LOCAL GOSSIP.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21118, 27 February 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

LOCAL GOSSIP.

BY /MERCTUTIO.

This year, 1932, is ono which has the distinction of coming "once in four;" consequently it has the ono day more which keeps tho calendar right, keeps it from saying it is to-day when actually it to-morrow or yesterday or something in- . consequential like that. One result is {bat certain worthy citizens who had the judgment to be born 011 February 29 /will have the chance on Monday—a comparatively rare chance—of celebrating a birthday. It is a distinction with its advantages and its drawbacks, being a leapyear child. In youth, if the calendar is taken strictly as a guide the drawbacks gre outstanding. / A birthday only once every four years, with presents correspondingly reduced! Why the thing scarcely bears contemplation. Of course as the years go. by the compensations appear. For <1 man of 48 years to be s.ble to say he is about to celebrate his 16th birthday has its points. There is a nice little catch in it, too. Take the case of the man who lias achieved 80 years—and one respected Aucklander will do that ''on Monday; explain tho leap-year joke "and ask how many birthdays he has had. 1 Kine people out of ten, aft-er performing prodigies of mental arithmetic, will say ,-20. And they will be wrong! As for ihe reason, it is simple. The century vear, the year of what someone has called the naughty noughts, is not a leap year. Thus 1900 was not one, and the octogenarian was robbed of a birthday. Oh, it's full of catches, this being born on February 29. It has its special catch this year. Tor, after celebrating this specially-fav-oured birthday on Monday, the leap year "folk can turn equably to contemplate Tuesday, the last day on which income

lax can be paid without the penalty being charged. Nice of the commissioner to arrange this, wasn't it ?

Such is the irresistible advance, of femininity in sport that down in Christrliurch they are evolving modified Rugby for girls; and those who think they are evolving modified girls for Rugby are not altogether pleased about it*

The girl applying for a job who, when asked what her experience was answered rone, and added " I shall not get any until I make a start," showed a real power of logical thought. The answer reminds one of the reply made by the eldest inhabitant of the village who, asked whether he had lived there all his Jife said " Not yet."

A New Zealand economist returned from a world tour tells how, when in the United States, he saw the gold reserve of the Federal Reserve Bank buried deep in the bowels of the earth, five storeys below the surface. Logical creatures, human beings! Years, energies, indeed lives, are spent in mining gold-bearing ores, in raising them from the depths of the earth. Then wlu>a-they_have been reduced, the gold extracted and refined, it is taken away and buried in the depths of the earth. Some of that gold may have, indeed probably did, come from Waihi or- Thames or any of the fields of New jZealand; it may have done so many years ago, for gold does not easily perish. The Rand, Alaska/ the ancient mines of the Incas, ma.y have contributed to the store. And now it lies locked away in vaults, guarded by armed men lest it might be taken out and put to some real practical use. What's it all about? What's it all for ? Answer that question and you may go on next with confidence to solve the" riddle of the universe.

The sailing of a full-rigged ship from the port of Auckland has been made quite an occasion. Rightly so, too, because it hadn't happened for a long, long time, and nobody can say when it will happen again. ) Those who go down to the sea in ships nowadays don't really go in ships, but in steam kettles, in marine motor-cars. The tall ship lias given place to the squat steamer, and traffic on the sea has thereby been robbed cf much that made it picturesque, perilous and romantic. It had to be, and it was. No man may stay the moving- finger of time, or roll back the tide of progress: .which doesn't mean that plenty would not like to do it, or think they would. Suppose by some unsuspected trick of fate all mechanically driven craft were swept from the seas and the world were thrown back wholly upon sail, what would happen ? Many thing?. Old sailormen would return to the seaways where they had suddenly become indispensable. Haif-forgotten arts and crafts would be revived. Seamanship would regain a new meaning—really an old meaning. Yes, but what else would happen ? A European mail would take an indeterminate time, perhaps up to six months, to reach New Zealand. The .perishable products of the soil that depend on swift transport and refrigeration to reach their distant markets would rot in store, and the whole elaborte economic system of this country would collapse, not merely run creakingly as it does at present. All life would have to be readjusted: so much do we depend on the steam or the oil that keeps the pistons thrusting and turns the crankshaft/ It is all very well to sigh for the picturesqueness that lias vanished, but we have made ourselves slaves and dependents of the machine that takes its place.

/ The Auckland Kennel Association has struck a. great blow for democracy in the dog world. To go beyond the patricians of various breeds, with pedigrees that would fill pages, and offer prizes for the cleverest dog, the ugliest dog, the dog with the longest tail or the saddest expression or the most completely bandy legs, is a step that can be imagined causing a buzz of tafk on vacant lots, at street corners or in other places where dogs which are just dog, mostly congregate. Mercutio took an early opportunity of consulting one Peter, about it, a cheerful chap who might have been a, champion cocker spaniel if the shape of his head and tho bulge of his eyes did not to irretistibly suggest pug. Ho heartily approved the innovation. It had long been tie subject of remark in canine circles, ke said, that while tho human race was always talking about equality and democracy and so forth, they imposed on their animal associates a regime of unbendinjly aristocratic cast. It could be most ] humiliating, ho explained. A dog migltt be of absolute world-beating calibre h stamina, intelligence, ratcatching, technique, temper and disposition, yet then it caino to show time, he simply waWt in it with a yapping pom, a spindle-egged toy terrier or a sniffy Pekinese iccause of the mere accident of birth. 'A human who raised himself from obscjrity to eminence was applauded aip fawned upon; a dog was liable to bi kicked for even trying to do it. It -wash't rijht, and from the facfc that this jlove nad been made toward the establiaiment in dogland of equal lights for 111 and special privileges for none, dogsp'ere beginning to have some iopes of thJ human race.