THE COMMON ROUND

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22371, 19 September 1934, Page 2

THE COMMON ROUND

By Wayfarer. The conference of the National Federation of Merchant Tailors’ unanimously passed a resolution to establish a men’s fashion bureau to fix annually the standard of styles. Delegates bitterly criticised male sartorial laxity.—Cable item.

The seasons come, the seasons pass. Yellow the leaves, or green the grass; A sparkling frost, a shimmering day; But in my old blue suit I stay. The girls throw off their woolly clothes. (They do still wear wool. I suppose), Dlaphanously greet the spring, ■While to my faded hat I cling. In flimsy lioso or wee, short socks, And dresses bright as hollyhocks, Brave women dare the threatening sky; But yet I wear my worn school tie. Sometimes they all are tall 3 and thin. Dark is their hair, and brown their skin; Or else they all are plump and blonde. And crimson nails and cheeks have donned. * ■ t But though 1 have no prejudice. And think them all extremely nice, I do not wish for fancy clothes (I can’t afford them, heaven knows!) I do not want to paint my Tips, Or hang pink frillies round my hips, Or wear knee-pants, a backless suit, Or decorate my hat with fruit. Or wave my hair, or wear a wig, And though I hope I’m nbt a prig, I absolutely won’t, damnation. Corset my handsome corporation.

We have at second, third, or fifteenthband a story which deserves the immortal benediction ; of printing hereunder:—

A retired army colonel came to New Zealand on a fishing tour. At one of the hotels in which he stayed, he was engaged in conversation with the desk clerk. “ Are you any good at r.iddles, sir? ” the clerk inquired. “ Well, I don’t know, by jove, but I think I should'be.” d Try this one, then. My father and mother have a child. It is not inv brother: it is not a sister of mine. Who is it?” The colonel pondered deeply. “Blest if I know, y’ know. Sounds like one of those jolly old hermaphrodites in Africa, ha, ha! ” “Wrong, sir,” replied the clerk, “It’s me.”

The colonel was greatly impressed, and immediately he returned to London, sought out his cronies at the club. “Jolly witty lot, these New Zealanders,” he said, after greetings had been exchanged. “All got a quip and a jest, by jove. Now I heard a dam’ funny riddle. Do you know it? ” ’ They assured him they did not. “ Well, you see, my father and mother have a child, and it’s not me or my sister. Who is it, ha, ha! ” After due cogitation the clubmen confessed themselves beaten. “Well, who is it?” they asked.

“Ha, ha! ” said the colonel triumphantly. “You’d never guess—it’s a jolly old hotel clerk in New .Zealand.”

So may a man declare that which, if anyone alleged it of him, would be the immediate provocation for assault and battery.

Our colonel is not alone in literature in his failure to recognise the import of his own revelations. One recalls a pregnant passage in “ The Young Visitors ”:—

He looks a thorough ancestor said Ethel kindly. Well he was said Bernard in a proud tone he was really the Sinister son of Queen Victoria. Not really cried Ethel in excited tones but what does that mean.

Well I don’t quite know said Bernard Clark it puzzles me very much but ancestors do turn quear at times. Probably there are quearer things in the genealogical trees of most of us than are dutifully recorded in the inset pages of the Family Bible which we so proudly show to visitors.

Talking of births, deaths and by-blows, some of the papers have printed a chatty communique from the Soviets lately:— Determining sex by electricity! Producing tabbies or tom-cats, cows or bulls, ewes or rams at will! Such are the sensational experiments in the laboratory of the famous Russian biologist, Professor Nicholas K. Koltzoff (says Popular Science Monthly). Tests with laboratory rabbits have shown that 90 times out of 100 the sex of

the offspring can be determined by the electrical method used by Professor Koltzoff. His discovery is being testecl on an elaborate scale at Government farms in Russia. If it proves to be as successful with sheep, hogs, cattle and horses as it has proved with rabbits. it will enable dairy farmers to produce practically all milk cows, and ranches practically all beef steers. It ■will reduce the waste now occasioned by Nature's haphazard methods. . . .

Poor Dame Nature, she seems to come in for a deal of criticism, one way and another, considering the fact that but for her haphazard methods we would not he here at all; or if we were, would be only too anxious to depart from an arid, uninhabitable world.

But we find the prospect of Officicnt sex-determination infinitely depressing. Poultry, for instance, are sufficiently pampered already, with their individual sleeping-quarters, concrete runs, waferheating and patent foods, and their own Olympic laying tournaments at Christchurch. Just imagine the incredible smugness of a hen which was able to name her chickens before they were hatched. Or take sheep—in what sort of trouble would the grower be involved if his merinos got to monkeying with their electric installations and he was presented with a lot of young rams at lambing-time, just when he needed a. new flock of good breeding ewes? As for mosquitoes, if the female’s instincts are half as anti-social ns we have reason to believe, she might, by daily dalliance on the overhead power lines, reverse Macbeth’s precept and bear girl-children only, to the unutterable discomfort of campers, hikers, bug-hunters and the members of the Gymnosophist Club.

While if the Red professor’s meddlings with the natural rules of sex extend to humankind, what have we not to fear? Man’s numerical authority shattered by bevies of superfluous females; the grave universities turned from their masculine robustness into academies dedicated to tea-chatter, needlework and plain-cooking:—

With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans, And sweet glrl-graduatea In their golden hair. And what use is any possible number of saccharine, platinum-tinted blondes if there are no rough-haired, sportscoated youths for them to be sweet to? Ask any undergraduate!

With worse to come! Women on the Bench; women traffic cops, bawling out shrinking male-drivers in high, screeching voice; young women fighting epic muddy battles on the Carisbrook ground, urged to victory by the timid voices of their fancy-men; old women, bearded and domineering, guffawing, over their whisky in the pubs, shouldering meek, pansy-faced males out of the seats in tram-cars (or worse, insisting that they, remain seated); at last, such an invasion ns Burton foresaw: — ... an army of women, smiters with swords and lungers With lances,' five-and-fwenty thousand in number,., each of whom, whenas . she mountain J steed and donneth battle-gear, eveneth j a thousand knights of the bravest . . .

and man-made civilisation would scatter before an Amazonian autocracy. In any case, perfect the sex-determining machine, and you remove the one sporting element that remains to matrimony. Robbed of the bitter-sweet, speculative periods when he lays wagers on whether it will be a boy or a girl (or both), many a dutiful father might be driven to the race track and the double chart—• and what would the W.C.T.U. say then, poor things?

“ I enjoy my glass of beer after work.” states a newspaper correspondent, “and do not 4 cage, if the publican is an estjockcy or "an ex-policeman so long as he treats*'the reasonably.” Personally, we don’t care if he is an, ex-gangster Qian ex-premier with a cast in one bye, provided he treats us often.

A contributor provides the latest version of a current story. It seems that Prince' George is unable to go to Melbourne because he is Marina princess, so that is why they have Centenary.

“ Oranges have been much in the public eye of late,” observes a contemporary. A sure sign of an electioneering campaign.