THE SKETCHER

Otago Witness, Issue 3775, 20 July 1926, Page 73

THE SKETCHER

GRAY’S INN. (To Edward Marsh.) The bell rings, the key clicks, the door swings open, And the lodge porter scans my face. “Good-night! ” “Good-night, sir.” The door clashes, and he turns Again to his evening paper in his box, Keen to resume the interrupted murder, And little dreams that he let in with me Two others, spirits whose immortal brows No mortal eye may scan. On sucli a night In nineteen-twelve when still the world went well, Three living friends thrilled to the core with London— The riot, the glitter, the peril, out of the glare And clatter of Holborn, into shadowed courts And customary calm we passed by dark Deserted offices until. we came To the great iron gate of the old garden, Wherein a quiet company of trees Live their untroubled lives at London’s heart. And as we halted hushed in their still presence As pilgrims coming on a sacred grove, Shadowed and heavy-foliaged they lifted Unquivering branches to the summer stars That sprinkled the blue night with vagrant silver— In universal wanderings unaware As those earth-rooted and sequestered trees Of the smoke and smoulder of man’s fevered life, That but too soon burst into such a blaze As burned up half the world, and in its fury Consumed the generations of young men, And with them Denis Browne and Rupert Brooke— Denis with all his music in his heart, And Rupert with his first songs on his lips. In foreign fields they lie to-night —but still The trees serenely lift their stirless branches To the indifferent stars. Yet no sad shades Are they who stand beside me, but young spirits, Song-aureoled, with laughter in thei* eyes; While I, an ageing man between them, seem A furtive purposeless ghost haunting the shadow Of ghostly trees beneath, cold ghostly stars. —Wilfred Gibson, in London Mercury. SOME OF OUR SCHOOL DAYS. By A. H. {Fob thi Witness.! Not long ago I was making quince jam—and recalling my school days. The two are always connected in my mind. For the autumn when I first made acquaintance with quince jam was the unique, interesting time when 1 used to walk the two miles to school with my brothers. How well I remember the road! Not far from home we passed the blacksmith’s shop, witii the hotel a little farther on, and the post office-store opposite the hotel. The road wound round the foot of the hills, with swamp on the one side, and here and there a rock or a blackberry bush, until it went up the bill in a deep elbow and down the other side to the schodlliouse near the bottom. One afternoon we rushed home with our usual appetites, for our usual raid on the cupboard, and found the quince jam made and cooling—a new and delightful addition to the plentiful homemade bread and butter. And thereafter for a time, at least, quince jam was a part of our school lunches. How it facilitated “swapping!” Two families of our school mates, especially, whose parents kept bees, looked as kindly on our jam as we did on their honey, to the content and satisfaction of all parties. One mother at least entered into the spirit of the children and sent us, by their hand, a bottle of honey, a neighbourly act which mother responded to with a bottle of jam. The play-hour at school, from 12 to 1, was a very social time among those who took their lunches. There were between 20 and 30 altogether, I think, and, of course, all became well acquainted with one another. At one period the boys worked like beavers at making a ditch and bank—for what purpose I don’t know | I suppose just for the

