ENTRE Nous

Free Lance, Volume XIX, Issue 993, 16 July 1919, Page 27

ENTRE Nous

ONE would expect—if one were very simple—to find educated men on the Education Boards. But they do quite nicely without them in Canterbury. At the last meeting of the Board the heating of schoolrooms was being discussed, and one member mentioned that at a city school the hot water boiler had "bursted." A second member said, "and , it cost seventy quid to mend it." The first member was pained. He did not know what a quid was, he said, though he had heard of a quid pro quo. (Being an educated gent, he naturally would have heard of it). Members, 'he said, ought to use proper English. And lie went on to explain how the boiler had "bursted." A third member spbke a little plater of a hot water system that had "gone bung." Education is safe in the hands of these scholars.

The other day an enterprising New York vaudeville manager wrote offering General Pershing a five-figure fee for five-minute talk 9to the audiences an the theatres in his circuit. The General took no notice. Then the showman wired: ' 'Do you entertain my proposition?" The general wired back: "No; your proposition entertains me."

In connection with the burning of the grandstand at Ricearton a curious fact is revfealed. . The Fire. Brigade turned out, but not, it was explairied, in order to stop the fire. Its object was only to turn the water on if life was in danger, and no life being in danger the firemen used the fire to warm themselves. The) Brigade will not cross the city boundary—or, rather, will not work where the fire is across; the boundary. It often dashes off to a glare, and finds the fire on the wrong side of the street where tfhe street is a boundary street. Then it goes home, leaving the fire alone. A few places—institutions chiefly—outside the city limits can be attended to, but otherwise the Brigade has no power to put fires out. Woolston, a suburb, has a fire brigade and' engine, but as the members of the brigade live all over the district, there is nobody but a superintendent to look after fires, and!, though he does his best when somebody calls him out at midnight, he can't do much by himself. * * * *

It may come to this yet—Young man: ' 'Have I .your permission to marry your daughter, sir?" The old man: "What are your habits?" Y.M.: "I have a private still on my premises, where my friends can get a drink. I struck a double yesterday at the races. I even smoke and like mere pleasure." The Old Man: "Put it there, young man, put it there. You're just the sort of son I want!"

Our Christchurch correspondent writes: "We have a lot of local patriotism here, and we are much annoyed with the Hon. W. l>. S. Macdonald. When Mr Herries's engines stopped running, the Gr.P.O. told us it could not help us with the mails. What, we said, no mails? And our Progress League arose, talked things over with the newspapers, got a fleet

of motor-cars, and got sworn in as postmen, and 10, next morning eleven' mail services were running all over the province, and astonished farmers who got their letters and papers usually at midday, were getting "them at 9 and 10 a.m.

Into the midst of this happy rearrangement of ' things came a violent message from the Hon. W. l>. S. Mac dcmald, threatening us with his displeasure for "usurping" his functions, and declaring he would not tolerate it. Our patriotic blood feeing up_, the newspapers, with wonderful unanimity, smote the G.P.O. on the eye and bade Mr Maedonald concentrate his gaze elsewhere. We feel that we are not usurping Mr Macdonald's functions. We saw his function was to leave us without mail services. As he abandoned the old function of carrying mails, we thought we would n<<i be interfering with anybody if we carried them ourselves. At any rate, Canterbury has a good fast inland service for the first time, but in time, no doubt, Bill Herries will get a scuttlefull of coal and start his engines', and the country folk will get their mails later in the dav once more.

In their zeal for sheltering their men folk from the wicked lure of Gay Paree the American "W.A.A.C.'s" had the British variety licked to a- shadow. Some time after the Armistice a British naval squadron was at Brest, and the "lively little lads in blue" used to go up to Paris when on leave. Here, thought the American "W.A.A.C.'sr," was a chance to show the British their efficiency as male protectors in the bad old boulevards. So it happened that after a gala performance at the Opera a British lieutenant was peacefully lending his way, accompaaiied by a lad -, ', wjien he was accosted by an American W.A.A.C., who said to him: ''I am an American and you are English, 'but are you quite certain the lady you are with is a friend of yours?" " The pair passed away in the crowd without a word, leaving the motherly American W.A.A.C. gazing wistfully after them.

Dear Free JLance—Your travelling special. Miss M. Cox-Taylor, in her first ' 'Long Trail'' article —which certainly piques one's appetite for more —hits off the 'Frisco Yanks rather neatly in her references to their jar-diniere-spitoons. What she so wittily says is true, but it is not the whole truth; at least, not before the 'quake and fire, say about 1902. Many of the cuspidors—spittoons—jardinieres (whatever you like to call them) then, were as big as hip baths with designs as varied as camouflaged cruisers. These were for the young or inexperienced expectorator. The true artist never used anything bigger than a sugar-basin and could lob on a dime N.S.E. or West or on the ceiling at fully ten feet or right through the cellar from the top of a 17-floor building. The reason is that expectoration is a correlative of mastication, and as ia people of tobacco and gum-biters, the Amurrican has no peer.

