FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 443, 27 August 1928, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By “THE LOOK-OUT MAN." THREE SETBACKS We poor New Zealanders. South Africans, Englishmen and Australians defeated our Rugby and League teams on Saturday. Maorilanders have been plunged into gloom. “It was a black Saturday.” They have been assuming each other. But there are one or two optimists, unpopular at present, of course, who assert that defeats by the representatives of three other countries will have one advantage. They will give New Zealand football a Slip. A poor consolation, but still SYMPATHY Tilden has been suspended by the American Lawn Tennis Association for writing comments on a tournament in which he took part at Wimbledon. It is further alleged that he received padded expense accounts. Sympathy wells out to Tilden from the compassionate heart of the L.0.M., who has been 15 years beyond the pale, having lost his amateur status at the coconut shy, when only six years old. OLD AGE A HABIT Besides having a . reputation for ghosts, Badwell Ash Hall, a seat in West Suffolk, is the place where old age becomes a habit. The two owners are 90 and 91 years of age, and the cook has prepared 60 Christmas dinners there. The housemaid has given 40 years’ service, and two farm hands have lived there for 80 years. No report is given of the ages of the poultry used in the Christmas dinners. UNCLAIMED GOODS At an auction sale conducted by the Returned Soldiers’ Association in New Plymouth on the vacation of its club rooms, everything was sold hut a pile of Hansard back numbers. Extraordinary! We had imagined they would be among the first lots snapped up. We can only suggest that the defeats suffered by the All Blacks, and such national disasters, have caused us to lose our capacity for enjoying a good joke. SINLESS PLASTERERS The sin of bad workmanship will not be mourned by the Salvation Army in its funeral parade, anyhow, for Commissioner James Hay has absolved Auckland from any suspicion of slipshod artisanship. Speaking at the opening of the Congress Hall he said: “The building is not fancifully or extravagantly beautiful, hut it is beautiful. You can see the way in which it has been plastered. The plasterers delighted in their work. It has been well done and I have a great admiration for Auckland workmanship.” AN INDEPENDENT Ruskin was a predecessor of Mr. G. K. Chesterton as candidate for the Lord Rectorship of Glasgow University, hut he returned a characteristic reply to the students who dared to question him about his political sympathies: “What, in the devil’s name, have you to do with either Disraeli Or Gladstone?” he demanded. “You are students at the University, and ypu have no more business with politics than you have with rat-catching. Had you ever read ten words of mine with understanding you would have known that I care no more for Mr. Disraeli or Mr. Gladstone than for two old bagpipes with the drones going by steam, but that I hate all Liberalism as I hate Beelzebub, and that with Carlyle I stand, we two alone now in England, for God and the Queen.”

A LESSON IN ETYMOLOGY Do you know how the term “nipper,” as applied to a small boy, came, into our common speech? The Prince of Wales did not until the other day, when he learned its origin while aboard the Victory. In ships like the Victory short pieces of rope called “nips” were used on the cable, dnd the boys whose job it was to fix these ropes were known as “nippers.” They had to be smart and active, and finally the word became one generally applied to small boys, particularly those of a bright, mischievous type. Yet another interesting piece of word history which the Prince had explained to him in the ship was how the oft-used expression “straight as a yard of pump water” obtained vogue. The Victory’s ancient pumps have a yard’s space between each sucker, which meant that there was a yard of straight water betwixt each when the pumps were being worked. Prom that derives the phrase that we so often employ. It. is just one of the old sea terms which we keep alive by daily usage, without knowing anything of their ffmesis. Sufficient for most of us is the fact that they are apt and expressive.