pleasure of doing it. Sometimes the 'girls had the football, and indulged in an ecstasy of kicking it about. We knew little or nothing, and cared much less, about the rules of football. Sometimes it was “prisoners' base" that called us. Sometimes we were given the rare pleasure of a look through the little fernery at the master's house, a scene of beauty to us, with its bits of rock and its little stream, to make things home-like for the ferns gathered there in the roofed-in hollow. Sometimes we borrowed a book from the dear little school library to enjoy in the play hour and to take home afterwards. There we first learned of “Little Women,” “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” “Sanford and Merton,” and probably others which I have forgotten. There was the great day when the inspector visited the school. I remember hinj telling me in his kindly way, “Write carefully, little girl.” The Royal Readers which we used were themselves a treasure of stories and poetry. Marmion and Douglas; Fitz James and Roderick Dhu; Casabianca—how familiar they became! Tine doing of our home lessons was interesting, among the interested folks at home. One of us was reading aloud, “Llewellyn and his Dog,” one afternoon while mother sat sewing, aritt at the verse “And now a gallant tomb raise, With costly sculptures decked, And marbles, storied with his praise, Poor Gelert'B bones protect” mother remarked quietly, “Poor beast; he would have been better pleased picking a bone.” Once—not during my school days—my brothers played truant, largely, I think, for the purpose of going to the Maori pah to get watermelons. The pah was a mile or two distant from home, nearly opposite the far end of our farm. When the boys had bought a melon or two and eaten them, they began to find time hang heavily on their hands. I forget whether they had traded their school lunches for melons or had had cash to buy them with. If the lunches were not there to fill both time and stomachs, no wonder that, as they used to say long afterwards, they thought it must be 3 o’clock, when it. was really only about 1. They had no timepiece, but, looking over the long stretch of level paddocks toward home, they could see the cows being taken to the yard for the early afternoon milking (they were milk* ed soon after midnight in order to supply our customers in the town a few miles away early in the morning, and then milked again soon after mid-day to make things even). Those two or three hours wore away somehow, and at last the wearied, hungry melonhunters came home to the friendly cupboard and the unsuspecting mother and sisters. Far more enjoyment was theirs when, calling for the mail on the way home from school, they were sometimes able to buy a cake or two of chocolate and a tin of sardines, and, sitting by the roadside, feast right royally, to the amusement of any passing neighbour. Those school days were good old days, and have left us many pleasant recollections. MEMORIEB OF CAPPING. A SONG OF LUNACY. It’s time for joy and singing, For standing on your Lead; Oh, set the church bells ringing! Oh, paint the pavements red! Come dance a tripping measure From Cambridge to Bagdad: The time is ripe For talking tripe For yesterday the World went mad. It’s time for breaking bottles, An I time to dig up drains, . To ope a thousand throttles, And wreck a thousand trains: It's time for killing misers And all whose looks are sad: The hour has come To make things hum, For yesterday the World went mad. Let's slay the college porter, And steal the college plate; A thousand gyps let’s slaughter And stow them in a crate. I'll eat a pound of pepper To show that I’m a lad: They tell me that I’m off my hat— But yesterdlay the World went mad. ■ —H. G. G. 11., in Cambridge Granta. THERMOYB. (By Flora Annie Steel, in the Daily Chonicle.) I had a cook once (aha knew no Greek and quite certainly was equally ignorant of etymology) who invariably apoke of more than one thermos aa “they thorns ov*.’’ There was a certain definite disdain about the phrase, for ahe was aa oldfashioned soul, and did not like noveltiee. I do-; but I recognise how often they revolutionise the whole of life. Heroin-

tionise it so quietly that one is scarce conscious of the change until something comes along to make one realise how different things are from what they used to be.

Such an eye-opener was mine one summer when I went to the West Highlands. They were the home of my childhood, my girlhood, so the dear hills seemed to enfold me in soft shadows, soft dreams, the purple gloom of heather covered moor, seen against the misty sky, seemed darkly passionate as ever, the con. tours of bracken goldening in tne sunset were mellow as of old, and the scent of the bog myrtle—what recollections did it not awake? Perfume is ever the most subtle of memories; a whiff and one is back years and years. Once more I was tramping the hillsides with my brothers, eager to carry their basket of trout—their bag of game. Once more—how well I remembered it!—darkness overtook us at some 2000 ft up the hill at the back of the house, and the eldest of the party said he knew of a shorter way down. And there we all were, three boys and two girls, slithering solemnly in single file down an almost precipitous face that ended as far as could be seen, in an angle of sott turf. Our leader arrived there safely; he got up and walked on without a word. I was the next; I also got up and walked on in silence, keeping to myself the knowledge that the green turf was sphagnum moss concealing a spring, and that the best part of me was wet through. So one by one we took our ducking, till the last boy came, and he, having no one to follow, used bad language. But only for a bit; annoyance did not last long in those days, and such things were jokes—rare jokes. Hundreds of such memories of past days were mine, and all seemed as ever. There were boys and girls in the house who joked and laughed as we had joked and laughed. They danced weird dances in the evenings, it is true, and the girls wore feWe. clothes—not shorter, for in the old Highland days petticoats were apt to follow the fashion of kilts—but distinctly fewer. However, they did not seem to feel the cold, and all were merry and light-hearted. Then we went a picnic down the sealock. How often had I not gone to one in the self-same place. The very boat was the same, the old Tubbaneer which my grandmother, had had built from the boys’ careful design. How they had toiled at that design, consulting learned booKs on naval construction. How they had battled out keel and beam, divided between desire for speed and safety! All to no purpose, since grandmamma, when they had gone to school, ordered the carpenter to add more inches to the width for fear the lads should drown themselves. So, as we rowed out to the west, I felt almost as if the past had come back again, it was a perfect afternoon—very different from that one when we actually had to hoW our only umbrella over the fire to prevent the rain from putting it out; since in my time youth refused to be beaten by the weather. It was a point of honour with us that what we had arranged to do. we did. But then, I think, we wanted much more fiercely than youth does now. But this day, as I have said, was perfect for picnics. The tide was beginning to race out through the Narrows; ere long we should be catching big lythe in the slack and we could hunt for claims in the shallowing sandy spits. What matter that, in the light of longer years, I had learnt that the clams in Question were not the edible clam, but congeners of a poisonous nature! What matter, indeed, since we boys and girls had eaten dozens of them with impunity, and surely these boys and girls could do likewise? Yes, all things were the same. There was the rock against which we had lit our fires, the nut bushes and oak scrub where we had gathered sticks, and the old times were to come back again! No! Ye gods! Out of the old familiar basket came three thermoys—-labour-saving thermoys. And there, in a trice, without the delicious expectation of waiting for the kettle to boil, were we having tea dribbled into our mugs out of bottles. Labour-saving! Yes! Gone were perspiring red faces, blown like the recalcitrant fire; intact were the brims of our hats; but gone also was the delicious toast smelling and tasting of wood-smoke, and unimpaired was the convention which prevents humanity from demanding a third cup of tea —for thermoys do not run to third cups. A poor exchange indeed! Cold scones for hot buttered toast! Yet it was labour-saving, and in a flash I saw how thermoys and their like had oh&ngcd the world. They have made it trouble-shy; they have made our youth curiously dependent on environment; curiously averse to the hewing of wood and drawing of water, to say nothing of the blowing of fires.' And what wonder? As belies their stomachs are saved work by peptonised patent foods; as children they are wangled into reading without tears; as young men and women they are encouraged to stand in queues at the labour exchanges and wait for work. Thermoys and labour exchanges. Labour exchanged for what, in heaven’s name? Honest, healthful, heartening trouble exchanged for an inadequate dribble of tepid tea! I am like my old cook. I hate thermoys!

