Jim Jams' Lodge Meeting.

Observer, 9 December 1912, Page 20

Jim Jams' Lodge Meeting.

By "THREE STAR. ,,

fIM JAMS, Past Master of the United Order of Irrigators, had attended the annual meeting of the lodge and had, with the aid of friendly lamp-posts, telegraph posts, curbstones and other objects distributed by beneficient public bodies, reached the Grafton Road Bridge on his way to his home — which waa at St. Helier's Bay. Be sat down on the kerb to meditate on the extraordinary fact that the earth was revolving on its own axis and that he was revolving too. Suddenly the earth in its revolutions brought a stalwart figure in blue and silver round to him—evidently a police sub-in-spector, who viewed him kindly and said, " TJm ! too far to the Hospital for Exuberant Lodge members, and too far to the Church Society for the reception of Afflicted Dyspeptics. Reckon I'll get him a shakedown at the Public Men's Reformatory." Lovingly linking' his arm in the arm of

Jim Jams, Mr Hendrey proceeded across the bridge and turned into the Domain, in the centre of which was a great building. He knocked at the front portal, which was opened by a gigantic warder. A whispered word from Mr Hendrey and Mr J. Jams was admitted and put to bed, where he dreamed that he was floating on a meringue in a sea of champagne. In the morning the warder appeared at the door of his dormitory and asked him his name. Mr J. Jams thought hard. He coudn't remember. He didn't know his address, but he believed he was called Oopseepoo, chief of the Walpurgees, in the island of Wotisname. The warder took the particulars down and looked grave. It was clearly a case of suspended memory or apasia of the intellect. He consulted the house physician, who held that although the case was not one for the institution he was quite interested and that Jams might stay. Everything Avould be done to try to restore his memory, and in the meantime enquiries would be made in the city as to whether a man of about 43, well-nourished, with clean finger nails, and who -was obviously a business-man of some kind, was missing. The medical superintendent of the reformatorj indicated to the chief warder that perhaps if the patient was introduced to the City Council, all of whom were in the reformatory (the city in the meantime being run by the Women's Keform League), they might strike some chord that would set reason on her throne again — so that he might be restored to the bosom of his friends. "Show him No. I—Parr," commanded the doctor. The warder led him forth into a paddock. Num-

For The Observer Christmas Annual

A Breezy Far.

ber 1 had a haversack full of green tickets slung round his neck, and he was addressing each of the posts in the fence. "As chief magistrate of this citay," he was saying to a totara strainer, " I have great pleashaw in handing you a park !" Saying which, he took one of the green tickets and nailed it to the face of the totara citizen with the aid of a tack and a tack-hammer.

"Do you recognise the gentleman ?" asked the warder.

" Yes ! yes \" shrieked J. Jams, with glee, " he's Boolooboolo, my chief medicine man. He owes me three cocoanuts and a piece of shark. Hello, 800100 !" But Number 1 was tacking a park to a knot in the last panel of the fence and didn't hear him.

Show him No. 2 !" again commanded the medical superintendent. " Forward John Court \" came the instruction, and Number 2, wearing a loin clotli, a necklace of sharks' teeth, carrying a nulla nulla, knobkerrie, boomerang, bow and arrows, a poison

blow pipe and a twelve foot spear bounded out and said, " Yah h h!" From his garments he took a piece of raw bear and gnawed it. "I am the chief savage I" he yelled. "Come and I'll make mincemeat of you !" He danced round Jim Jams wildly. Jim smiled seraphically. "Why, dash me, if it isn't the good kind missionary who used to come to my island with cases of gin !" In despair the doctor turned away. Surely he said, " he'll know Number 3—what ? Trot out Number 3—Michaels !" Number three came out from behind a pohutukawa tree, pulling a penny tin engine behind him with a piece of cotton. He had a slate under his arm, on which the minute engineering calculation, "If two and three are seven, how many pints of road metal would Mr Bush require to make a wooden bridge from Mt. Eden to Eangitoto ?" appeared. " Know him ?" asked the doctor. " Betcherlife I know him," answered J. Jams. " He's the bloke that invented wireless politics in the Sistonoosba Island."

" Oh, come on !" said the disgusted doctor. "Number Four ! ! !—Tudehope \" A mild gentleman, attired as a phonograph, with three funnels, each making a speech on different subjects, appeared through the door of the exercise yard. " Oh, I don't think it's any good trying him with Number Eour," said the doctor. "He thinks he's Gladstone, Bright, Pitt, Seddon, Asquith and Glover all in one ! Give No. 4 his Seddon 'phone and let him go away and play."

" What about Number 5 ?" asked the doctor. So the warder reached a massive hand through a hedge and dragged out that number. " Hullo Knight \" said the superintendent. Number 5 ran his hands through his curls, looked with a keen eye on Jim Jams, and said, " Re-mark-able development of the frontal region. Let me feel your cranium, my dear sir. Ah ! wonderful bump of alimentativeness. Teetotaller, I presume ? Oh ! I thought so \" and put his left hand over Jam's organ of benevolence.

" Know him ?" enquired the doctor. "Of course, I know him. He and I dined together off a fat sea-captain on the island of Bunkumwallah in the year 1248 ! Know him ? Pull the other leg \"

There's a last resort, warder/ pursued the doctor—" call Number 6—Nerheny—you can hear him addressing the plaster on the walls of waid 99, protesting that it's a disgrace and an intejference wid the libbity of the subjick. The warder

called three or four comrades, served out suits of armour to them, armed them with rifles, bayonets and ball-cartridge and spent the next two hours trying to catch Number 5. After prodigious efforts they drove him to the eastern angle of the building, where he scaled a water pipe and was about to reach the roof, when a hand shot out and grasped his lovelock

" I know him ! I know him \" screamed the delighted Jim Jams—" used to employ him at three oyster shells a day (and overtime) to gather cocoanuts.-"

" I'm afraid it's hopeless/ said the doctor ; " tnit there's no harm in confronting him with Number 6 (Shaw) and and Number 7 (Casey)." Number 7 appeared just attired in Royal purple, with a crown on his head. He advanced, and drawing his State sword, knighted the doctor on the spot. No. 6 was dressed in a paper sheet, every inch of which was covered with intricate calculations, going to show that two blue beans and three red ones did not necessarily make five, and that the finances of the city had been proved to be in a shocking condition since the Town Clerk dropped a half-penny down a drain.

Jim Jams joyously hailed them as friends from the sister tribe of Goozlewoozems and invited them to partake of a chop from the warder (who was the fattest person on the ground). A refusal did not annoy Jim Jams, who at that moment espied Numbers 8 and 9 (Dickson and Mennie) walking arm in arm across the lawn. Number 8 advanced, "Mr Speaker, sir," he said, addressing Jim Jams, "as Primear of this yer great country, I 'aye great pleasure in stating that my Purls of Oratory has been published and is now available to anyone wot enquires of the chief cook in the kitchen. My

dear friend, Number 9, will bear me hout when I sez that nuthin' like it 'as ever bin written before (cheers !)."

" Know eithei' of 'em ?" queried tlie doctor. " The big fat one with the spikey ' mo ' is Sam Dickson, M.P., and the little Scotchman is J. M. Mennie, and the nice curly-haired chap playing leapfrog over the hedge is Freddy Gaudin, and there's Bead with an ' Infant's Header' in his

hand, and the thin-faced chap is «J. Trevethick — and dear old Peter Mactay—and oh — where am I ?"

" Jim," said his wife, as she glared into his bleary eye on that Christmas morning—"you came home disgracefully intoxicated from the Lodge last night—and the rot you've been talking is stupendous. Like a cup of tea ?"