TEDIOUS TOPICS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16495, 4 August 1921, Page 6

TEDIOUS TOPICS.

(By WALT MASON.) There are so mam* cheerful matters of which a man may talk and sing. I wonder whv a fellow chatters about the grim and grisly tiling. I wander dailv by the ocean, the wondrous ocean, vast and blue : it fills me with a high emotion. T want to talk ybout the view. And there are always people sitting on chairs and benches near the shore ; old ladies with their endless knitting, old j gents who find this life a bore. And j they inhale the salty breezes, and they] | experience no thrills: thev talk all dav of their diseases, of warts and corns and ; liver pills. T turn to them at times and thunder. “ Forget your ringbones for a dav! .Admire, with mo this 'dewing wonder I this sea that rolls from far, Cathav! Oh. think of distant isles of coral, of loftv palm and banyan tree. To talk of goitre is unmoral when you behold this phinincr sea!” Thev look at me with grins sarcastic, and talk again of purnle pills: thev speak of operations drastic thov’re undergone, for divers ills. T have mv share of dread diseases, they all are fatal, more or less • but when T breathe the ocean breezes forgotten is my form’s distr< ss. When ocean, busy as a beaver, chants forth its ocean, grand and rich. T cannot think of chills a pel fever, of gout and mumps and barber’s itch.