Apparently lie has no beer now, either; but a person who can spit as he does should not want any. It's a solemn fact that I stayed in some houses with men who never stopped chewing all the week. Only removed the tobaegum or stuck it in their cheek or under the chair, for meals, and chewed right on in their fourth or fifth hour steep. Miss CoxTaylor evidently did not see the inside of a "saloon" or she would have mentioned the big bars that have (or had) no splash-pans. A running stream of water went on like the

brook for ever between the customer and the bar counter to facilitate the passage of chewed 'baccy, gum, matches, sputum and good resolutions. Personally I prefer a beer or so , per day in England or tliis country, to chewing gum and copious spitting in a foreign land. Think the former is better even though the foreign land possesses one benzine buggy to 27 inhabitants and talks through its nose and sometimes .through its hat.— Yo\irs, etc., Doggy Tuenspittjp.

Germany almost reached the limit in discovering substitutes for things during the war. This limit was reached in the south th.e other day when a consignment of hares and rabbits was sent to Doc. Thaeker for the Christchurch Coal and Blanket Organisation. Rabbits are a poor substitute for blankets, and the people complain that the hares are the worst kind of fuel.

Somebody has been enquiring about the Jap's sense of humour. It ia there all right. The Japanese joke-spinner as a rule can get off quite a good one when he is in form. Jtrat according to Western ideas he takes rather long in getting to the point. Here is one on thle ;pro(hibiitit>mst: A man refused to drink sake on the score that he had taken an oath to abstain for three years. The very next evening he came for the sake-drinking, explaining that he had decided to extend his pledge to six years, which would permit him to abstain during the day and drink what he liked at night. "I can suggest a still better plan," said his host, "why not extend your period, of abstinence to twelve years and then you could drink all day as well as air night?"

Some years ago somebody started the idea ~*>f a canal from Christchureh to the Sumner Estuary, and a number of people, thinking the plan would take on, bought land at s-trate-gic points. As the years pass, without bringing the canal, they are growing desperate. They have formed, with other folk who simply like the idea, a Canal League. This quaint body hopes to rope in Admiral Jellicoe as a supporter. One of the League members has been urging; that the Admiral should be driven to the top of a nearby mountain, and asked to .give his opinion as to "the strategic value of the canal."

These air stunts across the Atlantic remind us that it us just one hundred years ago since the first steamship went paddling out from th'e American city of Savannah to cross the herring pond. She was called after her home port, and was rigged as a ship, but with no" sails higher than top-gallant sails, steam being apparently intended aa an auxiliary in calms or light head winds. She took on board 75 tons of coal and 35 tons of wood, and at one point of her voyage she was reported as a ship on fire. The Admiral of the Channel Fleet sent out a revenue cutter and fired several warning shots, and the surorise of the catrbain, when he boarded her, to , find she was a combination of sail and steam may

well be She was 29 days--11 hours on the voyage, diiring which she worked her wheels only eighty hours.

A _good turn was done to the Blind. »Soldiers' Hospital at St. Dunstan's, England, recently, when the people or" London gave a special day for the fund collecting campaign. " ally, the occasion moved people to think about the. Wind- and wonder how it felt to be cut off from the world of scene, life, and colour. It is not easy to get the point of view of the blind when you're not blind yourself, as the following incident shows. A blind soldier from St. Dunstan' s had been visiting a friend in London, and at night was accompanied to his bedroom by his host, who inquired before leaving whether he was. comifortaible and Shad all he wanted. "Everything," was the reply; "but/you have left the light on. I don't require the light, of course." And in the depth of the darkness in which he left his guest in that strange room the host realised what it meant to be blinded, and how much it meant to have learned to be blind.!

What price God's Own Country as a Mahommedan State? According to argument at our Appeal Court the other d'ay the present condition of the bigamy law will give us a good opening for settling up iour own little harems if the Appeal Court judges don't put the acid on it.

Dear Fbee Lance, —You'd hardly think honeymooners would' travel by train these "cut" days—especially by puff-puff - leaving cold places like Taumarunui at early mom in mid-winter. But such is love's young dream that they do—even though disturbed by the night porter. Last week, a pair of this variety of lovet-bird's (who do not arise as soon as the larks, as a. rule) boarded the early ') train leaving Tau. for Palmerston. Deep concern was plain •on both faces (thoughpretty on the lady's) when the coalwaster got well going. Some whispering between the pair and a few sympathetic travellers led" to a 'hur- ,■ ried exit at the first stoppage. XheK reason was, that, owing to the scramble into clothes, breaking the ice in' the water jug, and the hustle for a' luke-warm sausage breakfast, nearly all of the wedding jewellery had been left right behind. Luckily the lady still had her wedding ring. I last saw her and' her own(er)est start to walk or look for a wheel-barrow back to the chief town of no-license and surreptitious; swillfng, in those parts. I trust they found the gew-gaws safe under the pillow. They had a "good! hope," as the neglected property was only gold and precious stones. Now, if they'd told me the leavings had been a square gin bottle with only a teaspoonful of juniper juice left in it in an unlicensed house, I would have advised them to keep their, train seats until a happier resting place— Pahnerston was reached. In the King Country bottles fly from the rooms the instant the owners leave them.—Tours, etc.. t>OMiV Dovb-ootb.