WORDS REBOUNDED

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 December 1946, Page 9

WORDS REBOUNDED

WHEN MR. SEMPLE LOST HIS WAY •

HOTEL ELECTION INCIDENT

Even although, on the face of it, his party? failed to hecome ths Govt ernment of New Zealand, Mr. Holland is assured of one hearty laugh qt the expense of an opponent —none other than Mf. Semple, writes a Blenheim correspondent. During pis Blenheim address Mr. Sernple suggested that Holland did not know whether he was com? ing or going, but later events were to cast some doubts in this’ direction as far as Mr. Semple himself is i?ohcerhed. This, is what happened:

The iporning fqllqwing his address Mr- Semple, whom a Melbourne paper recently clubbed “Minister of Public Words,” was a guest at Barry’s Hotel, and, early astir, set off for a walk around the town.

Returning, as he thought, to his hotel, he had a very good breakfast, despitp the rather puzzled expression on the face of the waitress who attended him. Evidently a little bewildered by events, the girl finally asked the Minister if he was a guest in the house, and he assured her that he was. A. further question elicited the fact that he had spent the night in room number so-and-so, and Mr. Semple might, had he been looking, have seen a pair of eyebrows shoot perceptibly skywards. However, the visitor finished his meal without further incident and strolled leisurely out of the hotel. No doubt to Mr. Semple’s complete bewilderment he was shortly afterwards to discover that he had breakfasted not at Barry’s Hotel, as he had supposed, but at the adjoining City Private Hotel. So he went back and paid for his meal. What the Minister probady does not yet know is that, the number of his room at Barry s Hotel actually corresponded with that of a higmyrespected lady member of the other establishment.