From The Watch Tower

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 642, 19 April 1929, Page 8

From The Watch Tower

By

“THE LOOK-OUT MAN.”

BY REQUEST A prisoner up for sentence at 'Wellington asked, through his counsel, for hard labour. He got three years of it. jYo conventional plea for probation On behalf of my client I frame. Ror pray for the street consolation Obtained by suppressing his name. Rot thus do I blandish your Honour That Justice's ends you retard; It's patent the man is a “gonn&r ,” So give him a year or tivos "hard.” This suit has the prisoner's approval; He seeks absolution in toil , And hopes to effect the removal Of sin when he furrows the soil. In hammering stones in the Quarry, Or wheeling out boulders and sod, He’ll sweat till he’s thoroughly sorry He merited mention of "quod.” A notable effort? Yes, splendid. Yet, hoist with that self-same petard — The favour his Honour extended — The prisoner is doing it hardl BEO WI LE. TELEP”“"E The tiMfcns of fighters! In Sydney recently Norman Gillespie outpointed one Jack Roberts in the first seven rounds of their prize-fight. In round eight a bell rang. Gillespie lowered his fists. He had heard the gong going, he thought. But It was only a ringing telephone. The next thing Gillespie heard was the trickle of cold water. Roberts had knocked him out. POPPY DAY J.P.: How is this for practical Christianity? This morning I met three different people who bragged that they had resurercted their last year’s poppies and thus defeated the intentions of the street collectors. No doubt this is the Anzac spirit, as viewed by a certain peculiar type of intelligence, but It really looks as though the poppies wil lhave to be like the motor number plates—changed in colour from year to year. OUR COUNCIL Brisk exchanges on the battlefront: Cr. Phelan: That takes the cake. The Mayor (later) : That takes the bun. ... I found Cr. Murray sneaking round inside the zoo. Cr. Murray: Point of order. . . . And after Cr. Phelan had taken the metaphorical cake, and the Mayor had seized the figurative bun, and Cr. Murray had been ordered in the best Napoleonic manner to sit down, they all adjourned to the supper room and had real cakes and real buns “on the ratepayers,” and wondered at this “last supper” how many of their undeserving colleages would be present at the next. * * * SQUATTER BENEFACTOR A self-made man, and proud of it, is John Clark, donor of £5,000 in the cause of radium for cancer sufferers. His forty thousand-odd sheep roam over the pastures of Waipaoa, Opou and other stations down iGsborne way. As a youth he tramped into the district with not a fleece or an acre of land to his name. During the war, when his heenfactions were many, he was accosted by two lady collectors, who looked at his cheque for £SO with dismay and said: “Couldn’t you make it more than that, Mr. Clark?” He took back the cheque, tore it up into small pieces, and handed it back without a word. For years and years the children's creche in Gisborne was kept going by an anonymous Samaritan. Eventually it was learned that the man was John Clark.

rl* rH r!: rrr rr. rtr MRS. BYRD'S LAND Part of the frozen southern territory over which Britain and America are now politely wrangling is Marie Byrd Land, named by the American explorer after his wife. The American Press explains his courtly action by explaining that Byrd is a descendant of Henry of Navarre, King of France, and that therefore such graces come easily to him. On her right hand Mrs. Byrd bears a ring of white gold, set with diamonds. Two hundred years ago it belonged to Evelyn Byrd, “the fairest flower of colonial Virginia,” who, when presented at the court of St. James, met the gallant Earl of Peterborough, fell in love with him, but for religious reasons was not permitted to marry him. The lovely Evelyn died of a broken heart, but the ring she wore is passed on to the wives of the Byrd eldest son. It is all most interesting —as long as it is not flavoured with the same imaginative spice as some of the publicity matter habitually issued in America on behalf of the great and near-great.