LOCAL GOSSIP.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20324, 3 August 1929, Page 1 (Supplement)

LOCAL GOSSIP.

BY MEHCUTIO

A concert bv massed bands, hold at Wellington last weokend in aid ol tho earthquake relief fund, necessarily relied on voluntary contr ibutious for tho proceeds. The result ot tho first time of asking was no! very encouraging. It •was estimated, that tlioro were between 7000 and 10,000 people presont, and the collection yielded £4O. A second chance was given those who may havo felt a Bocond impulse to give. The return from tho second collection is not stated, neither is it recorded whether anyono, repenting of eailier geneiosity, took any thing out, But, after all, the first col lection is tho> one to consider. Forty pounds seems quite a sum, lull remember it was contributed by between 7000 and 10.000, or averaging the two estimates, 8500 people. Now. work this out. Carry in<* it to only four decimals, which seems straining tho 1 prodigality of tho crowd through quite a fino enough mesh, il shows a donation of 1.129-M a head. Tho piusic, or tho good causo, did not seem worth evet. twopence to tho average per ton in that crowd. Not worth even I'd, in fact The fraction over a penny extracted bv those brass bands hardly amounted to a brass farthing. There jnav bo many cood reasons for all this, but they are hard to discover. Vou would not find Dunedin, usually tho target for witticisms on the subject of 'financial caution, acting like that!

A professor from Glasgow, passing through Aucklaii') after a visit to Australia. paid the Commonwealth a compli nioiit. " 1 found," he said, " that Aus / tralian conditions in education vory similar to those in Glasgow." That Mas the compliment. People from Glasgow are like that—or aro alleged to be like that, probably with as much iusti fu-ation as there 'is in the charge that the Aberdonian is nearer than a woollen undershirt and as devoid of humour as a tin pip Held on a wet day. But. at least, / the incident justifies recalling the old story of the Glasgow city father who is said to have departed this life and ai lived in the other world with a lively cur osity about its conditions. After a preliminary suivey ho delivered himself to the nearest bystander thus: "This is verra. vcrra gratifying. 1 never thorht heaven wad be sae like Glesca. " But," protested tho other, " this isn't heaven "

There is at least one man in Auck land civic life who brings a touch of imagination to his job Mr. Blood woith thinks Auckland should have a municipal golf course, a municipal milk supply, a municipal aerodrome, and a municipal bank He was becomingly modest about the golf course, explaining that he was not a golfer and had no very definite, opinions to express. But, so tai as anyone knows, he is not an airman, a milkman, or a banker, though ho may be a depositor in a moderate way He had just as much right, there fOl e, to advocate tho golf course as any of tho oihei things. But, giving Mr. Blood worth full credit for his procres sivo spirit, he doos not seem to have appreciated the value of concentration. \Y hy not combine all Mis objoctives ? First, provide the golf course. In a country as devoted to sport as this one is that would be a go-id starting point. When the grass tias taken nicely, turn cows on to the fairways, and as oppor trinity presents itself mark out a landing ground for aeroplanes. 'lhe chance of enlisting an airman to hunt for a lost ball would be a powerful attraction for eriatic golfers. The bank is a d' ftj cully, cerlaiplv. No doubt there would be ba'nk bunkers, but money deposited in them would lip rather top much at the rnorcy of busy niblick'* for real safety Somoi liing else will have to be thought up for the bank but the other thiee might be combined with economy in land «ud amid general applause.

A member of the executive of the New Zealand Farmers' Union—it is just as well to lie precise about this—says that the children at school are not taught properly to express their thoughts, and ho thinks they should he. There wove men, he said, who could freely sway meetings, even when, what they said was not sound It now becomes dimly ap parent what l>-: was driving at, though it also seems n pity ho had not expressed himself ratiier better. Here is where the argument appears to stand: because men who 'can speak are able to sway meetings even though what they say is not sound, all the children at school should be taught to speak. Result, when they grow up they will be able to sway meetings, though their ideas may not be sound. Now what that man might have said, but didn't, was that the children at school should be taught to think. Then meetings would not be swayed by men, though what they said was not sound —or nil sound, as the case may be. When the position is analysed this scheme for making public speakers of the unoffending school children, whose bright, young lives are already sufficiently menaced. what with unification and agricultural bins and Hat feet and what not, had better be stamped on right away The number of public speakers already exceeds tho number of public Pud private thinkers far too greatly.

The chairman of the Dairy Produce Board ha- revealed tho very interesting fact that last year a beer Ixittle was found embedded in a cheese turned oui by a New Zealand factory. Tho bottle was empty It is not known whether its presence there was due to carelessness or mischief. Had the bottle been full, there would have been no doubt. tew people get mischievous with full and unopened beer bottles—at least, mischievous enough to lose them permanently. But this curious happening suggests an idea. The man who fii!>t thought of sticking a piece of iridiaiubbor on the end of a pencil is said to have made a fortune out of the idea. At least- according to the story as usually told, the man who first thought of doing it on a commercial scale made the fortune. Tho pneo he was able to charge more than covered tho cost of the rubber, and yot the combination pencil proved popular enough to sell in millions. Now what about some enterprising chees« company supplying a bottle of beer with each cheese it sells ? Therp is little doubt the sales would go up. and r the price was right the profit would 1)3 sure. There should be money in this idea, yet here it is, presented absolutely free lo any cheese manufacturer with tho necessary spirit of enterprise.

Not long ago Parliament was called on fo act because a typists, striking the wrong key when copying the draft of a bill, had made Parliament legislate to no effect. The mistake had to be corrected A correspondent has forwarded 3 document in which the striking of a wrong key has perhaps caused the truth to he told by inadvertence. An organisation in .t country town issued a circular to business people suggesting thoy should nay a small levy for an entnely laudable •urpose, promising to do their business vjod. It 'included ono of these forms, ;o often thoughtfully provided in simi 'ar circumstances to save the target the trouble of writing an acceptance. You know the ono of the "sign on the dotted line" kind. But the typist or typiste, as the case may have been, in troduted the novel feature. The conclnd ing sentence was made to read " Please kindly sigh and return the attached slip if you are agreeable to contribute." That, no doubt, is what business people ofton do when they feel they cannot refuse to respond to aD appeal, but wish th<n could.