THE ENCHANTMENT OF FLOWERS. Anne Marvell, in tlie Daily Mail.) You may know a nation by its dowers. France by her packed masses of Parma violets, created for the boudoir and the scented flirtation; the United States by her “American beauty” roses, which, like her fairest women, are of the hothouse and the conservatory; Holland by her straight, martial tulips, which never deviate from the path marked out for them; England by the unambitious but exquisite sweet pea, which, like her girls, has a knack of flowering into sudden beauty. . . . However much we may in other ways have discarded the precedents of our ancestors, in the matter of horticulture we have retained and improved on them. Everywhere in the world to-day there is a reaction against the gardenless homes of great cities; the population flies to suburbs, and derelict fields are parcelled out into strips of bright enchantment. One foresees already a future wreathed and garlanded with blossom. More than ever the great ceremonial occasions of existence are beautified by the presence of flowers. For birth, marriage, and death, for religious festivals, for the rare moments of triumph of those who inspire or please us we demand their assistance in expressing our emotions. Our grandparents, with characteristic timidity, dared only to invoke the lily when they wished to send their messages of homage or affection. We, whose conception of living is so much richer and more complex than theirs, have tired a little of eternal white. We draw on all the colours offered by Nature with which to garnish our surroundings and stimulate our senses, and when he have exhausted her offerings we invent new ones. It would be natural to suppose that the greatest floral enthusiasts are women. Superficially this may be so, but in reality it is men who have the deepest feeling for perfection of form and colour. The masters of flower-painting are men; all the most exquisite poems about flowers have been written by men, and it is men who have shown godlike patience and daring in the mating of wild forms and the creation of new ones. * # # In Holland gardening is both a tradition and a passion. The inhabitants seem to find all the thrills in it that other nations get from horse-racing or baseball. And the question whether such concentration should be respected or smiled at by the rest of the world is answered at a glance. No one who has seen acres and acres of land which once was a wilderness of sand dune, but now lies under the spring sun like a fragrant ocean of gold and blue and white and vermilion, will deny that it is the essence of wisdom to take, ad the Dutch have done, the words of Candide literally—“We must cultivate our garden.” THE APPIAN WAY. The Appian Way was never a wide road. The end of the straight portion of the road proper is a short distance from the actual city gate. To-day the principal traffic consists of little onehorse wine-carts, with their tiers of small casks, perched on top of all the driver resting snugly in a tent-like seat, with a folding hood painted a faded blue. He can Bleep there if he wishes; the horse knows the way home. At intervals along the wayside there are little refreshment houses where the drivers eat their meals. A little to the east of. the road may be seen the remains of the great aqueduct. The Roman idea of water purification was evidently to keep it in the sunlight. They had water-pipes when necessary. There are scores of tombs along the wayside. Most prominent is the tomb of Casar’s daughter, Cecilia Metella; first a tomb, then a fortress. Near it was a large racecourse, a large brick enclosure with high walls, with a capacity of 18,000 people, which had originally been built in the fourth century for the funeral obsequies of the infant son of an Emperor. The walls of Rome come into view as the wayfarer nears the city. The way must have been busy enough in its time. Streams of people coming from or going to the races and other fashionable events; farm traffic; the tramp of soldiers; funeral Corteges; merchants, nobles, officers, pilgrims, provincials, foreigners from everywhere, philosophers, deputations from all the world; Orientals and Africans; slaves, priests, office-seekers, and all the elements that go to make the kaleidoscope of a busy throng filled the Appian Way with teeming life. But nowadays one trudges along the comparatively quiet road. There is a gate between two walls, and then, a few yards on, another, the Arch of Drusus, after which one is in Rome. Thence the ground is covered with ruined remains of the once great city, doubtless in the course of the cycles again to be as great or even more magnificent than ever. There is a virility about the people. Things are done when they are wanted. The great monument to Victor Emmanuel II shows that they have not lost the oonception of big things, that they do not merely talk of them, letting personalities and parties absorb all their energies, hut with a concerted effort they are capable of pushing things to a conclusion.

