TALES OUT OF SCHOOL

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23133, 3 September 1938, Page 14 (Supplement)

TALES OUT OF SCHOOL

AVERY handsome and valuable souvenir' of the Auckland GirlsJ Grammar School jubilee is the special number of the school magazine issued to mark the occasion. Few publications of its kind have been so well done. It is a remarkably comprehensive record of activities at a famous school for 50 years.

There is much, of course, both in illustration and letterpress, that can be properly appreciated only by old pupils of the school. However, the editors have furnished at least one item for the "general reader." This is a chapter entitled "Shall I Ever Forget—" Following are some of the items; —

The Belgian French master who invited the girls to strawberries and cream—and soon departed ?

A Third Form at a French lesson with .Miss Wallace? "Is there anyone who doesn't understand this;-" l'p goes a small girl's hand. "How dare you? Leave the room for impertinence!" Mr. Major, now a pillar of the Modernists in Kngland, cowering behind the blackboard as a refuge from cruel girls:' A school picnic to Xihotapu (as it was called in the 'nineties) ? "Tomtug hats, wasp waists and belts like saddle girths. The only time t ever had a mistress at my mercy—when Mademoiselle IJhlmann wanted to be taught tennis? Mademoiselle on her wrathful dignity:- "I say nozzing. I shut my niotis and smile like an oyster." Mademoiselle's telling me that 1 always chose the most "unappropriated" word?

Some Memories Grave and Gay Recorded by "Old Gra Girls"

The girl who was jokingly told to squeeze the filter and was found faithfully obeying instructions? Mr. Morrell convulsively jerking his drawing stool ever nearer the edge of the dais until —? Sir .Maurice's peroration at a prizegiving about the hoys "finding a fuller reward in the lovely white arms, etc," and tin? frozen horror on the faces of M isses Wallace, Maul tain and Blades? Mr. Tibbs, gazing at a photograph of the sixth, and remarking, "You must be a singularly brainy set of girls''? The girl who, walking decorously in line to the Albert Street Swimming Baths, suddenly, as we passed the City .Markets, shot out her hand from the "Croc.," bid .'ss (id for a sack of potatoes and. to her own di.smay and the fury of the mistress in charge, heard them knocked down to her? The kindly member of a large Auckland clan who stopped another speaking uncharitably by saying, "You know. X is my cousin"? When someone said afterwards. "I didn't know that," she replied. "Neither do J, but someone bad to stop her. and who knows who is not my cousin? Our name is legion."

The year, when quite accidentally, the inspector's arrival was greeted with "0 Cod our help in ages past." and their departure speeded with "Let lis with a gladsome mind, IVa'ise the Lord, for He is kind"?

Prize-giving (lav, 19.%—just after the Abdication tlio strange, symbolical darkness of the total eclipse in tlx* morning. followed by brilliant sunshine in tlie afternoon?