A PRACTICAL JOKE.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9402, 24 March 1909, Page 2

A PRACTICAL JOKE.

Mr Victor Grayson, the well-known Socialist M.P., was recently the victim of a practical joke, which will be voted amusing or silly, devei or stupid, according to the individual poiijb of view. Hearing that Mr Grayson had determined to electrify the Labour Conference at Portsmouth with a stirring speech, Mr F T. Jane, a well-known |naval critic*, and Oaptaiu Kenneth Wilson, a retired Army officer, resolved to get him out of tbe way until it was too late for him to make turn his energy into volts. Mr Jane had a racing car, so it was decided to invite Mr Grayson to go for a sightseeing trip on it during the luncheon adjournment, and to run about the country until the afternoon was well advanced. First of all the yonng Socialist’s nerve was tested by a speed of sixty miles an hour along a country road (poor other traffic!). Then a halt was made at a hotel for lunch, and Mr Jane tipped the waiter to be as long as he could in bringing in the courses. On the ran back to Portsmouth the oar was stopped for an imaginary breakdown, and Mr Jane fussed about among the works, while Mr Grayson expressed himself freely about the delay. Eventually Mr Grayson left the car without thanking his hosts for the pleasant onting, and took a tramcar into Portsmouth. One result of the joke, we fear, was to give Mr Grayson a splendid advertisement, for certain London papers gave the account of the escapade greater prominence than they would have given fco any speech of his. The jofee had an Interesting sequel. Captain Wilson received a telephone message purporting to come from a friend, asking him to go to Southampton to see a football match. 1 He went, but there was no friend and no football match. There was, instead, a rough-and-tumble with a number of Mr Grayson’s sympathisers, about which the captain was very reticent, but in wbiob, it is understood, he gave as good as he got. He is over six feet high, and a formidable man with his fists, so the encounter may have been complicated with casualties.