There is the, tramp of countless feet ■till echoing along the Appian Way from the dawn of time. History has trod the

road wilt tireless feet. Who shall say that his*bry has not yet much work to do along the ancient highway of the “ Eternal City ” where Numa lived and Augustus reigned?—James Graham, F.R.P.S., in the Theosopkical Path. LARGER SHOES TO-DAY. It would seem that the hands and feet of the modern girl are larger than those of her mother (says the Daily Chronicle). Not infrequently parents and aunts take opportunity to crow over the younger generation in this matter, and that there is some truth in their claim is proved by a visit to the shoe or glove department of a London store. “The change in the size of women’* feet is due to the comfortable way in which they are shod, necessitated by the interest that they now take in sports,” is the view expressed by an expert at a West End shop. He observed that when he first entered the trade sizes 6,7, and 8 were kept in shops at the top of the fixtures, and out-of-the-way places, but were now put where they were easy of access. One has only to dip into the average Victorian novel to come across such phrases as “her little, little hands,” or “her small feet tucked away under her modest gown.” These and many similar allusions suggest that small hands and feet were the ambition of the women of that time. That Thackeray did not altogether sympathise with that popular criterion of feminine beauty may be surmised from his description of Laura in “Pendennis”:—“Because she is in the habit of wearing very long dresses, people of course say that her feet are not small; but it may be that they are of the size becoming her figure.” When our mothers were young girls the sizes in which the great majority of shoes were sold ranged from twos to fives. The most usual sizes at that time were three, three and a-lialf, and four. Nowadays the demand is chiefly for shoes within the range of the sizes from five to eight, and five and five and a-half are very much asked for. Indeed, it is not an uncommon thing for a schoolgirl to take eights, and a good many shops now stock nines for women. The development of the woman’s foot has been so greatly affected by such sports as hockey and golf, in which she now participates from girlhood, that one cannot but wonder whether it is so very much smaller than a man’s foot. It is quite a mistake to suppose that a size in shoes means something different in masculine from what it does in feminine footwear. A modern woman who wears eights has a larger foot than many a man. However, modern styles help to counteract such effects by their daintiness, and enable the wearer to enjoy comfort while appearing neatly shod. THE FUTURISTIC MOVEMENT. The Futuristic-movement only lasted for a short while—long enough, however, to give people a love for pure colour, and to influence the dress and fashions as well as the stage. All these changes date from the Cubist and Futurist movement, and tend to make our houses and streets brighter. London especially was, in the days of my youth, a dingy, dark city. Everyone wore black or dark grey clothes, and if a bit of colour were added one would be accused of_making oneself ridiculous. But the London of those days was more smoky. One had to be continually washing one’s hands, and the fogs in November and during the winter were of the real black and yellow variety, and often lasted for days. Boys would go about with torchesyto .help citizens find their streets and homes. Doctors recommended red flannel underwear as a necessary protection—that was before Jaeger wool under-garments were used in this country—and English red flannel was known as the best manufactured anywhere. During the war the dinily-ligllted thoroughfares reminded me of London as it was before the streets were lit by electricity, figures groping along like phantoms, and shops with golden lights glowing through the doors. Anyone returning from the Antipodes would hardly believe that Piccadilly Circus of the present day, with its glare of jumping lights and coloured advertisements, was the same place they left 20 or 30 years ago. The only illuminations in those days were on the King’s and on the Queen’s birthday night. The idea of keeping shop windows lit up after closing time was partly due to young Ackerman, a nephew of the well-known firm of artists’ colourmen, who set up on his own an opposition shop in Regent Street. Being young, energetic, and anxious to get on, he would remain working on after closing time, leaving his lights burning in his shop window. This naturally attracted the public until after the theatres closed, and brought him many unexpected clients.—An Artist’s Life in London and Paris —L. Ludovici (Fisher Unwin).