What Others Are Saying

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23275, 18 February 1939, Page 12 (Supplement)

What Others Are Saying

"Luck Silver" * j JJAROLD GIMBLETT, the Somerset cricketer, and his bride, Miss Marguerita Burgess, were chained together after their wedding at Watchet Methodist-Church, Somerset. The children who bound them would, not let them go,until they had paid "Luck Silver" to pass through the church gates. This West Somerset custom is believed to bring good luck and a happy married life. • Mr. Gimblett lives at Blakes Farm, Bicknoller. 31iss Burgess is the only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Fred Burgess, of Knapp Cottage, Watchet. Somerset County cricketers attended the wedding in force. —News of the "World. London. What's in a Name? ]\fß. ANT? MRS. L. E. FANT, of Richmond, Virginia, have been overwhelmed with gifts from friends since they married. All the presents are elephants (not live ones). Their house is full of them. Mr. L. E. Fant describes the situation as "complicated." —Renter. New "Line" in Anglers is a story for anglers—and it's - 1 - not about, fish. When- a 'gown shop in High Street, Eastleigh, Hants, was opened recently, a long piccp of stout wire, bent at one end, was found lying on the floor —• with an expensive gown hooked on to it. That explained the recent thefts of light articles from shops the fanlights of which had been left slightly open at night. And doesn't it go to show that whatever you are angling for it is always the biggest "fish" that gets away? —Sunday Chronicle, London. Spanish Turmoil TN the heart of Barcelona, stand dozens/of shattered houses. Staircases hang in space like unfinished spirals. The passer-by can look into a room through a no longer existent wall and see a crushed bedstead, a clock, a child's chair, as if they wore on the stage. ■ Recently 1 spent a whole day with some of the men who are responsible' for those ruins—with captured Italian and German aviators. Some sire gullible fools and some are cynical murderers. The '1 talian,s are chatterboxes, thoughtless and • good-natured. They repeat hastily a few phrases they have learned by heart and then pass on 1:0 the subject of girls and the weather. The Germans are methodical and steeped to the marrow in propaganda. *—'llya Ehrenboursr. in Izvestia, Moscow. Inspired -WHEN.y°u .can't think, ,go Joe a . long walk," advises someone, probably a shoe manufacturer. < "—Washington Post, i

Eton Specials •p.TON COLLEGE, regarded by many as tho apex of the Public School system, was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI. From that day to this it has been closely associated with the Monarchy and the ruling families of .Britain* j To the public at large Eton is perhaps best known for certain of her peculiarities:.' For instance, Etonians w-ho have not yet reached the height of sft. 4in. wear top hats and Eton jackets; those who are over that height wear top hats and tail coats. —From "The Old Public Schools of England," by John Rodgers. (Batsford, London). Finger-Prints TF one were to ask any ordinary pcrson in France and the United States who invented the system of fin-ger-prints as used now by the police of every modern State, tho answer in nine cases out of ten would be Bertillon. Probably even in Britain more people would give this answer than not. It is a remarkable instance of wliat amounts sometimes to sheer genius on the part of the public for getting hold of the wrong end of the stick; not just the middle of the stick, or a bit toward the wrong end, but the actual wrong end itself. For Bertillon, who had invented his own system of individual identification and classification, was for long strongly hostile to the finger-print system, and did not allow himself to be reconciled to it until as late as 1903, by which time its value was a matter of proof and not of speculation. —Francis lies, London. "Everybody Sing!" " T BELIEVE that singing—not liutn--1 ming; it must be a lusty voice—can cure many ailments. According to my theory, tho motion of singing actually has, a disinfecting action on the throat." —Dr. Thausing, Hamburg. Culture v. Whisky GIR DENI.SON ROSS has returned to London after giving the Lowell lectures at Boston. As a much-travelled scholar who had not previously been to the United States, he brought back three, outstanding impressions, a The first is the high level of culture in Boston. The others are more material — the overheating of the public rooms and tho impossibility of getting any good whisky. —Peterborough, in The Daily Telegraph. Our Mission live in a world which is full of - " ■ misery and. ignorance, and c the plain duty of each .and all of us is to try , to make the little corndr he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered it, ' —T. H. Huxley.

Golfer and Showman 'THE news that Walter Hngen is A "officially" retiring 'from golf induces a certain melancholy, for here was a colourful and exciting personality, a great golfer and a showman of parts, who drew year after year the bulk of tho crowd at any meeting ho graced and who was always sure to givo them a run, for their money. As he is not dead, and I hope he will last a great many years, for ho 1 is only ,4(3 years old, I do not propose to write an obituary notice, but rather to bid him au revoir, for though he is retiring I cannot see hini divorced for ever from tho game which gave him fame and at one time and another must have brought him a vast deal of money. —Berwick Law. Hat in Hand A LETTER of request needs careful writing, though it does-not call for the last graces of style. A young Inverness reader asks me which of these wordings is "correct": "1 wish to mako an application for the post," or "I wish to make application for the post." Both are correct, but the second is preferable because the writer is concerned with his single application, not with one of a number. But a certain type of employer might think that "an" had been omitted through carelessness. Why not crisply: "1 wish to applv . . In business letters steel filings are better than sawdust. —Jackdaw in John o* Weekly. Not Her " pOOK, I don't like to mention it, V but tho food disappears rather quickly in the kitchen!',' "Well, mum, I admits 1 eats 'earty, but no one could call me gorgeous.'^ —Pathfinder.

[ Evidence "PROGRESS is hitting our town." ! x "How's that?" i "At church the other Sunday, some- ; body dropped a zip-fastener in the collection plato." j —Toronto Globe. i Grit in the Axis rpEHMAXS nowadays must think V highly of Italians, even retrospectively. That the political reorientation presents its own little problems may bo deduced from an apology in the current monthly organ of the German Admiralty for an 'article tending to disparage the work of the Italian navy in the Avar. An indiscreet theory that the Italian battle fleet "never oijcc showed itself in tlio Adriatic" has been translated into terms of "strategic passivity." Any intention of impugning the daring or the offensive spirit of the Italian navv is repudiated. ! The explanation is none too early. German post-war writings on the naval war havo consistently belittled the part played by the Italian navv. British and French naval authors —among tho former Admiral Mark Kerr, ViceAdmiral C. V. Usborne, and Mr. Hector C. Bvwater —have, on the other hand, paid full tribute to Italian navai exploits. They remember particularly the sinking of two Austrian battleships by tiny motor-boats. j ' —Daily Telegraph, London. Serenity minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunder* 1 storm. , —Robert Louis Stevenson, quotod In The Observer, London. Beautiful Good-bye i AK all the good-byes I have heard the Japanese "sayonara"—since it must be so—is the most beautiful. ( Unlike attf wiederseben and an rcvoir it does not cheat itself by any bravado "till wo meet again," and sedative to postpone the pnin of separation. It does not ov:ide the issue like "Farewell" which is a father's good-bye—"Go out into the world and do well, my son." it is encouragement .and admonition, but it passes over the significance of the moment, of parting it says nothing. "Good-bye", and "adios" say too much; they try to bridge distance, almost to deny it. "Good-bye" is a prayer:- "You" must. not go—l cannot bear to have you go! But you shall not go alone, uinvatched. God will be with you." But sayonara says neither too little nor too much; it, is a simplo acceptance of fact. All understanding of life lies in its limits; all emotion, smouldering, is banked up behind it. It is the unspoken good-bye, tho pressure of a hand, "sayonara." —Anno Morrow Liudbergh, in "North to the Orient."