PATER’S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3584, 21 November 1922, Page 60

PATER’S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

FLYNN OF VIRGINIA. We have chatted on a previous occasion on Bret H-arte and the “roaring days.” Here is one of his poems, stimulating to read aud worth memorising Didn’t know Flynn— Flynn of VirginiaLong as lie s been !yar? Look ’ee here, stranger, Whar hev you been ? Here in this tunnel He was my partner, ' , ■ That same Tom FlynnWorking together, In wind and weather, Day out and in. Did’t know Fivnn! Weil that is queer. Why, it’s a siu, To think of Tom Flynn— Tom, with his cheer ; Tom without fear — Stranger, look ’yar I Thar in the drift, Back to the wall, He held the timbers Ready to fall: Then in the darkness I heard him call: “Run for your life, Jake! Run for your wife’s sake! Don’t wait for me.” And that was all Heard in the din, Heard of Tom Flynn— Flynn of Virginia. . SHAVING UNDER DIFFICULTIES. I am, of course, aware that some of my younger readers have not yet had recourse to the razor, though doubtless some Juive prematurely lathered and tempted the hesitating “down.” By-ana-Dy tiiey will sometimes wish the whiskers had been slower in maturing, but they will doubtless be interested in primitive methods of removing “bristles.” If your razor annoyed you This morning by its strong resemblance to a piece of hoop-iron (says a writer visiting the South Seas), there may be comfort for you in tiie knowledge of what some of your lessfavoured brothers have to put up with. - Consider the shaving of Luke-and-John, an amiable Christian gentleman, whose skin must have been very tough in addition to being brown. Luke-and-John dwells in the tiny, palm-enfolded village of Boiana, on the north-east coast of New Guinea, and being something of a beau he is particular about his shave. I saw the operation in progress and realised that sacrifices in the cause of vanity are n part'of the white man’s burden only. , Luke-and-Jo-hii sat with his back against a palm while his barber attended to him. liis face expressed a calm acceptance of pain in a righteous cause. Tiie barber took half a dozen’hairs on his customer’s chin and about them twisted a piece of strong, fibre-like glass. The knot was cunningly devised to grip. With a sharp jerk he pulled them out by the roots. This application of dentists methods to barbering proceeded slowly but steadily, and at the end of several hours the task had been completed. “Better this way,” said Luke-and-John philosophically. “He no grow so fast next time!” In New Guinea a man whose beard flourishes exceedingly must be sad at heart. Another strange method is that of applying to' the face a dreadful, noisome, sticky concoction resembling molted rubber. This is alowed to set, and the strips are then pulled off by brute force. The hairs come with them, but how it is that the skin does not accompany them is hard to imagine. After such methods as these, shaving with a niece of glass or shell —which is the usual method among the islanders and Australian aborigine;!—is quite a simple matter, though as the operation is usually performed without lather it cannot be enjoyable. 'But why is all mankind so determined to do away with the whiskers which Nature intended should grow upon cheeks.? Whence springs the universal urge to be clean-shaven? In a thousand ways the Papuan's idea of fashion differs from ours, and vet even he is one with us in declining to be a “beaver.” OF THE. ENGLISH CRICKETERS. To-day (wrote I). L. A. Jephson, himself an English cricketer, on September 30) the M.C.C. side for Australia and New Zealand sails in the S-s. Orvieto, of the Orient Line, and every cricketer and lover of cricket will join with me in wishing them success, good luck, good cricket, and a safe return. It is refreshing—nav. exhilarating—to think that once again a team on a prolonged tour evil be led into the field by A. C. Maclaren, one of the greatest captains that every swayed the destinies of *An England XI. By no stretch of the imagination can the M.C.C. combination be regarded as of international character, but they are a team of real, “live, enthusiastic cricketers whom lack of initial success will in no wav discourage. Their batsmen all prefer the bat to hit the ball, they seldom adopt purely defensive methods, and their ‘'footwork”’ will be towards the ball and not away from it— in fact, the game they will play is the game that is worth tramping many weary miles to see. We wish them many' runs, but we expert no granite consistency of a Yorkshire XT. No, we expect a big score to-day, a slashing, dashing total of 400, and then an attenuated effort of about 90 to-mor-row ! Personally T think the great run getter will be A. P. F. Chapman, provided he can accustom himself to that extra bit of pace in the Australian wickets. On his day there is no more surprising batsman. He gives of the “unexpected” with liberal hands, and each run that he scores-—and

he can score all round the wicket—is a “Chapman run,' original., lively, and very, very satisfying. But though the bat-ting may be an unstable quantity, players of the class of Ca-lthorpe, Hill-Wood, Wilkinson, Lowry, and the “boss” himself are bound sooner or ‘later to produce a sufficiency of runs. The bowling and fielding of the team are happily of a higher standard. Freeman is certainly one of the befit slow spin bowlers in England, and with C. H. Gibson, the Old Cambridge Blue, to bowl his splendid length a-t the other end, 1 venture to hope that protracted “stands” against these tourists will be few and far between. The fielding is not only solid but, with Chapman and Wilson, will rise to heights of super-excellence. In conclusion, it is a highly experimental combination, yet under the magnetic leadership of Maclaren e have no ! fears of dismal failure. So, “Good luck, Archie!’