Oh, Those Gramophones!

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 29, Issue 48, 22 June 1917, Page 2

Oh, Those Gramophones!

A SUBURBAN '‘PERIL” DEALT WITH BY OUR HARMLESS HUMORIST. Some! people keep gramophones ah a hobby ; some do it on purpose. I live at the Nook, situate in a quiet avenue. I have lived here for two weeks, but when I came I didn’t know they had a gramophone let loose. The house next door to me is called The Retreat. From nine in the morning until ' the last car home there comes from this house the ■ sound of an oboe, a D-flat piccolo, two more piccolos more D-flat than usual, a concertina in the last stages of croup, the bagpipes, and the clarionet disguised as bronchial catarrh. Gramophones, are all very well if people would only let them alone. But this one is fitted with a little oil-bath, all black fittings, self-starter and two-speed gear. \

Soon I shall become desperate and shall rush out' of the house with the kitchen chopper in my hand, and the world will quiver with the news of dark deeds being perpetrated on the cross-roads. There will be a dull thud, as of somebody being severely chopped, and then I shall give myself up, glorying in my crime, What did Edison want to invent such things for ? One of these days I shall write him a jolly stiff note about it. For nights on end, hair ditto, 1 have sat down in my room to write priceless articles for the papers, when the gramophone next door starts. They must have the records laid on at the main.

I ask you, what would you do if you were writing an article on “The Economic Aspect of the Black Beetle’s Patella as Compared with the Physiology of the Ghan Fly,’’ and then to be greeted with information that it is still a considerable distance to Tipperary ? The matter is fast becoming serious. Only the other morning when I came downstairs I found our tabby cat lying dead with cotton-wool in each ear. I cannot get anything to grow in the garden. The other day I decided upon action. I said to the Perkins, who lives at The Retreat, when I saw him* in the garden : “Do you want to sell your gramophone, Perkins ?” “Gramophone ?’’ he said. “That isn’t a gramophone. That’s my daughter singing. Got a good voice, don’t you think ? Writes good poetry too. I ought to get some advice for her, don’t you think?’’ “Yes,” I said. “You ought to see a doctor. Perhaps a piece of bone is pressing on the brain !” Perkins doesn’t speak to me how,