ODDS AND ENDS.

Greymouth Evening Star, 22 July 1918, Page 8

ODDS AND ENDS.

PIANO NOT A NECESSITY. A Berlin musical instrument dealer was prosecuted by the antiprofiteering authorities for selling a.t £IOO a renovated second-hand piano for which lie paid only .£35. The charge was that he had committed "usury'' ia connection with an '"article of daily necessity.'' The courts refused to agree with the official view that pianos were a "necessity " for the soothing of war nerves, and said that the tradesman had a right to sell a piano, like any other "luxury" for whtever he could gtt for it. DESERTER'S SECRET HIDING PLACE. After baffling the police for several months, an Army deserter named William Trcnfiekl was caught, and came before the Magistrates at Gloucester. He was found by detectives in a cupboard in his mother':; bedroom. 'She was in bed, and denied her son was in the room. The cupboard front was concealed by wallpaper, but wasi detected when the police tapped the walls. The mother and another woman were each fined .£lO for harbouring Trenfield, who was handed over to an escort. OTRL PEDLARS IN FIMM.'S. _ There is in Fiance at the present timea number of girls from an American college who are performing relief work of a unique kind. They have taken upon themselves the functions of pedlars, ragpickers, and hucksters in the villages over which the battle wave has ebbed. Every girl is trained in social service, and they travel about with stocks of tinware, pots, pans, clothing, and farm implements. The "pedlars" also sell milk, chickens, rabbits, and goats. Another service they arc trying to render, to reduce costs and foster trade, is the opening up of a chain of grocery stores. The "pedlars'" have done a. good service inwards re creating the conditions of village life ill the devastated land.