Oddments

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 September 1949, Page 4

Oddments

Women could be every bit as clever as men. All they lack is wives to spur them on. 5 “Pitying the men because of their suffering, I gave them something over ‘to drink.’ It was taken, but taken without thanks, and with evident displeasure, and handed over, with the ferry money, to the employer. In New Zealand . . . you may ask a man to drink . . . but the offer of money is considered to be offensive . . . The pity is that in the course of years it will doubtless be unlearned.”— Anthony Trollope on tipping in New Zealand in 1873. * * For the past 40 years James Whitham, of Sheffield, Britain, has had the most curious August Bank Holiday, job. He has been compelled by law to sit in his office waiting for people who will never turn up to a meeting which will not take place. Whitham is secretary of the Cutlers’ Company. A law, passed in 1791, decrees that this company must hold a meeting on the first Mofiday in August to elect 24 persons to be Master Manufacturers. The law was passed before Bank Holidays were thought of. No one has attended the meeting for 100 years, except the secretary. He has -to be there. Only a new Act of Parliament could set him free, and that would cost nearly £lOOO. So, year after year, Whitham has sat at the nonexistent meeting, reading the newspapers. But this year he missed it. A bad chill kept him in bed. His assistant sat in the office in his place.

—The Seeker