PASSING THE TIME AWAY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20292, 28 December 1927, Page 13

PASSING THE TIME AWAY.

HOBBIES WHILE TRAVELLING. Most people think that suburban residents spend their time on the train reading the newspapers or chatting about business (writes a correspondent of the New York Times). Playing cards is also a well-known pastime for men who must journey an hour or more on their twice-a-day trip. But there arc other occupations. Girls knit and sew on their way to the office, and sometimes write letters on the morning express. Incidentally,- women seem to prefer novels to newspapers as they shuttle to and from the job. Then crossword puzzles keep some members of both sexes busy, some of them eagerly entering the puzzle mazes on the station platform before the train pulls in. Now and then a chess addict may b observed with a pocket folding board, working out profound problems of the game. He wears, consciously or unconsciously, a mantle of superiority in the presence of the crossword puzzlers. There is considerable study done on these trains, usually by the younger travellers. The late Hamilton Wright Mabie. whose pen delighted a large audience, in his years of travelling between Tarrytown and Manhattan, used his rail hours for special application to language*!. He often asserted that ho had mastered three modern tongues in this fashion.