RANDOM REFLECTIONS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18350, 22 August 1929, Page 3

RANDOM REFLECTIONS

A LAUGHING PHILOSOPHER. (By Robert Magill.) In this country women have outnumbered men for a long time. The voting lists show that they have more political power. There is hardly a position in life, from that of sweep to surveyor, that they cannot fill, and now, since they wear short skirts, they are not even afraid of mice. Under these circumstances, I am beginning to wonder if we men are not obsolete, and whether, like the plesiosaurus, we shall soon become extinct, or nearly so. A few years ago the possibility of this would have caused a panic, because man was essential to woman, but now she is so self-sufficing that she can run the whole business of life without his assistance. She doesn’t need his escort; she finds him superfluous in the home. And compared with woman, he is far from perfect. He is more expensive to keep. He eats more, and in consequence suffers more pain, so that he needs more doctoring. He wears out more carpets. He is uglier. It costs more to educate him,, and he is more fragile. He dies earlier, and he is always getting into trouble. Even to-day woman doesn’t occupy the same space in the newspapers as does man. At present the world is run by, and for the benefit of man. When he isn’t waging some idiotic war to amuse himself, he is watching a football match. Thousands of. people do nothing all day but prepare food to appease his insatiable hunger. Thousands of tailors work to provide him clothes to wear out. Wherever woman turns she finds man in the road. If she hits a golf ball into a bunker, it lands on the head of some man who is already there. If :;:he calls three no trumps, she is immediately doubled by some man holding three aces and two kings. A world without men would be a paradise, or that is what I gather from the various women who have talked to me. The House of Lords—or Ladies—would be composed of eminent dress designers. Maids would be kept in cages and it would be an offence punishable with death to steal one. All traffic laws being incapable of comprehension by women, would be abolished. Afternoon tea would commence at ten a.m., and last till nighttime. All the rubbish in the British Museum would be thrown away, and the place turned into a West End store. Yet it would not be a world entirely unmasculine. There would still be a few of us here and there, chained to kennels, to do the rough and dirty work of the world—work such as opening tins, filling fountain pens, and sharpening pencils. For no woman, be she Senior Wrangler, champion tennis player, and R.A. all in one, can tackle anything like this. DESIRABLE RESIDENCE. George, who lives next door to me, agrees that the neighbourhood has deteriorated. He says he noticed it directly I moved in, and in his opinion the mere fact that I lived there would turn Park Lane into a slum. We have not yet got “Apartments” or “Piano Lessons” in the windows, those fatal signs that a suburban district has seen better days, but most of the cars driven by the inhabitants are tuite common compared with our new peeder Six, while the display of washing in the back gardens on Mondays is positively plebeian. That being so, when we saw a house advertised with a really classy postal address, we went off to see it. Strangely enough, it was absolutely as described, even more so. Usually an old-world garden means one full of weeds and empty bottles. This one had had a year’s rent spent .on it in the last six months. There were two rooms more than advertised, each with a fireplace. When my wife had sat still for a minute, she recovered from the shock, and the lady of the house took us into the drawing room to give us some tea. Now the drawing room windows faced the crossing of two new arterial roads, and the lady said she had to keep them shut because the cars covered the furniture with an inch of dust every day. Rather, she shouted this, to make herself heard about the hooting and the noise of the racing engines. Cars passed three abreast at five yard intervals in each direction. Just then an extra heavy lorry thundered past, and the clock fell off into the fender. She explained that it was always doing that. The whole house was vibrating like the engine room in a torpedo boat and the cups and saucers were dancing like castanets. She had to hold them down to pour out the tea. and after she had put the pot down, it waltzed across the tray and fell into her lap. She smiled sadly, but she did not J seem surprised. Really, it 'was quite interesting to watch the pictures on the walls, shake themselves crooked and occasionally fall off. I She admitted through the vibration, . that “Y-y-ou d-do have a tr-tr-trouble j to k-k-keep the bed-clothes on at I night when the heavy 1-1-lorries are ( going b-b-by.” And she said the piano had a habit of shifting while you were playing it, so that you struck the wrong note, but it didn’t matter, because nobody could hear it above the din. As she spoke, there was a crash outside. Two cars had collided. She said they did this on an average once a day. but it wasn’t always fatal. As we left the chimney swayed and crashed through the roof. DOING PARIS. Paris is the capital of the American possessions in Europe, and is considered the handsomest city in the world. Its streets were built extremely wide and straight by Napoleon 111., for the benefit of the Paris taxi-driver, who, if he misses a pedestrian first time, is allowed to go up on to the pavement after him, and hoot at him ! if he climbs a tree. The city is chiefly famous as the venue of one of Mr Chaplin’s best films and the main exports are fashionable frocks, plaster of paris, and Paris sausages. The population, including the suburbs, runs into some millions, and the taxis run into nearly as many. The excursionsist is recommended to take a good pair of boots with him, because once he has wandered away from his hotel he will find that the ’bus conductors talk a different sort of French from that in his phrase book, and after he has taken one look at a taxi driver earning his seventy-five centimes for the first 400 metres, he will prefer to walk. You must forgive my harping on the taxis, but they are the first ; things to strike you in Paris, and they don’t care whether they strike you in , the back of the neck or the front of the waistcoat. The most famous street is the Champs Elysees, pronounced Shorn; 2l leesey. if possible. If not, point to it i on the map and the agent de police, ; who is not called a gend’arme, will » execute a little dance and make you a ; long speech, finally getting so excited 1 that nothing less than a five franc - note will save him from apoplexy. 1 Here you will find the Arc de Triomphe if you want it, also several

cafes, which you are more likely to want. Other prominent buildings are the tour Eiffel, where you can get a Vermouth melange on the third floor if you go up in the lift and Notre. Dame. On the roof there are the celebrated gargoyles, which are nearly as ugly as those people who sit opposite to you in the train. The Moulin Rouge is the chief educational centre of Paris, and the next is Gipsy’s Bar, in the Boul’ Mich. But be careful if there is a man in here singing songs. If you thoughtlessly give him five francs, he considers you have bought him, body and soul, and he wants you to get the benefit of his next song, and nobody else, so that he stands with his face about a foot from yours, looks hard at you, and “sings.” It is worse than being talked to by a sergeant instructor. There are many beautiful things in the Louvre, also in the Magazin de Printemps, and La Samaritaine, and the prices are quite reasonable when you realise that somebody’s got to pay for the war. A final mention must be made of the bottom left hand corner of Paris. There is one street there where the number of Frenchmen exceeds the number of visitors.