From The Watch Tower

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 222, 8 December 1927, Page 10

From The Watch Tower

By “THE LOOK-OUT MAN”

“A KISS IN THE DARK ” The gentleman who applied for a re-hearing of his case after having been fined for dangerous driving, and who contemptuously described tire car with which ha had collided as “a cheap one,” was lucky not to have had his penalty increased. “My car’s worth £1,000,” he said, and he coolly informed the magistrate that he had asked the other man “What he was crying about.” “People like that make me tired,” he said, and referred to the collision as merely “a kiss in the dark.” People like this defendant don’t make other people tired, but they make them very angry. In this ease insult was added to injury, and anybody but a very even-tem-pered magistrate would have increased the fine. Indeed, the magistrate observed that he felt like doing so; hut he ordered the fin'e of £7 to stand—supported by £4 costs. It was a dear “kiss,’ ’in any case. THE PUBLIC SERVICE It Is natural that, as indicated by the Commissioner, competition for Government positions Is keen. A man on the permanent staff of the Public Service has “a steady job,” generally at a fair wage, and mostly with no.t too much to do, and he has that feeling of safety which accompanies the knowledge that he is provided for during all his working years, and that a superannuation scheme will ensure his comfort after retirement. Men in private employ do Aot enjoy the same satisfaction, and it will he a good thing for the country when some national scheme of superannuation is evolved. It is stated by Mr. Fraser, M. by the way, that girls are being discriminated against in the Public Service—that they receive discouragement at every turn and have few avenues of advancement open to them. This hardly seems accurate; hut what is unfortunately true is that there are married women in Government pay whose husbands are in good positions and quite able to maintain them. Each of these women is keeping some more needy person out of a job. * * * SHOOTING BY HEADLIGHT The merry party which enlivened the “witching hour of moonlight” by chasing a cat with a motor-car along Customs Street, must have thought it expensive sport when the driver was fined £SO. The incident recalls to the L.O.M. a somewhat similar sport in which he partook'on several dark nights in the vicinity of an outback N. town. It is recalled only in a spirit of repentance. This car party used to arm itself with pearifles and shoot over the front of the vehicle at the rabbits which sat up on the road, bewildered by the headlights. Cars were few In those days, but rabbits could be seen by the million. It was great fun ■ popping-off Bunny! One supposes there is no such sport these times, for cars are almost as plentiful as rabbits, and to fire a rifle along a road would be to risk hitting more than a: bunny. WHERE FATE LEADS It must have been very specially ordained that Conal O’Riordan, the brilliant Irish novelist, should not die young. In an article in “T.P.’s,” O’Riordan tells of “the despair of seventeen,” when, after the death of his father, he found himself in London without money, health or hope. “After a bullet through my head, as a celebration of my seventeenth birthday, had failed to draw anything but a torrent of ill-spared blood, I settled down to the journeyman business of life.” O’Riordan went on the stage and strode the boards for a number of years before finding fame as an author.

A BACHELOR’S VIEW Algy, who works in an insurance office and has views on various matters, got into an argument regarding marriage. Algy isn’t married. “The disinclination of young men to marry,” he says, loftily, “is because the modern woman wants things made much too easy for her. All the resources of science seem to be devoted to laboursaving devices in the home. At the moment there are so many that the cost of installing them is prohibitive on a small income. It is no longer a matter of buying furniture for the home, but of buying all these modern accessories as well. The old theory was that the woman should work hard in the home while the man worked hard in the city. The work-ing-class woman with a family still works hard, but the ideal of the modern wife, and especially the childless wife, seems to be an hour’s dusting in the morning and an hour or so’s preparation of the evening meal. For the rest of the house duties she relies upon the charlady and the various labour-savers. The man has to pay in harder work and less relaxation, and incidentally, is prevented from saving,” _ " ‘‘