PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3489, 25 January 1921, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday’s Daily Times.) Stevenson’s cri du coeur “ What is life without the pleasure of disguise” may have referred to fashions, or it may not. If it did, he may now consider himself fortunate in having left this Earth before disguise vanished also. In the case of women’s fashions, disguise will soon he a thing of the past. Hair-pads, they say, have gone. Neck-bands, they don’t need to say, have also gone. But this is a hackneyed question. Descriptions of women’s dress nowadays are necessarily brief. There isn’t much to describe. A far more interesting topic is that of men’s hair. No one can view the unnatural spectacle of bare-faced and prison-cropped men without the thought that the time is ripe for the return swing of the pendulum towards greater hairiness. The hair of men, like the superstructure of women’s heads, has its ups and downs. The prisoner’s crop gives way to the flowing curls or the periwig, the bare-faced age is succeeded by the age of the cavalry moustache and the mutton-chops. And once again the pendulum swings back. Absalom wore his hair long—to his undoing—:and ever since his story has been used as a warning. It was a Parisian barber who painted the History of Absalom over his shop door. An English confrere hung out the sign of David Weeping, over the inscription : Oh, Absalom! Oh, Absalom Oh Absalom! my son, If ihou hadst worn a periwig, Thou hadst not been undone. Thus barbers have always set great store by the bare poll. No barber, of course, could be expected to advertise Samson. And so we come to the question of wigs. The wig has an ancient pedigree. It was worn by the Egyptians, by the ladies of Gnossos, and on the classical stage, where the tyrant’s hair was .black, and the hero’s was the yellow-curls beloved by the Greek dandy. The Greek slave of Comedy wore a wig of foxy red—a colour not heroic now, and abhorrent to the middle ages as that of the traitor Judas. Yet an auburn wig has, they say, been found in a)i early Christian grave. With the eighteenth century came the golden age of the periwig—and of the barber. A boy’s head was shaved at the age of six or seven, and a little periwio- was set on his. bare head. Poor Beau Brummel used to sigh that the ladies ruined all his wigs by begging locks. And who does not know Johnson’s wigs, scorched in front by his candle and shortness of sight? In

those days wig-snatchers flourished, and a gentleman walking home on ill-protected streets had to keep a sharp look-out if he wished to keep his hair on. The Revolution and the nineteenth centllry have killed all that. We are now in the age of the Roundheads, and the subaltern tuft beneath the nose. How long will it be ere we can greet a man wdth An ere’s to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, with your ’ayrick ’ead of ’air! The fate of Europe, say the Esperantists, depends on the adoption of Esperanto as the international language. “ Yes,” says one of them, ‘‘Esperanto is the future tongue of the League of Nations if the j latter is to be an effective and lasting ] institution • for it is the clearest and most logical language in existence.” And from the pen of a local correspondent comes the following : Quite recently you referred in your Notes to the Geneva Congress, and the expense of it, also to the language difficulty, which had a disastrous effect on the usefulness of the Convention. Not long ago I was talking to a Wellington man who about eight years ago had attended a congress of 60 Esperantists at Paris. Members came from all over Europe, and by the aid of Esperanto they understood one another perfectly. If tire League of Nations therefore would adopt Esperanto its deliberations would be more satisfactory to all concerned. An educated man ooukl become a thorough master of Esperanto in two or three months by devoting an hour a day to the study. These tremendous claims naturally make Esperanto a question of perennial interest. | We might even call the interest everi green, for it is one of those ever blooming j things that look fresher than they really i are. Yet Esperanto is not without its I advantages. Here are some of them, j First of all, it is better than nothing, i Secondly, it would be a god-send to those who do not possess the intellectual capacity to learn another language. Thirdly, there is the glorious feeling of power in being a linguist. And how easy it is: “table” means a table; “ girafo ” means a giraffe; “ kovri ” means to cover. Think of it. Only an hour a day during the winter evenings, and you can harangue a Petrograd crowd, be perfectly at home in a Paris cafe, wander suitably disguised into a Moslem mosque, or into the Purple Forbidden City of Peking. But there is another side to the picture. To a man who already knows English, Latin, and French, Esperanto is as easy as sliding off a creasy pole. But even he will have something to learn. “ Koto ” means dirt; “ kruta ” means steep; “ rafaneto ” means a radish. An Englishman who knows no language but his own, i and who has the energy to give a concentrated hour a day for several months to Esperanto, would learn as much of French or Spanish or German in the same time as would enable himself to be “understood perfectly ”•—in the sense implied by my correspondent. And this new language would be of incomparably greater use to him. Esperanto