CURRENT TOPICS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 289, 3 November 1934, Page 6

CURRENT TOPICS

(By “Wayfarer.”)

An Irishman in a Boston Court wa« endeavouring to disprove that he ba<i a brogue. The Judge, listening to his statements, interrupted saying: “Pat, if you wish to deny youi brogue, may I- suggest that you put i in writing?” « * # *

“Archimedes,” read the schoolboy, aloud, “leaped from his bath shouting, ‘Eureka! Eureka!’” _ “One moment,” said the teacher, “What is the meaning of. ‘Eureka “ ‘Eureka’ means ‘I have found it, said the boy. “Very well. What had Archimedes found?” questioned the teacher. The boy hesitated, then ventured hopefully, “The soap, sir!”

Tradition lias it that Queen Victoria once kept an Indian elephant on the site of the existing golf course at East Cowes, and that it had its bath regularly in the old pond there. The pond, which is now quite dry, has stone-rivetted sides, 'a concrete bottom, and a ramp leading down into it. An old caddy on this course has stated that it was not an elephant, but Spanish oxen that the Queen owned! The pond -was their bath, and, as the caddv put it, “they had a rinse down in it on Saturday nights.” * * * * *

The report cabled yesterday that there was to be published a Bradshaw giving air-route time-tables relates to an important change in a publication which is now not far off attaining its 100th birthday. George Bradshaw, who started" the famous railway timetable guide bearing his name, was born in Salford in 1801, and in 1839 he issued Bradshaw’s Railway Time-table as a small book. In 1841 he first published the tables monthly under the title of Bradshaw’s Monthly Railway Guide. The name is a household wold in Britain.

The streets of London have been a veritable Babel lately; one hears every language spoken, and sees people of every nationality. In Kensingwn on a recent day an observer saw a noble looking Algerian, tall and handsome in his native robes, talking to an English woman; Indian men accompanied by their women in beautiful saris; many Germans, chiefly young; French and Italians, Japanese and Chinese, and some people who looked Siamese. On the other hand, a person just back from the Continent said that be stayed at an hotel in Paris which had 500 rooms, but that only 30 were occupied. From Paris he went to Germany, and he was the only passenger occupying a sleeper on the coach and there were only 13 passengers in all. « • • • •

A queer story of the power of habit is told by Dr. Philip Gosse in his new book, “Memories of a Camp Follower.” In India he visited a soldier fast sinking with pneumonia. Learning that the man bad in civil life been a railway porter in bis own native country, Dr. Gosse strove to rouse him by calling softly the names of local stations in their respective order. The patient rallied sufficiently to correct his visitor in a mistake; the nurse asked for a “repeat performance” in a few hours, and Dr. Gosse then obliged twice daily, till the man eventually confounded medical opinion by recovering. When the teller of this incident retailed it to a much-travelled friend his comment was: “Well, that may have saved the porter, but for me any reminder of the gloomy, draughty platforms I’ve waited hours upon would have finished me off I”

Economy in the construction of place names is not without its appeal. The Duchman is in line with Germany, Switzerland, France and Russia when he calls many small streams merely by the intensely simple name Aa. He, however, does not confine himself to simplicity, as witness Aarlanderveen, but it seems that the national peculiarity of proper names confuses even one familiar with ponderous titles. It is revealed that when the great Douglas plane with Parmentier and Moll was in difficulties near Albury because of lost bearings all the assistance the radio was meant to give had to be discounted to a certain extent. Static did not prevent the Dutchmen understanding the Morse instructions as to methods to be adopted, but when the ether gave them place names of the type of Tangambalanga and Gootamundra they had to admit defeat. It was all a nightmare of hieroglyphics ! In the interests of possible week-end aerial visitors from the Continent in the not too distant future even this Dominion might consider a simplification of its place names, if it were not that their significance would then largely be lost. *** * . *

Something new in dilemmas has appeared on the agricultural horizon after the patience and endurance of the American farmer had been tested to the utmost (says the Christian Science Monitor). First, he had falling prices of almost everything he sold to contend with. Then the problem of overproduction had to be faced. And just as expert measures to meet that situation were provided, along came the drought and upset all calculations. Now a farmer in one of the New England States writes to his newspaper protesting against what he calls “unwitting Governmental discrimination.” He says that a cousin (also a farmer) in a southern State received an order from Washington to plough under 25 per cent, of his cotton crop. The cousin replied that there was not so much as a single boll on his property. He was then informed that as he was on the Government list as a cotton planter, it would bo appreciated if he would kindly cooperate and plough up 25 per cent, of his land anyhow. Shortly after this puzzling incident it is reported that he received another Government communication ordering him to get rid of' 25 per cent, of his pigs. Again he took his pen in hand and regretfully declared that his farm could not boast even as much as three little pigs. And again he was told that he_ was on the Government list as a pig-breeder and would he please do something about it. After his correspondence with Washington had been forgotten the Southerner one day received two officiallooking envelopes in which he found two handsome cheques from Uncle Sam. One was for ploughing under the cotton he did not grow and the other was for doing away with 25 per cent, of the pigs he did not own. .‘■rnd now the New England farmer wishes to know how he can get on the same list as_ his cousin, He can’t grow cotton in his part of the woods, pigs are prohibited by the selectmen, anc * does not wish to pull up his stakes and go south. So what is he to do ?