THE COMMON ROUND

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22607, 26 June 1935, Page 2

THE COMMON ROUND

By Wayfarer.

I The people of the world, the working ] people, are mostly farmers; the rest | mostly parasites. Or is it the other | way round? It matters not. It all goes ! to show that we eat too much. Parai sites must live. To try to keep pace with the hundred Young Farmers who came to town last week was n duty. But the strain was terrific, and our seven-league boots were leaking. They have iron constitutions, these young men, and their entertainment was planned accordingly. Manufacturers, clergy, merchants, professors, musicians, community singers, rectors, doctors, art critics, curators, astronomers, legislators and heaven knows who buckled on their war gear and prepared the fusillade. And the Young Farmers, who had not thought to bring gas masks, stood up to the onslaught like heroes. British infantry facing the wild rushes of dervishes in the desert could not have done better. If rumour be correct, though under orders to withhold their fire, they inflicted more than one casualty. What was the medical answer to an inquiry as to the suitability of Balclutha for a nudist colony? What compositions did they ask for on the city organ? Doubtless the song the Sirens sang. It is heard sometimes in winter in the unsophisticated backblocks. On these and other vital points the usual sources of information are reticent. But they went to the weekly cheer warble, joined in the Danse Desmoulins, and sang " Home to our Mountains " with fine gusto. Anyway it was a moist and glorious week —a debauch of mental improvement. If the Young Farmers are not suffering from dyspepsia it is not the city's fault. But while factories and art galleries and observatories andmuseums are all very well they are static. They are always with us. They can wait. Not so our transient civic phenomena. There were strange omissions from the Young Farmers' cultural menu. No representative Douglas Credit exponent was invited to address them. How they would have enjoyed a little talk by Councillor M'Millan on recent archaeological discoveries at Waipori! They may have yearned to hear Councillor Batchelor on the good old days of the Triangle among the tins and bottles. They were taken to see wool —how sick they must be of the sight of it —when they might have been listening to Councillors Munro and Jones on the evergreen subject of how to be in two places at the same time and travel at the country's expense. Did a guide conduct them down Princes street and point out "Who's who"? What, not really! "Plain Bill" — that long, thin man with the sidewhiskers? No, No! That is a rabbit inspector. By Jove! Let's move on boys! And, as night spread her pall, ever in the murk above the Government's magnificent railway engine and three carriages whirled their wheels in flashing red, white, and blue, and never moved an inch. And the human beehive, last of the world's seven wonders, ground steadily on its prehistoric way to the hills above. Then all was hush'd Save the remorseless roar of gutters; And ever and anon the bubbling cry Of some late straggler In his agony. But it is nice to think that the visit of the Young Farmers has been good for the book trade. How wretched the man whose books are not his best friends! As Uncle Toby said to the Widow Wadman—but, as usual, somebody has gone off with the volume. The head of one of our secondary schools has put the Young Farmers on the right road. Not without warnings! A beginning perhaps with Cobbett's "Rural Rides," but no •whisper of "Jorrocks." Solid reading, yes! Good old Macftulay and lots of " Lives " —Scott and Queen Victoria. But the light and frivolous-minded brigade — the comedians, the satirists, the romancers—No! For adventure a caution, and, floating above all the deep wells of our Literature, how exhilarating to find that unsinkable lifebuoy, the great H. G. Wells himself! How softly falls that "Wells in particular" To the hayfield and the mustering the Young Farmer will carry his satchel of intensive literary pabulum. Let us hope that "Mr Polly " and " Jimmy Goggles the God " do not somehow get mixed up in it. In the pure air of intellect and the Otago Central the Young Farmer will be happy again. It has been the city's parting assurance, the banquet-hall benediction. But again the pale cast of doubt. For it is written in immortal verse— The farmer will- never be happy again He carries his heart In his boots For either the rain la destroying his grain Or the drought is destroying his roots. A Canterbury' professor has been explaining why slovenliness is apparent in the speech of New Zealanders. The trouble is begotten of modesty. New Zealanders, Australians too, do not attach enough importance to what they are saying. Consequently they do not care how they say it. The soft impeachment may not altogether displease. Yet it is unexpected. The ugliest speech we hear does not come from persons whose deportment is noticeably retiring. The professor's trained and sensitive ear has run to earth a nosey articulation, a nasal twang: Do you notice what unpleasant faces some of them make when they speak? I wish some of the painted flappers could see themselves when they talk. The upper lip assumes a snarling expression. All the vowels are sent up somewhere towards the nasal cavities. Is it some physiological difference that ie creeping in? Are we in danger of losing our upper lips? Well, if girls develop the type of upper lip that their speech suggests, I am glad my young days are over. Alas! We have noticed. And we have heard irate seniority use the expression " None of your lip," which no doubt illumines the professor's observations. But where stands modesty with labial contortion and the imitative faculty? A nosey intonation in the palaces of pulsing pictorial refinement may account for a good deal. A northern rector has discovered the film vocabulary of some boys to be " truly amazing." The air-minded ones hanker after the dedication of the southern end of our harbour, when it shall be terra firma, for the purposes of an air-port. The Harbour Board lends ear to their beguilings, but without enthusiasm. The population in that vicinity is apparently not to be consulted. But the gentle purr of the flying machine over our roof-tops, especially when super'Maxim Gorky types are common, will lie a restful experience. The dogs may bark, and the seagulls may fret, a few machines may get involved with backyards, chimneys, and masts of ships, but, being fully air-minded, we shall rejoice in our intimacy with a richer era. When the planes blot out our sunshine, and the flying-boats skim over Anderson's Bay to flop into the harbour, to the terror of the dreary octopus, and railway engines rust and wharves decay, we shall glorify the age of uplift —the higher life. There is one aspect of the proposition which seems to have escaped notice. Rude Boreas supplies it. It is in evidence every time a black nor'-easter rages, as it did the other day, and out of the bottle-neck of our harbour hills tears across the southern endowment like an unleashed monster. Who that has tried to stand against it on the foreshore, and fought for breath against its buffetings and batterings, would wish to plant an aerodrome in such a place? The nor'-easter, most reviled among our

winds, will do our old harbour a good turn yet. Very like a whale! Two engraved whale teeth have been presented to the Auckland War Memorial Museum. The donor, according to a northern source of information, "is a great grandchild on both sides of the original owners." An inquiring correspondent writes: "Is this the missing link? It must be a hard blow to the Fundamentalists."