FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 986, 31 May 1930, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By

•THE LOOK-OUT MAN

INTEREST ADDED Three £1 notes placed in a pillow slip by a Takapuna resident were forgotten and sent to the bagwash. When the laundry returned the bag, the notes were found tightly screwed up in a corner of the pillow slip. Some store their family savings in the caddy with the tea, While others use a patent money-box. There’s she who finds a hiding place among the crockery, And he who makes a storehouse of his sox. The miser keeps a golden hoard beneath the kitchen floor; The spendthrift jingles coppers on his hip . . But here’s a new concealment for a brace of notes or morejust hide them in a handy pillow slip. It may be that the landlady will fill her laundry sack With this and other household bits and pieces. But here is an advantage; When the pillow slip comes back, your money opens doubled—and increases ! M.E. REWARD OF GENIUS The success of talking pictures is not the only blow that has been received ’by musicians of today. Disguised as a blind and tattered beggar, Jacques Gordon, a famous violinist, played exquisitely on the busy sidewalks of Chicago, and was rewarded with the sum of £1 3s 3d. As a result of this experience, he argues that the public is attracted to his concerts by the fame of the artist, plus the social prominence of the audiences, rather than by the music itself. But to make his test complete, M. Gordon should have stated the average earnings of the genuine Chicago street musician. Possibly a less meritorious performance would not have attracted anything like five dollars from the hurrying audience. In any case, a violin in competition with Chicago’s traffic must be desperately handicapped. WHERE ART THOUI Leaving her well-known temple of sensational religions to look after itself for the meanwhile, Mrs. Aimee Semple McPherson, American evangelist, accompanied by her pretty daughter, is wandering obscurely in Eastern Europe. For t.he time being her whereabouts is unknown, and 40 of her disciples who were to meet her in Palestine, afterward accompanying her to Oberammergau for the Passion Play, are becoming anxious. With the exception of a telegram from Constantinople, Mrs. McPherson has sent no word. However, with vivid memories of a similar disappearance in California, and an allegation of kidnapping, followed by a prosecution of Mrs. McPherson for something that closely resembled perjury, her followers will hesitate before startling Turkey with cries fit “Aimee, where art thou?”

MRS. BROWN’S VIEW

Holyrood', where plain Mr. James Brown, M.P., will represent his King as Lord High Commissioner at the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, has seen battles and burials, dances and deaths, festivals and fires, marriages and murders. Since its original construction in 1498, Edinburgh’s historic palace has accumulated the ghosts of great personages, royal, ecclesiastic, civil, and military. In future years the name of Jimmy Brown, ex-miner, must be added to the list; also that of Mrs. Brown, whose ample, ankle-length skirt has been the subject of cabled comment, and who confessed she was “a wee bit sorry” to exchange cottage for palace even for ten days. Doubtless Mrs. Brown with the true housewifely instinct of wishing to keep a capable finger on the pulse of her residence finds Holyrood too much of a good thing altogether. ROMANTIC COMPANY After sheltering Augustinian canons for more than 400 years, Holyrood Abbey—so named because it housed the Black Rood or true cross of Scotland—was destroyed by the English in 1544, reconstructed as the Chapel Royal in 1672, reduced to ruins in 1765. The palace was built by James IV. in 1498, burned in 1650, restored by Cromwell, and rebuilt by Charles 11. There- Prince Charles Edward held his levees, and . there the Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland holds his levee each May. Since the days of George IV. Holyrood Palace has been the residence of all British sovereigns visiting Edinburgh. Visitors today gaze at a dark stain outside the door of one of the apartments and are told that this is said to be the blood of Rizzio, favourite musician of Mary Queen of Scots. Mr. and Mrs. Brown are in romantic if shadowy company.