HOOTS! HOOTS! MON!

Gisborne Times, Volume LXVIII, Issue 10735, 5 November 1928, Page 5

HOOTS! HOOTS! MON!

BERNARD SHAW GIVES OFFENCE REFUSAL TO SPEAK AT A DINNER United Press Assn, by El. Tel. Copyright [Australian Press Assn.i (Received Nov. 4, 5.5 p.m.) LONDON, Nov. 3.

Bernard Shaw’s custom of sending a printed post card curtly refusing to open bazaars or speak at public dinners has stirred up a hornet’s nest In the Trinity Literary Society, Glasgow, which offered the dramatist a fea of forty guineas and received the usual post card. Instead of meekly receiving Mr Shaw’s “No” the Rev. H. S. McClelland, president, reported pointing out that, Mr Chesterton, Dean lngj(, Sir 0. Lodge, Mr Barnes, and Mr Masefield and other prominent men had accepted the invitation, whereas Mr Shaw accompanisd his refusei by gratuitous and typically in solent advice to hand over the fee ot the forty guineas to a young man. Mr McClelland added that the replies of the other lecturers of international reputation showed that it was possible to be both a genius and a gentleman. He could not accept the plea that Mr Shaw was too busy, as ho had ample time to bask almost naked on a raft in the sunny sea at Riviera or spend an evening with a famous Yankee pugilist. Mr Shaw replied with a postcard in the broadest doric: “Hoots! hoots! mon! Dinna tak offence, whaur nano meant and gio yer siller to the young a ten ye.” A postscript read: “I tfust this is worthy of a devoted student of Burns and scott”