MAN FATE CANNOT KILL

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 985, 30 May 1930, Page 12

MAN FATE CANNOT KILL

BUT IT HAS TRIED HARD Mr. Maynard A. Dominic, of \ ork, has ambled through life because of this he has been constantlmissing death by inches during ti. last 20 years! If lie had been of the energetic commercial traveller type of man. Ur Dominic would have been dead re ar , ago. A 3 it is, he is always ain minutes, a few hours or perhaps t few days, too late to be killed. By all the ordinary laws of Fate and Chance, he should have beet drowned at least twice and killed «• least once in a railway accident, bu* lie has always failed tc- arriye in time. And he owes his life, p rlEr ; pally, to the fact that he is a -re., reader. When I saw him at the Savor Hotel (writes a “Sunday Express'representative!, he was reading a profound biographical work. He is , mild-mannered man of few words Long-drawn-out moments had elapsed before he had accomplished the feat of placing his book un one side, removing his spectacles and ui crossing his legs. “Dear, dear! Fancy coming to see me, ’he murmured. “I am not at all interesting. I'm a publisher, in fact —a quiet business, very quiet.” Mr. Dominic has made more th»* 100 crossings of the Atlantic durinj; the past 37 years in his search for literary works. “I should have lost my life in the Titanic disaster,” he said. “A number of friends who were leaving London for the States madevery inducement to me to sail with them in that ill-fated ship. “T declined the invitation, and returned in another liner. You see. 1 do a great deal of reading, and the liner I sailed in had a favourite chair I used. My friends lost their lives.’’ His next narrow escape was when be sailed in the Lusitania on her las', successful trip to Europe. “It may not be generally known,’’ he said, “but on that occasion a German submarine fired two torpedoes a: us, but they failed to explode. The Germans sent her to the bottom on the next crossing. I was not on board.” Mr. Dominic's luck again held viler his bedroom in London was wrecked in an air raid. “I happened to be in the bathroom at the time,” he went on. “I should have been killed on that occasion, bat I am a slow-going individual, and had I not taken a long time over my bath I should have returned to my bedroom just In time for the bomb.” Mr. Dominic's leisurely methods saved him from death in a railway disaster. He dawdled at a bookstall and missed the train. Twenty of those who caught it were killed when the train came in collision with another train. “Adventure never comes my way,’’ he concluded “I seem to miss It by inches.”