THE SKETCHER

Otago Witness, Issue 3804, 8 February 1927, Page 73

THE SKETCHER

NEW , MUSIC. Beat a swinging rhythm With a fleshy sound, Let your feet burn tattoos On the sullen ground, Let your thoughts go leaping Like a wounded hound. Forget this thing called W’isdom . ~._ Drowned in laughing eyes, This world is like an egg shell Balancing on lies. Listen, listen, listen to that tune, My body is a hollow filled with silver of the moon, My mind is a mountain I shall never climb, My heart is the last beat in an endless rhyme. Hold me, hold me, do not let me fall, I am like a blind man walking toward a wall, I am like an orator who cannot sneak at all. This music is a poison Made of silken sound, With cruel cool fingers It jerks me to the ground, I am like a broken puppet On a merry-go-rdund. —Marion in Palms. THE NON-MOTOR SCOUT. By Basil Macdonald Hastings, in the , . ', ' Daily Chronicle; The buying and the' selling die. The Daimler. and the Rolls depart. Once more the motor car glides from the. centre of the public stage, and there is consideration for other and, perhaps, humbler things. . . . Here begins my campaign for the non-motor scout. I have no grudge against motor cars. I get angry only when I have to listen to too much talk about their insides in what should be peaceful club rooms. I Want to kill a motorist only when he gives his car Christian name. This year, to show my lack of bias, I visited the motor show. A dealer asked me what I thought of it all, and I explained that I asked no more than that .the cars on exhibit should suddenly Start .off and show their glorious speed. . ‘But people would be killed,’’ he gasped. “Engines would explode. Olympia, might be burnt down. W’hat would you, dor” “I would go home,” I replied, “and have an egg for my tea.” It will be clear, then, that I am not an enemy of the motor car. When I am ip town I prefer that all motor cars, ?k.£?Pt taxi-cabs, be in the country, and ■when I am in the country I prefer that all motor cars be in the' town. This is a* much for their sake as mine. Being a walker, a placid man, I am content with a small piece of England at a time. J-here are others who, when they take the air, wish to see several counties. I want one thing; they are diversivolent Let us respect each other. * * -» '. Upon my walks and on the occasions of my riding through the country in cars, I have come across numbers of uniformed men who act as motor scouts. They stand at corners as a rule, bend forward yhen a car approaches, so that they may read any symbol it bears on its front, and yhcn leap to attention and give a smart military salute. I do not know what salaries they get, but I must find out, as can hardly pay our non-motor scouts owners of the cars always look 5 ® salut , es > and g*t their hands out Of their pockets soon a s they glimpse a motor scout in the distant. So cager are they to return the salute that they, sometimes lift their hands too quickly, and then become abashed. Easy, however, to poke fun at both saluted and saluter. We walkers are Really jealous. Very well,-then. Let us ho!0 a Hon-Motor Show, and spend the takings on the organisation of a band of non-motor scouts. At once you apP ,almost as quickly you wonder if lam pulling your legs. Certainly not. If motorists need uniformed men to salute them and cheer them on their way, along the country road's I am certain that pedestrians could do with a little of that sort of thing. I have .known times when, after being missed narrowly thrice in succession, I have cipuched under a hedge ~and prayed in my fear. What would it have, meant to me then to have heard the step of friendly feet, and to have felt the reassuring pat on the shoulder of an honest non-motor spout. , »

Please do not think that I suggest we should employ men as smartly uniformed as the present motor-scouts. That would che presumptuous, ,even if we ould afford jbe presumptuous, even if we could afford jwe pedestrians, and one of the finest about us is that we know our x place.

-r I suggest a. smock. Yes, a smock and t a (large floppy country hat that fits ■r© v CT. the ears. On the front of the 'aßmock would be inscribed the letters rSbf.M.S. Does that not strike you as riSnodest? You can get a linen smock half a "crown, and your hat would >»9t run to more than eighteenpence. Beat 'that. A non-motor-scout outfit for four

Now, as to colour of 6mock and _hat. I say green. “Green, indeed, is the colour of lovers,” says Armadp in “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” a play written by a man who was never saluted by a "motorscout. We walkers are the real lovers of |he country, although we admit motorists to be admirers. Yes, let the pedestrian of the future peep round corners for “the man in the green smock.” How will the non-motor-scout salute you ? I will have none of the military business. That is for the great and grand. He can hardly life his hat. He might touch his forelock. He might scratch himself behind the right ear. He might just nod or shake hands. Yes, I think I would like him best to shake hands. But we will decide all that when we come to spend the proceeds of next year’s Non-Motor Show. At once I am asked what is going to be exhibited at the Non-Motor Show. Give me time, give me time. I admit that all I have got so far are promises of a governess cart (from the widower of a governess) and a buggy and a rockaway (from an American), but these certainly form a nucleus. I promise that I shall be present daily,“Wearing the honourable green smock of the non-motof-scout of the future, and interviewing applicants who do not object to standing on corners and shaking hands for . a living.

