DISHONOR AMONG THIEVES.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 16186, 24 July 1923, Page 7

DISHONOR AMONG THIEVES.

STORY OF A LAWN MOWER. (Special to the Herald.l CHRISTCHURCH, this day. A good story, a ■ gem of its kind, is being told in Lyttelton. It concerns a waterside worker who, having successfully sown a lawn in. front of his, house, found that a lawn mower would be his next item of expenditure unless other means were found of procuring one. He decided to ■ adopt the cheaper ? if less honest, means, and bided his time. One day his chance came. A steamer was discharging hardware, and in the hold in which the watcrsider was working were cases of particularly attractive looking mowers. , The next problem was how to get one. asliore. A lawn mower obviously cannot be slipped in the pocket, or under a man’s singlet, like a few plugs of to taebo, or packets of cigarettes, and the ever-vi&ilent Customs watchmen are always suspicious of any appearance of balkiness of* clothes. This was a matter that Required thought and patience, so the watersideu canefuly took one machine to pieces, arid took ashore a little at a-time,' sometimes a wheel in his pocket, and, next, time perhaps the blades in a parcel of broken dunnage, which companies usually permit the men to take home for firing. The handle he had to saw in two, and this also came ashore as dunnage. The work of exportation was completed on a Friday night. On Saturday afternoon the watersider assembled the machine and mowed his lawn, and on the Saturday night someone stole it out of the shed, and lie has t seen it since. It is said that the lawn plot is now under cultivation as a kitchen garden.