also means economic waste. The total number of foot-pounds of work used up by an Englishman and a Frenchman in learning Esperanto are at least as great as those expended by one of the two in learning the language of the other. And the work thus saved by one of them could be used in other profitable directions. Moreover, a Londoner of only one language will speak Esperanto with an atrocious English accent. A Parisian will speak it with an accent as atrociously French. A Chinaman will turn every “r” into “ 1,” and a Maori every “ 1 ” into “r.” As sure as eggs are eggs a Londoner or an Australian will pronounce “ tolo ” (linen) as “tow low.” And the constant thumping of the Englishman’s syllabic accent-beat will soon knock off its pedestal the beautiful “ perfect understanding ” so confidently claimed. To Esperanto as a written language there is not the same objection—for you needn’t pronounce it. The following is a poem on the Declaration of Peace, 1919, osperanted by an Englishman. Anv intelligent man

can decipher for himself. But let him not expect much : At. La Paco. (Memore de la Pacdeldaro, Julion, .1919). Ho, dolce post la bruo de 1’ batal’ Eksonas mm Proklam’ de bela Pac’ A 1 ciu bom’, —al tiuj eri la Val’ De 1’ Itort, al ciu, kiu sub in iliac’ Terura etaris. Vocoj de 1’ infer’ Subigas: kantas nun ciela hor’ Pri 1’ am’ de Di’, pri F fido kaj F esper’ Al mondo subpremita de F dolor’. Alvenu, Pac’ benata, venu nun! Hontegas kaj al vi eopiras ni: Briladu F arno dia kaj la ver’, Eraron forpelante kiel sun’: La cielkant’ al glor’ cte nia Di’ liesonu triumfege sur la Ter’. Dear “ Civis,” —At a suburban railway station quite close to Dunedin there is a placard stating that “ Passengers are prohibited crossing the railway line except by the overbridge?” Is the English here right? Besides* can people be called passengers who are going to catch a train, or who have left one? And thirdly, what is the use of posting up a notice that is never enforced? Nobody ever uses the overbridge. As an example of English the above is rough and ready. We say “ prohibited from crossing,” or 11 forbidden to cross.” As the sentence reads it can only mean “ Passengers crossing the railway line except by the overbridge” are prohibited, —which seems to mean “are prohibited persons.” A man crossing the line may be an ex-passenger, or an intending passenger. Or if he misses his train, he may be an ex-intending-passenger. Or if he tries to alight before the train stops, and the guard catches him up by the coattails, he may be called an intending cxpassenger. All these are not passengers, yet they are comprehended by the Department under the single category of passenger. Further, if a man be neither an ex-passenger, nor an intending passenger, and still cross the line in the prohibited way, the “ verboten ” is not for him. He may run over and back as often as he likes. As I said before, the prohibition is not meant to prohibit. In accordance with the usual policy of the Department, if the stationmastor saw a socalled passenger crossing the rails, he would have to wire or write to Wellington for instructions. Even a District Traffic Manager has not the power to stop one train a week at “ Mickey’s ” Crossing without reference to headquarters. By the by, where on Earth is “Mickey’s” Crossing ? From an Otago township ; Dear “ Civis,” —I was much interested in your recent notes about our district, and I here send you a little incident in which our good folks will fee! a like interest. A resident in this district was left in a state of deadly loneliness. Then a friend inserted for him a matrimonial advertisement in the Otago Daily Times, to which were received thirteen replies. Of these four seemed genuine, the others being evidently triflers. The two men interviewed one lady in a Dunedin hotel, but she declined on hearing that there was no motor car. Several letters were exchanged from St. Clair, and then the friend called. Mama appeared upon the scene, and it transpired that the lady inquired for was a schoolgirl of tender years. Finally one of the remaining non-trifiers paid the bereaved husband a visit or two, and before he knew he was married to a war-widow with one child. Yet he seems happy. Why shouldn’t he be happy? He got what he asked for. Whether the following be a jest or a problem I cannot say. Probably Loth. An Otago Central correspondent writes : Judging by the humour that predominates in your well-read column, I thought vou might appreciate a short conversation which passed between a traveller on our coach and a “ local. ’ The traveller remarked on the feedless appearance of the hillsides, and asked the “local” what the sheep fed on. “ Oh, chiefly on verbs,” was the reply. “ You must have a very intelligent breed of shee.p here,” was the traveller's amused remark. “ Aw, no? Just merino and half-breed,” innocently replied the “ local.” Now “ local ” surely means an inhabitant of the district. And “ traveller ” can only mean “commercial traveller,” for no other kind of traveller would have allowed his leg to be pulled so obviously. It is quite evident that it was a contest of wits, and the “ local ” won. Each thought the other was a fish at the end of hb line, and the commercial was landed. No inhabitant of Central Otago would by mistake say “ verbs ” for herbs or ’erbs. But what was there in his antagonist to suggest the idea of “verbs”? Have you ever talked to a commercial traveller? Civis.