From The Watch Tower

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 38, 7 May 1927, Page 10

From The Watch Tower

By the LOOK-OUT MAN

THE BURGLAR Forty burglaries have been perpetrated In Auckland in a month. When the enterprising burglar goes aburgling In the darkness of an Auckland autumn night, The police are busy guarding public meetings Or keeping order at a hinged-in fight. When constabulary duty's to be done At an entertainment in a well-lit hall, The policeman's lot is quite a. happy one And burgu-lars don't worry him at all. With dynamite and jemmy in his toolkit, The burglar gaily burglars as he xcill. He carols as he does his nightly shopping, And whistles as he counts each little till. When constabulary duty’s to be done, In walking up and down the lighted street, The policeman’s lot is such a happy one — The burglars are a-burgling on Jiis beat. When bui'glars industriously burgle, The police are ever busy on their jobs, You see them sternly clearing clean the footpaths And assiduously guarding theatre mobs. When constabulary duty’s to be done, In zealously parading up the street, The burglar manifests his sense of fun By burgling ev’ry shop xtpon his beat. SYDNEY'S CHIEF SUBURB Mr. Bartram, M.P., says he was asked in London whether New Zealand was not a suburb of Sydney. These Australians will have their joke. Some of them, on leaving London in khaki, won wealthy brides by telling them their fathers had emu-feather factories at Botany or kangaroo farms in Hyde Park. These impressions still stick on some Londoners. By the way, there is a suburb called Zetland in Sydney. That would be near enough for a veracious Australian who desired to stretch a point. * * * THE VISCOUNT’S BRIDE Viscount Mandeville’s marriage to Miss Nell Vere Stead, an Australian brunette, moved the London newspapers to search the register and discover the bride’s father was described as a landowner, whereupon they dubbed her a “millionairess.” The Look-Out Man is a landowner, too, but he isn’t a millionaire. He owns an estate which is ten parts equity and ninety parts mortgage. But to revert to Lord Mandeville—he’s an ingenuous sort of lad. The wedding was carried out to schedule, despite the fact that on the night before his -bride-to-be was shaken and cut in a motor collision, and he told the reporters, “We were happily married to-day because my wife is one of the pluckiest girls one could meet.” Well, you do run a risk if you marry a modern lord—but why tell the world? * « * SHAKESPEARE ISN’T DEAD The Rev. W. Jellie, 8.A., speaking at the literature class of the'W.B.A., said that the attendance indicated that Auckland was not lacking in appreciation of England’s greatest poet. The cry “Shakespeare Spells Ruin” has needlessly frightened many theatrical managers out of plans for Shakespearean production, but, strangely enough, Shakespeare has managed to attract audiences of sufficient size to repay managerial enterprise in this part of the world. Oscar Asche earned many shekels with his “Taming of the Shew” and “Julius Caesar” productions; Nellie Stewart scored a marked success, artistically and financially, as Rosalind as “As You Like It”; numbers of large ladies have played Juliet and managed to get the ghost walking on Fridays; and Alan Wilkie, one of the stoutest-hearted men in the theatrical business, is at present forging ahead—after his recent disastrous losses by fire—producing Shakespearean plays in Australia. Wilkie cherishes an ambition to stage every play of Shakespeare before he retires. It is a strange ambition, for some of the lesser Shakespearean dramas do not lend themselves to, nor are they worth production. Still, one has to take one’s hat off to Mr. Alan Wilkie, 0.8. E., for his enterprise and pluck. He is performing a great educative service in Australia and New Zealand. * * * GOLD IN AUSTRALIA The rich strike of gold at Westonia, in the Southern Cross district of Western Australia, recalls memories of the glamour of Pilbara, Kimberley, Murchison and Coolgardie in the days when gold-dust poured like water over the bars of public houses which charged 2s for a whisky—and whisky was swallowed in quantity, unadulterated by such enfeeblements, as aqua pura. Some of the great mines of Western Australia have been played out, but one never knows when newer and even greater lodes will be revealed in a territory of nearly a million square miles, only a fraction of which has been scratched by the prospector. Australian is the purest of all native golds, by the way, assaying 99.65 per cent, of the real metal. Australia (principally Western Australia) produces many millions of pounds’ worth of gold annually, and in the past it has been worth far more than its intrinsic value to this young nation, for many who took part in gold “rushes" were the pioneers of permanent settlement which opened up millions of acres of land for pasture and the plough. Apart from Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie in Western Australia, Ballarat, Bendigo and Castlemaine in Victoria, and Goulburn, Bathurst and Orange, Wyalong and Peak Hill, in New South Wales, may be cited as cities or towns which were founded by mining and which are now the centres of rich pastoral and agricultural areas, yielding immense wealth in wool and crops.