Reporter Finds Embarrassment In “Fan Mail”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26963, 24 December 1948, Page 6

Reporter Finds Embarrassment In “Fan Mail”

“Fan mail” and gifts from unknown admirers may be nothing new to royalty, film stars and other people in the limelight, but they can be disconcerting when received by a reporter. One member of the Daily Times staff, however, has been periodically embarrassed during the year by the arrival of boxes of chocolates.

Gifts from admiring folk with whom a reporter comes in contact'are rare enough to occasion considerable surprise, but when the identity of the giver remains in doubt they become objects for suspicion rather than satisfaction. The Daily Times reporter received the first box of chocolates subsequent to the publication of an article covering the career of a wellknown local identity who had retired. With his faith in human nature given a restorative fillip, he acknowledged the gift, ate the chocolates, commented on the iheident as a seven-day wonder, and ednsidered the matter closed.

Some time later, however, another box of chocolates arrived, and this time there was no indication whence they had come. The gift was, in itself, unusual enough to'kindle suspicion, and the fact , that a murder trial involving poisoned jujubes was in progress at the time served only to heighten the reporter’s apprehension. The box was opened with caution, examined with care, and reluctantly consigned to a desk drawer.. From time to time he,-would retrieve the box and examine the chocolates individually to see if they had been given lethal fillings. " A tentative trial involving the presentation of chocolates to grateful and unsuspecting fellow-members of the staff indicated that there was nothing wrong with the sweets, so they were disposed of in the normal manner.

-But when another box, once again with the donor unidentified, was found on his table, the reporter was definitely nonplussed. The first box was a gratifying surprise, the second could have been an error, but the third turned the whole affair into an apparently sinister habit on the part of a person, or persons, unknown.. The third box waited even longer before the supply of sweets was tapped, but once again greed eventually triumphed. Yesterday the reporter found yet another parcel on his desk. There was not even an address on the wrapping, and nobody could be found who had seen the parcel left in the room. It was, needless to say, another box of chocolates. The old doubts came crowding back. - Was this another expression of gratitude for some unknown good deed? Was this another incident in a campaign designed to lull the reportel- into a sense of false (and gluttonous) security? Or had his desk become the dhmpmg ground for manna, disguised as ready-wrapped boxes of chocolates, dropping straight from heaven? To these and many other questions, the reporter would very much like answers. Unless the identity of the unknown benefactor is forthcoming, it would seem that the reporter will have to issue a call in the near future for “ human guinea pigs ” for chocolatetesting purposes.