AUTHORS AND THEIR VIEWS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18553, 10 November 1923, Page 4 (Supplement)

AUTHORS AND THEIR VIEWS.

THE SPARTAN FATHER.

"He decided to play the Spartan father and ; make a sacrifice of his only son. That's tho worst of your highly moral men; they are so dreadfully fond of making examples of other people. It's a form of self-indulgence, really. ..;. Highly moral people let their morals run - riot, just as:-jsome people let their passions run riot. It's all a matter of temperament at bottom." Arthur J, Bees. A DANGEROUS COMPANION. , "Leila loved the garden. She liked to eat the * baby tomatoes'on the nasturtiums.; and the big pods ■on the laburnum, that looked like French beans. She had planted some melon seeds and they were doing well. "Progress could be observed each time she dug them up for examination. • ~- ! " ' That boy does her no good,' said the Aunt. A most dangerous companion. Never once in all the time I saw them together did either of them utter a word of sense. Gibberish . they talked. The boy doesn't seem to understand the meaning of words. Words like "shirt, and proper - names like "Glamorgan," he uses them all wrong. I doubt his muH. And (he's never still a minute. Those two children were never really in the house nor out of the house—always either coming in or going out. How those two children do shriek! Surely it is possible to play without shrieking.' Damascus Gate. THE DISCIPLINARY AUNT, . Aunt Agatha had a sincere opinion that Oscar was destined 'to become a criminal .or a lunatic. Symptoms of lunacy or crime had appeared m an unfortunate sentence addressed to her. He liad been naughty and the disciplinary aunt .: announced that at lunch -he should have neither suet pudding nor treacle. When the pudding course was in progress she enjoyed eating slowly and majestically before him. Naughtiness was always punished. Aunt Agatha was one of those who, on chew everything 30 times before dismissing it down the throat, and now she ostentatiously chewed her suet pudding.' - Oscar watched her in the worst of tempers. He hated Aunt Agatha. The Stupidly delicate way she cut off with spoon and fork a morsel of pudding annoyed him. The way she lifted her spoon to her month, slightly advancing her mouth to meet it, annoyed him. The sight of her jaws going inp and down, and her subsequent swallow, annoyed StS^ 0f §- Hfl stood the sight 'Sltet^SS ß »w««»ente for some ISt w5- her: "You 1 gw»t, big, gobbling glamorgan," said he! * -Ernest Raymond.