THE COMMON ROUND.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19496, 3 June 1925, Page 2

THE COMMON ROUND.

By W ayfarxii.. Many Happy Returns of the Day to King George, wdio completes his sixtieth year - , bestowing a regal benediction on the Dunedin winter carnival. A diamond jubilee, perhaps it might be called. His Majesty is less than a year older than King Edwai’d was at the accession in 1901. To be sixty is not to be young or to be young-looking, as an eminent artist, who liad been foolishly charged with portraying the Sovereign in unflattering guise, remarked last year. “The honourable lines of anxious service are engraved upon His Majesty’s countenance, and it would be a perverse compliment to represent him as a young man.” But to be sixty should bo still to have several years of happy and useful life ahead; and King George’s wellordered regime, personal and public, encourages the hope that his reign has long to run, “Keeping his throne unshaken still. Broad-based upon his people's will, And compassed by the inviolate sea.” They come trooping, our country cousins, to the Show (with the races as a sideshow), and right glad are we to see them. They come with the healthy bloom of open-air life upon their cheeks and tho goodly brown of rural toil upon their hands. We tell them, once again, that they are the backbone of the dominion, etc., etc. They' smile modestly, and tell us that they are only too glad to do anything for us—with one exception. They won’t undertake, or even try, to “keep to the left-side.’ Why should they? You are not asked to keep to the left-side of a paddock or a homestead path. Besides, the regulation pans out quite unfairly in town. It all depends on which direction you are going. If you are wandering your way, say from Knox Church to the Octagon on the right side, “Kccf.) to the left" means that you can’t enjoy a nice quiet look into the shop-windows—and vice versa. Therefore country visitors and feminine citizens and shopkeepers will always bo hostile to the chalk-mark. To revert, however; our friends from the farms and the sheep stations and tho tussocks will admit that we are showing them Dunedin at its best in point of weather. The air bites shrewdly, but their own ample spaces are not charged with a more wholesome atmosphere. They deserve hospitable treatment, for they are tho backbone of . . . but someone may have said that before. We talked of the Derby last week on tho eve of the race. Tutankhamen (alias Ptolemy II) did not win; the cablegrams do not even mention him as an “also started,” in spite of the chartered steamer and the three detectives and tho veterinary surgeon and the consignment of special horse feed. But Manna won ; and a certain Mr Carew won,—won the first prize in the Calcutta lottery, bringing him in what Joe Gargory would have called ■a “cool” fifty thousand, more or less. The incidents of Mr Carow’s past life and present intentions arc distinctly interesting. They embrace a fearful and wonderful mixture. Seafaring, boiler-scraping, business management, racing speculation : and then on the morning of the greats clay big with the fate of Manna and Carew—but let him toll the story in his own words: I left work in order to avoid excitement and went home and said a few prayers. I wont to bed and smoked my pipe peacefully until the time of the race, I drew Manna in another small swoop at Hull. This made me tho more certain I was in luck's way. I saw the race in my mind’s eye, and know the result as soon as the horse flashed past tho post. Whatever else I might do with the money, I intend 'to give £IOOO to tho Roman Catholic orphanage at Crosby. Why should I buy a motor ear. when I have the motor ear which Horatio Bottomloy used before ho was sentenced? Pause and meditate over the weird conglomeration. Varied industry, brave punt ing, prayerful petitions, peaceful pipesmoking, a trifle more speculation (at Hull), an infinite measure of superstition tho seeing of the race in my mind’s eye, Horatio.— fortune’s munificent gift, and the bliankfnl recognition in aid of religious charity. There may be doubts as to whether the final allusion to Horatio Bottomley is out of place. Mr Coates has come in on a pretty general wave of approval. Not a word of disparagement has been said. His enemies, if ho luas any, have been decently silent; and my only’hope is that his well-meaning friends will not. make the mistake of praising or advertising him in wrong fashion. For instance : Mr Contes is a family man. He is tho father of five young girls and delights in their company- Yesterday, after his election as leader of the Reform Party, it was the maid’s night out, so after tea_ the Prime Minister-elect sent his wife with a friend to enjoy a laugh at the theatre while he slaved at home to wash up with the elder girls and to mind the baby. Tho people roust gain a real affection for a man like that. It may perhaps ho questioned whether this little narrative, pleasant enough as it is in a, way, is couched in a strain calculated to arrest public sympathy. Have you over, or never, sat uncomfortably in church, with a sensation that the posterior hones and tho naked wood of tlio pew were too closely combined? Have you shifted uneasily, trying hard to keep mind and ear attentive to prayer and praise and discourse? Well, if ihe answer is in the affirmative, as conscientiously it surely must he, think of Heaven. You sing of Jerusalem the Golden, and of the special place reserved for you—(though you would join in a panic rush if (ire broke out in the church) —and you dream with lazy religiosity of harps and jasper pavements and golden crowns and cushy seats. Listen to an outspoken English parson : “There will ho no plush seats .in Heaven, and some of us will bo lucky if wo get any at all,” the Rev. H. C. Robins, vicar of St. Edwards. Romford, told members of his church council. He was replying to a complaint (hat. cushions had been removed from some of the pews. 'Tho cushions were dilapidated, said the vicar, and ho hoped they would not be replaced. Ho would like to see all cushions done away with in church. The Son of Min had not where to lay His head. Let us not be too anxious, Mr Robins might say, as to where we give repose to the less noble parts of the body. I have occasionally fraternised (unofficially and “without prejudice”) with members of the detective force, and always found them to be good fellows. In the course of our conversations they did not watch me with embarrassing vigilance. They were ready to learn the little that I knew, and to impart (within limits of discretion) the much that they knew. Shrewd, of course, with unsleeping eyes and ears and brains, but genuinely humane, wishful to do a good turn, whether to harmless journalist or harmful criminal. But, after these general and generous remarks, let me say that I leave never met a selfsacrificing detective akin to the Worcestershire sleuth whose heroism bus recently been recorded. To obtain evidence against a dentist whom he believed to be unregistered, a Dudley, Worcestershire, policeman had a tooth extracted. He paid 2s 6d. Yesterday the dentist, James Carr, paid £5. No hint of compensation, or of a Y.C. or M.C. “for valour.” Not as much as an 0.8. E. Tho very name of the brave champion is umuentioned. But Wayfarer, not oblivious of those two and sixpenny agonies, extends sympathetic admiration across tire wide waters. Reports of cases in New Zealand courts are often touched with piquant personal interest. but perhaps they know the trick of the game better in Canada. For example: Full battery of lawyers retained in tho Bingo case, seven in ail, ranged in tho city police court yesterday. At tho end of the table Joseph Myers, managing director of tho mine, about whom the Crown is endeavouring to weave a net of evidence pointing to his salting the mine, sat fiddling with his endless slips of paper, frequently _ passing them out to his plaster on the ’back of his neck, apparently e„ee.iic a , >);. hi. it li ; ■ , ■•> ~e unloosened in one corner and was merrily flapping in the breeze. More might-be quoted., but enough is as

good as a feast. Our observant reporters don’t give us bulletins about boils and plasters, but we lag behind some parts of the Empire. There is a gruesome charm in the imaginative vision of an unloosened and merrily flapping boil. America itself may be envious of Manitoba.