THE COMMON ROUND

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22099, 1 November 1933, Page 2

THE COMMON ROUND

By Wayfaeek.

Names make news. It is doubtful whether the discovery of the pen with which “The Common Round” was written in 1933 will ever excite some future archeologist and capture columns iu the press, but such excitement has recently been caused in Europe by the finding (not for the first time, either) of Horace’s villa in the Sabine, Hills. The thing that seems to have aroused the newspapers’ frenzy is the fact that it contains baths. The firlt is a rectangular room with the floor at a lower level than the remainder of the villa. The entire lower part of the room used to be filled with water through an opening which is still visible in the wall. . . . This room was evidently used for cold baths only, for hot baths were taken in another room. . . . Horace must have been very fond of bathing, for a smaller hot bath was in another part of the villa, in addition to a swimming pool in the garden. , . . In other words, the villa of Horace contained baths, in which he presumably bathed. Now there is nothing very much to get excited about in that. Most of Horace’s friends had baths too, for the Romans of his day were a cleanly race. In fact, the history of Rome seems to be perpetuated largely in saucy stories and ruined bathrooms. Indeed, most of it seems to consist of a combination of baths and anecdotes concerning them. We cannot help feeling that if there-had been less washing two thousand years ago there might have been a good deal less fuss made about the ancient philosophers, and that, as any schoolboy knows, would be all to the good.

As far as we can see, if any struggling philosopher wanted to make an immortal name for himself, all he had to do was to take off his toga and struggle in a bath. We are almost tempted to break into bitter 1 verse about it. In fact, we fall and break: — TALES OF THE TUB. When Homer smote his blooming lyre, He set his audience on fire; But when he wished to wash his face, He went alone, with modest grace. Now Horace, he had nothing on That torch-singer of Helicon, And so to show he was no fool He went and got a swimming-pool— It evidently seemed to him, He could not sing, so ho would swim; But If he thought he had to wash Four bathrooms seems a lot of bosh. Or there’s the case of Archimedes, A good mechanic, true, but he’d his Pet weakness too; we have to laugh To think how that boy loved his bath. He’d sit there dreaming hydrostatics. While wiser scholars sat In attics; Then make the neighbours look askance, By rushing out without His pants. Then take that chap Diogenes, Instead of rearing progenies, Or boarding quietly at a pub, He had to go and hire a tub; It seemed to tickle Alexander, A home without a sun verandah; But If we’d seen the silly cynic, We would have shoved him in a clinic.

The Moral. The moral Is, we do not think It’s clever yodelling at the sink, We see no virtue In immersion— To bathroom bards we’ve an aversion,

The trying experience recorded in this column last week of a man who, having been declared dead, was refused readmission to the electoral roll on appearing in person to complain that the presumption of demise was premature, reminds a correspondent of a New Zealand case wherein a man was decreed dead by law who was not dead in fact. Alpers J. recalls the case in his “ Cheerful Yesterdays.” A. 8., a wealthy run-holder in Canterbury, had become insane, and after he had been shut away for twentytwo years it was desired in the interests of his sons that the estate should be divided. The family solicitor, a man of resource, conceived the brillidht idea of obtaining administration on the assumption that A. B. had died. The New Zealand Parliament, no less possessed of initiative, and with an eye to substantial death duties, passed an appropriate Act, the fictitious time and equally fictitious place of the, fictitious death being duly specified. The deceased, as a final act of grace, was provided with an ample settlement, including the services of a car and chauffeur as he was not averse from a drive in the country.'

All went well, the only hitch in the scheme being the emergence of A. B, from the mental home, sane and very much alive. Fortunately he was, as has been indicated, a reasonable man, and had no wish for resurrection. Indeed, he derived a certain ironic satisfaction from his situation. Wrote the learned judge:— One day when the paper brought the news of a suit in which a neighbouring squatter had been divorced for misconduct, he turned to his relative and said with a chuckle, “If I were to misbehave myself I couldn’t be divorced, that’s certain —I’m dead.” f It is not every man who can accept the fact of his demise with such commendable tranquillity.

Whimsy extends even to royal personages in this age of extraordinary happenings. From the pages of the Sunday Express* comes the latest report o f monarchical eccentricity:— We saw the King arrive through a chink in a window in the basement, with a lot of workmen and charwomen who

were immensely excited. . . . This is the sort of happening that Sir J. M. Barrie has made peculiarly his own. Die-hards may consider that there is such a thing as carrying democracy too far, and of over-doing the unconventional attitude, but it is scarcely open to doubt that the privileged spectators on this occasion must have been both loyally and agreeably impressed. As for the charwomen, they have more experience than any section of the public except housemaids with the uses of chinks and key-holes, and we can understand that with their excitement at seeing these convenient apertures utilised for a new purpose would be commingled genuine and heartfelt admiration for the personage who led them into the breach.

Perhaps even more remarkable, however, is the revelation of a lady who recently returned from an inspection of

Hitlerised Germany. There were no fewer than 41,000 men and women in Berlin, she declared, who dared not sleep in the same room every night. The inspired press had led ns to believe that New Germany is breeding a hardy and fearless and united race, with cooperation as a basic part of their procedure, yet at the first opportunity of | applying the community principle to their behaviour these half-hearted revolu- | tionaries revolt. How could a sinking of prejudices as to class and rank be better exemplified than in the sharing by the Nazi legions of bedroom and breakfast with forty thousand of their colleagues? What could make a more inspiring proclamation of their indivisibility than a symphony of nasal organs raised nightly in harmony, a paean of praise to Hitler rising even in somnambulence . . . midst the crowd, the hum, i the shock of men? Of course, we, who are civilised, realise that Nazis would make strange bedfellows, but it is sad to know they cannot enjoy their nightmare fantasies , in unison. They manage things better in Italy, ! where even Hymen is subject to sensible discipline.

Outdoing the German mass marriage of last July the Fascists, who are alarmed at the decline in the birthrate, have organised a festival of marriage ... in which 2000 couples are being wed at dawn. . . . “Mussolini expects . . but while we should be the last to question the wisdom and the strength of a dictator, we cannot refrain (bearing in mind the Bishops of Lambeth and the recent visit of Dr Marie Stopes to Rome) from a certain scepticism regarding the prolific expectations of il Dime in this instance. Is it permissible to imagine him gathering together his statisticians and pointing sternly to the tell-tale graphs of vital Statistics? Tableau:— “It sundry men and sundry maids Get married every year, Do you suppose,” 11 Duce said, “We’ll keep the birth-rate here?” “ I doubt It,” said the registrar. And wept a bitter tear. " Well then,” hla Excellency declared. In tones both grave and bitter, “ We’ll marry them In legions— There’ll be no bachelor quitter I** " The question Is,” his friend replied, "Will each pair get a litter?” Lord Raglan declares that the savage is less cbild-like than the test match enthusiast. And, he might have added, less savage. • Concern is expressed in Capetown at an anti-Jewish campaign which includes the pasting of insulting slips on railway carriage seats. This sort of thing requires to -be firmly sat upon. Comment is heard regarding the way in which journalists are being treated in Germany. New Zealand Parliamentarians state that in their experience , the more often they treat them the better. There is considerable conjecture in Europe as to the identity of the mysterious Marie Louise. If, as appears probable, she is the heroine of one of those gongs they used to sing in the trenches, the less said about her the . better.