LOCAL GOSSIP.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19412, 21 August 1926, Page 1 (Supplement)

LOCAL GOSSIP.

BY MEiiCUTIO. II is not usual for a visitor to a country ho has never seen before to want a cold welcome. Still, there was one came into Auckland this week, from Honolulu. An American official, he spends his working days in a land of overlasting sunshine; hitherto he has always gone back to America for his holidays, only to meet more sunshine. So ho has coma to New Zealand, looking for a little cold; not a cold in his head of course, merely a cold atmosphere. He came to the right place for it. The week of his arrival gave him varied samples of weather, few of them good. At least, they were not considered good by those who had to be hero, putting up with them, whother or no. It is all very well for an itinerant holiday-makor cloyed with sunshine to gazo on grey skies, streaming streets, gutters murmuring with incipient Waikatos, the trees hending under breezes that reach to the marrow of the bones, to see all these things and say "Splendid ! That's the stuff to give 'em," or the American equivalent of that quotation from the classics. The average Aucklander knows just as well as he that you can have too much of a good thing. His good thing in excess is the sunshine ho has abandoned; ours, the winter he came to seek. And what is the moral ? There isn't one, except perhaps that if there ever comes a day when the weather can be controlled at will, there will be a lot of fun. The wandering shag visited a pond in public gardens at Nelson, was attacked by a paradise duck, severely mauled, and left with a broken leg and The shag was probably convinced there was not too much paradise about, that duck.

The man who prepared to open a shop at Epsom, and found that his customer entered by night, took what appealed to him, and . departed without paying, cannot complain that his stock was not immediately appreciated. Still, it is annoying to have somebody else open your shop before yon can do it yourself.

"When an empty hearse ran amok in the New North Road the other day, charged over the footpath and invaded a front garden, the escape of the driver from injury was described as remarkable*. So it may have been, but not so remarkable as tho escape of the man who first described the thing as an unrehearsed incident.

Stories of successful surgery, recovering from little interiors such things as collar studs, whistles, pieces of tin, and other articles childrer swallow in their haste or misguided enthusiasm, show what strange things children clo swallow. But tlioy are not much stranger than the things some adults swallow, as is shown every time the technique of the confidence trick is made public.

The South Island is becoming more and more alarmed at the prospect of losing seats in Parliament as each census comes round." Sympathy must not bs denied those who contemplate the prospect a tour of : any electorate being much more than a Sabbath day's journey. Tho lot of a member of Parliament is protty hard already in some ways; for one thing he has to listen to tho speeches of his fellow members. though it has been very pertinently remarked that when the boot was on the other foot, the South Island did not worry much, the dismay with which the prospect is faced should not be regarded callously. It will indeed be appalling if the time comes when tho House of Representatives contains one poor, bewildered, much-travelled mortal described as the Honourable Member for the South Island. Of course the South Island at present rejoices in some members ■v/hose absence —but there, enough's enough.

The suggestion that bread should be wrapped beforei being delivered has roused a, diversity of views. On the whole those who think it should not are the bakers. Perhaps it is natural, seeing they would have to do the wrapping, or be responsible for it. The starting point in the argument js that na food ought to be carted aboutunless securely covered. What have the nature-food people to say to this ? They are insistent on food being consumed as nature made it, Touching wheat, this means eating the cover .supplied; not the husk, of course, but the cuter coat. They do not apply the principle throughout, drawing tho line at pineapples, and even cocoanuts. Still, they have not laid down anv fixed principle about coverings. When vou do get down to nature,; you find quite a number of things ready wrapped for distribution. Ihe Cape Cooseberrv is contained in the neatest cover, though the wheat grain, already quoted, and the oat, are also wrapped by nature. The maize cob has a nice cover, the walnut an outer-wrapping which is not tidy. Among them all they do not supplv a very clearly-defined prm ciple, except perhaps that artificially prepared foods seem to need protection most. To come back to the bread, it is quite certain that if tho public demand for a xvranped lon.f were clc'ir find sufficiently insistent, wrapped it would have to be. As it is the public doesp't seem really to care a rap.

A certain English provincial paper recently published a paragraph descriptive of an address by a lady, classified as a missionary returned for a Holiday after 12 years' work in New Zealand. The address, it states " was able to throw many interesting sidelights on the difficult but inspiring work of converting a people to whom earthquakes are ordinary everyday occurrences." Why should such a people be difficult to convert, supposing the sentence really fitted the facts ? It can well be imagined that people not used to earthquakes would be easy to convert immediately after there had been a shock. For instance, last Sunday morning there was a bit of a shako in southern England, extending some way up toward the Midlands. The net damage seems to have been breakages of crockery, with the cracking of a few ceilings. Nobody seems to have suffered bodily injury, though one or two did fall out of bed. Yet what a pother was made about it! There should have been good work done in church that morning, providing folk were not too frightened to go. But allowing that conversions in such circumstances should be easy among people startled by a new experience, there is no reason to suppose that, once accus-

tomed to shocks, folk would bo harder to ! convert than those not knowing the feel of an earthouake. The upshot is either that the lecturer managed to convey a qjieer iden of New Zealand, or the writer of the paragraph evolved a complete non neqaitiir