IN THE CURIO SHOPS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 26 November 1924, Page 6

IN THE CURIO SHOPS.

VO4OHS: OF THE' “OBJECTS.”

When midnight came and their tengues were loosened (vide I-laus Chriscian Anderson and other authorities), }ou cannot conceive what a babel there \\ as.

~did\you come from?” was the first question always put to the Latest anwail.

And then: “What did you cost-?” I came from ‘The Merchant Adventurers, ’ ” said, one night, 'a Bristol blue decanter. 1 “How much were you?” a .I was thirty-five shillings,” R answered with very perceptible pride 1 ve been going up; steadily for years Uo you know, when I first left 'homo 4 was m a cottage in Gloucestershire, near Stanway—l was only half-a-crown. A dealer wim pretended he was a cyclist bought me, and I irent to a shop in Bloomsbury where L was a pound, and then I travelled westwards and went up to thirty-five shillings. Isn’t it wonderful?” ‘ But it isn’t with any cheerful blue glass decanter that this history is concerned, but with a certain morose warming-pan.

You must understand that all the odds and endfc so> decorative and quaint that litter the rooms of these curio-hunters nourish a gnvance. And that grievance is that they are always iale. *. . they want to be at their own jobs again. It never occurred to the man that there could be any discontent among his rarities, but if lie had sharper ears or more imagination he would have known that they were 'all spoiling for work cnee more. But of all the unemployed articles in the room, that which moist- resented its foolish lazy life was the warmingpan. There _ it hung on the wall for ever, with no fire- in its greatcopper receptacle, lm bustling housewife to grip its handle and thrust it about between the '.sheets, not even a bed in sight; its sole occupation waste be decorative and quaint. “Of 'all the rot!” it used to say. “Bod-warmers should warm beds.” it would mutter.

“Hanging on a drawing-room wall doing nothing,” it would grumble with profundities of scorn. —E. Y. Lucas, in “Giving and Receiving.”