CIGARETTE PAPERS.

Southland Times, Issue 21658, 21 March 1932, Page 8

CIGARETTE PAPERS.

A SAVING IN TIME. A discreet knock sounded on my door. I glanced over at Ruggy, who happened to be present, and made no attempt to disguise my surprise. A discreet knock was a sufficiently rare occurrence to merit the inquiring eyebrow. The door opened to admit a man with protruding eyes, meticulously dressed in the height of 1910 fashion. He seemed somewhat surprised to find the room occupied, but greeted us with some degree of effusion.

"I am,” he announced, much after the manner of a politician applying the closure, “taking orders for a book which I am writing entitled, 'How to Save Time.’” "What a Sidey’s got 1” I exclaimed with a guffaw'. As this low pun met with a stony reception I hastily asked the distinguished visitor to tell us about his proposition. “Time is like an endless chain,” he began. “It has no end. It is illimitable; it is infinite; it is intransitive; it is indeterminate. And why has an endless chain no end?” Here he glared at me as though I had just stolen his pocket-book. “I don’t know,” I replied vacuously.

"Because it has no beginning, of course. To have an end a thing must have a beginning, and to have a beginning a thing must have an end. Things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another. A stitch in time saves nine. You should not, ruff four spades without a forcing bid. Tell me, have you ever thought of the fact that if we had twelve hours’ daylight saving a day all the year round, we need not go to bed at all?” I stared at Ruggy, the stare being returned with interest. I confessed to him that. I had never thought of this before, but it was all clear now, as through a glass darkly. "Have you ever thought that if you came down to work at five in the afternoon instead of nine in the morning you would be obviated the necessity of waiting on the people who are waiting on you ”

At this stage another knock sounded on the door. Truly this was a red-letter day. Two knocks on the door in one afternoon!

“Come in!” I bellowed. A second stranger appeared, glanced at the author-salesman, and, tapping his forehead suggestively, led that worthy’ away to outer darkness. Apparently he was a keeper, or something, and the author, who talked sanely enough, wasn’t all there.

I glanced expressively at my watch apd then at Ruggy. My research in the saving of time had cost me exactly forty minutes, fifty-five seconds! —CEC.