to assist Labour in New Zealand. Everything has its limits, however, and we have reached the limit on the waterfronts of this country.” Is this unconscious irony? Because a great many people, visitors and_ locals, after comparing cargo handling in New Zealand ports with the tallies in the ports of other countries, have expressed themselves in words almost identical with those just quoted. Incidentally, will there be the regular and the special stop-work meetings under the new re-

girae ? This week the Wellington watersiders held one to condemn conscription. However, as so many vessels come out in ballast because of Mr Nash and the Reserve Bank’s requirements, slack times are inevitable with one-way trade on, every wharf.

" Can’t you stop this boisterous wind, Johnny?” said X.Y. to the oldest authentic Maori in the village on the nth morning (Friday) of the prevailing west-south-westerly zephyr. “ I get down on my knees last night and pray for the wind.to shut my door that bang and save me the trouble of fixing him, and the wind do it. You know,” continued this recognised authority on Maori mythology and genealogy, “ there is a God of the Wind, a God of the Fire, a God of the Water, and a God of the Forest, and they are all under one Supreme God. There was a chief called Rata, and ho; went with his warriors to the forest to cut down a tree to make a canoe. When the tree was felled before nightfall they went home to their camp, and next morning, after a tempestuous night, they went back to hew out a canoe from the trunk. But all the trees were standing, so they cut down another. The same thing happened three times. Rata then made good au omission. He apostrophised the God of the Forest, respectfully of course, and the god informed him that he should first httvo asked bis permission to fell a tree. In default of this the God of the Forest approached his confrere in. charge. of the wind, who conscientiously saw to it that the fallen trees were blown upright, again before the toilers returned to the job next morning. Rata was so apologetic concerning his unintentional slight that the God of the Forest met him much more than halfway, for by his instructions the birds of the forest industriously and most efficiently speeded up tho hewing out of the canoe by chewing and pecking the wood away.” Rather taking the edge, off what X.Y. thought was a minor scoop, or at least an item of topical interest, Johnny informed X.Y. that it was all in tho School Reader, Maori names and everything. These, however, have been omitted in the above close paraphrase, which would probably have been much more vivid if rendered exactly as spoken. But shorthand in a hurricaneswept street, minus the requisite stationery. is a physical impossibility.