IN THE HILLS. It’s in the hills I’ll go stalking God, In the grass of the hills, Where the blunt stones Have a tongue and will talk/ And in the hills I will find Him, Where the gull drops a. feather down, And the conies are tame, —lm. the hills that are breasts. Slow pulses are beating there, • The dull husk is thinned; The weather-old sleepers Dream still of the dawn. No- winking of windows' there, No flesh that is warm, —But grey talking grasses, And stones with a tongue. —James J. Sweeney, in. the Irish Statesman. ON BEING “CONTRAIRY.” Mary, who was “quite cantrairy,” is not dead yet. There is a good deal of her spirit left in most of us, it seems to me, Else why all those' great dissensions, religious, political, industrial, domestic, that have torn and continue to rend the world? If you look deep enough, you will probably find that not all . of them, by any means, were provoked or inspired by a zeal for a “cause.” For to hear some one expounding at full length—and breadth —the righteousness of Protestantism, is it not sufficient to rouse in you some little demon ~ that prompts you to say something —and a few other things—in favour of Roman ’ Catholicism ? Or if someone argues in favour of flannels and woollen stockings, isn’t it more than enough to make you rush for the cudgels on behalf of crepe de chine and webs of gossamer—or even vice versa! That little demon of contrariety is, there is no doubt of it, responsible for quite a lot of mischief in the world.

As Florence can vouch for. You haven’t heard of Florence for quite a long time, have you? She has recently acquired a bungalow with decided leanings towards the country aspect of life, a garden, a crazy-paved footpath, a view to the hills, with a backward glance over the town just left behind. The other day she had a visit from her Aunt Matilda, and, it is needless to add, her name being such, that her stockings they were thick, her skirt it was long, her hat was severely plain, and her hair -was worn in a “bun” at the back of her head. On this occasion Florence determined that that little demon should be kept in strict subjection. He - had been known to get out of hand on previous occasions. The controversial subjects of skirts and stockings and hair should be kept in abeyance. She refused to rise to any bait on these subjects. • So that when she was pouring out her aunt’s first cup of tea, and that lady passed some scathing remark on the vogue of the shingle, her eyes resting- depreciatively on Florence’s neat and glossy head, she remained politely silent. But her aunt was ever for war, never for peace. Always she preferred a spear to a pruning hook. .-

She she turned upon the place of Florence’s abode. Aunt Matilda is a born .and bred town dweller. All her life her view has been bounded by unbeautiful town walls—perhaps that accounts for the compression of her mind. Why anyone should choose to live in this part of the town ' she could not imagine. They ■ might think they were living .in the country—she knew better. (She spent her holidays this year in the Highlands, 50 miles from the nearest village.) What good did the hills do anyone when they could not pass outside their door without ’ peering eyes watching theni from between the pink casement .curtains of the next bungalow?

It was sheer snobbishness that compelled people to live in bungalows, setting themselves apart from their neighbours and giving themselves airs. These ridiculous terraces, too, on which they were built, climbing up as far skyward as they dared! .

If they wanted to be high up, why couldn’t they take the top flat in a tenement? It had always been good enough for her. But, if they really must have a bungalow she knew where there were some more commodious, less dollified ones, in a better district of the city, with larger gardens. . . . And so on.

No wonder that Florence, despite her best intentions, felt that little demon steadily rising. Meanwhile, Auut Matilda assiduously helped herself to bread and butter—no, she never ate cake. Suggest the idea to her and a torrent of abuse of all the fantastic devices in the shape of confections displayed in windows and upon tea tables, contrived to appeal to the decadent fancy of to-day, would immediately pour forth. So Florence said nothing. ’ /

Aunt Matilda went on to speak of a book she had just read, and her particular objection fell upon the names of the heroine and her friends. Clematis! Mignonette! Perfectly ridiculous. Had she ever had children—in this ungrateful age, devoid of filial feeling, she was profoundly thankful that Providence had seen fit that they should be denied her—they would have been called Jane and Mary. The plain, old-fashioned names were good enough for her—Aunt Matilda’s manner, of course, implied that no one could be worthy of better. Now Florence does not think like that. Granted that the names mentioned may be, perhaps, somewhat fantastic and recherche, they have decidedly points in their favour. \ They have their vowelmusic—Aunt Matilda is surely not too young to have lost a taste for Tennyson. They please the lips and the ear. They please the eye, too. They are full of suggestion. Clematis? A little porch with purple blossoms tumbling all about it, cascades of them drooping round the windows—soft, velvety, wonderful. Surely if your name is Clematis you confer a favour upon your friends by calling up a picture, just as you do if it is Rose or Violet or Hyacinth. Mignonette? The same conditions apply. Vowel-music. Perfume. Suggestion. Genevieve and Geraldine and Guinevere are also names with a pictorial sense; they fit one instantly into a romance. ** . * Your name is Jane or Mary. People ask if it is John’s Jane, or James's Mary? Its interest is diffused—decidedly diffused. Spread over all the Janes and Marys who have shared it and are still sharing it. Its pictorial sense has become commonplace; its precious perfume long since spilt. Something of this Florence attempted to convey to her aunt, quite ineffectively, of course, ’ for that little demon that prompted the “contrairy” one was busy with. her, too. “Matilda,” said her aunt, “has always been good enough for mel” She truth for once, thought Florence ! “Is that a new hat?” her aunt presently exclaimed, her eyes devouring a milliner’s box that had been hastily huddled into a corner. “Let me see it.”

Florence brought it forth reluctantly. You do not willingly display your best work of art, your poem that breathes your inmost thoughts, or your newest Vaby, to unsympathetic eyes. And this hat partook of something of the individuality of a poem or a baby. It was not chosen out of a heap that lay about for all and sundry to handle and try on, fitting the hat to the head. It was not even, chosen out of a glass case where the more delicately nurtured of the milliner's creations are sheltered from over-harsh treatment and unkindly criticism’. It had been built up, with Florence’s own glossy head as a basis. She had selected its glistening velvet, its touches of primrose colour, its special aiamente pin. Something of Florence’s very nature went into the building of that hat. Adverse criticism of it meant that something in her self was wrong; it usually was where Aunt Matilda was concerned! z .

“That,” said Aunt Matilda scathingly, “is a hat for a child. That pale yellow will never go with your complexion. You forget, Florence, that you have now been married for over seven years!” It is not to be wondered that Florence felt a little hurt, though she did her best to remind herself that “Aunt Matilda is always like that,” as she restored the despised hat to its swathings of tissue, paper. Aunt Matilda is, I admit it, an extreme case. But our very dearest friends w Can sometimes prove equally trying where-houses and hats, and even more momentous things are concerned. Their harsh criticisms make for outbreaks, rebellions, and strikes. But if everyone agreed with us, and preferred best of all to live where we lived, and liked the same cakes, and just exactly the identical primrose shade for their hats, and named all_ their girl children Azalea or Marigold or Evangeline, just think how dull and uninspiring the world would become! . Even Florence would flee to bread and butter puddings and plain sedate shades of greys and drabs,; and old-fashioned, demure; unpicturesque names. ■ . • i For that little’ demon of opposition, would still have, his way !—The Weekly Scotsman. •

VARIATIONS ON A THEME. You say you cannot live on love—’Tis but a slender occupation; And yet I feel it might not prove An unattractive avocation. To live on love were charity,' And some, alas, have been denied it— A hungry life! It seems to me You talk like one who never tried it. My own idea is rather neat, A worthy plan for such a sinner: Let’s always have enough to eat, And ask Dan Cupid in for dinner. —Sherman Ripley, in Moon Shadows.' A MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE. What is the safest hiding place in the wqrld ? (asks a writer in John o’ London’s Weekly.) The answer is probably—London. There is at least one case on record of a man who disappeared from his home in London for a number of years and continued to live undiscovered not only in his native town, but in a neighbouring parish. .It was in the earlier years of the eighteenth century that a Mr Howe, .who was at that time residing with his wife in Jermyn street, Piccadilly, left his home, remarking that he had special business at the Tower. Later in the day, a letter arrived stating that the same business necessitated a journey to Holland, and that he would not be back for a few weeks. As a matter of fact, he did not return for seventeen years, and in the meantime nothing was heard of him.-

Howe did not, however, go to Holland. He went to Westminster instead, where he hired a room at the cost of a few shillings a week, changed his name, and donned a black wig. By these simple means he was able to escape detection. The years passed, and Mrs Howe, whose two children had both died during her husband’s absence, being deprived of adequate financial support, was compelled to summon the assistance of Parliament. An Act was passed by means of which provision was made for the woman until such time as Howe’s death could be legally established. Howe followed the progress of the Act in the newspapers but raised no objection to it. ’ But the most curious—the' almost incredible—part of the story has yet to be , During the last seven years of Howe s disappearance he was in the habit of attending the Sunday services at St. James a Church, Piccadilly—where he had formerly worshipped with, his wife—and from the seclusion of an obscure pew he was able to observe his wife without- io turn being seen by her.

must by this time have given up all hope of ever seeing her husband again. One evening, however, while she was entertaining some friends at supper, she received an anonymous letter in which the writer requested her to meet him the following day in Birdcage Walk, St.' James s square. ’ Passing the letter to her brother-in-law, a Dr Rose, she remarked jocosely, You see brother, old as I am, I have got a gallant.” The doctor, however recognised Howe’s handwriting, and imparted this information to Mrs Howe who immediately' fainted away. ’ Ultimately it- was agreed that the whole party then present should proceed to the mu Ce on the following evening, they had waited only a few moments when Howe appeared, embraced his wife affectionately, and walked home with her H_ ever i pav 0 her again. Thus ended one of the most mysterious disappearances of which histoiy bears record. The reason for it will' al wavs leniaxn an unsolved enigma. NIGHT IN ITALY. (By Sir Gerald, du Maurier, in an English Exchange.) * The loggia lights are showing up the yellow Banksia roses, and the spears of the cypresses over the nut trees are darker than the darkest mountain. Andrea has put back the curious tablecloth on to the table, just cleared of our nuts and vermouth. • Inside a musician of tender promise is dreaming away at an etude, while from the distant campanile the bell rings out a stray insistent chime. • Under the locust trees the wingless Cupid pours libations to the moon from the mouth of his leaden dolphin in full sight of the ever-watchful pansies. * * * That was good, that little feast in the waning glory. My favourite dish ends the. meal —the three vying cheeses of which I choose the crudest, that made by the goat herds in their mountain huts. Raphael’s contadina hands me hatefully, from the square-shouldered bottle I know so well, my double measure of Cointreau. Surely Lucifer fell for this! Ah! had he been one’s guest and-seen the vanishing beauty of the lake, he would have ranged a caged angel from window to window, and wondered why he had ever kicked his heels against the gates of Paradise. The campanile bell at Gravedona warns us that in six short hours the sun will again be seen above Monte Grigno, and will rouse Sylvia AtricappiUa (Hang it all, what a prig one is!), or, in plafti English, the black cap, from his nest. And that will mean, I suppose, the usual' vain clamber in the early dawn for honey in. the comb from the cottage 600 feet below, where Croce stands up . and takes the morning. ' *’■ ’•» .• * • • And in spite of being drunk with all This beauty,' I am not altogether satisfied that I qannot take five strokes and put it across Newbery.

But of course, as usual when I get on tbo 11th tee, the nightingales will sing, and I shall lift up my head in the unequal match, strike blindly, and be informed By Francesca, aged nine, or Roderigo, aged 10, that I am “out o’ boundsee.” This is always, the deciding factor. I shall miss a short putt on the home green, order two vermouths, and hand my opponent an exquisitely-emblazoned agricultural engraving, to the value of approximately a couple of front-row velvets at the movies in the Tottenham Court road. Still, Newbury will be pleased. And he is such a nice fellow’. PEELING APPLE'S. I never peel red appes but I see You at my knee— Your tiny face all puckered in a queer grimace Watching the knife go round and round. “Mother, make me an apple ring?” Strange To remember such a trivial thing! —Burd Bennett Skemp, in the American Poetry Magazine. THE CURIOUS SEX. (Doris Arthur Jones, in an English Exchange.) From time immemorial women have been branded as being more curious than men. Now we are told by a London clergymen that men far outnumber women in the inquiries they address to him during the “Question Hour” he has instituted at his church. I do not believe that one sex is more curious than the other, but they are interested in totally different matters. Feminine curiosity is light-hearted, and less searching than masculine. Few W'omen are ashamed to admit their desire to know the cost of a dress, but the majority would be reluctant to admit their ignorance of some important event in history. The opposite is the case with most men. They feel it is bad taste to be curious about personal matters, but they rarely mind asking for information about public affairs. Curiosity often becomes a vice ’with some people. Most of us are familiar with old maids and bachelors who spend all their time probing into the affairs of others. Such people live generally in villages or small towns. They are an object of terror and dislike to the other inhabitants, and the originators of countless petty scandals and quarrels. Lack of any real occupation drives them slowly, as they grow' older, into indecent prying into their neighbours’ concerns.I think one of the most objectionable forms of curiosity, possibly because it is accepted as legitimate, is that shown by members of a family about each other? We are deeply interested ..in. the J affairs of our nearest and dearest, bit that does not give us the right to seek or demand information the possessor , desires to withhold. There is more gossip and tittle-tattle among large families than among friends, or society in general. We are apt to condemn curiosity as an unpleasant quality, and few T of us will acknowledge that we are led and tempted by it. We forget that it is an instinct which is. one of the most valuable and beneficial assets of humanity in the battle of life. It is the driving force behind the work of all scientists, doctors, and explorers. Without it the world would still be in a state of barbarism.