GOOD STORIES BY A JUDGE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17758, 30 January 1926, Page 9

GOOD STORIES BY A JUDGE.

WHY MR JUSTICE EVE LIKES CARAVANS.

Mr Justice Eve, who was the guest of honour of the Authors’ Club in London recently, confessed that he was not an author.

“In these circumstances,” he continued, “J. cannot help thinking that there is some misunderstanding in the minds of your committee that I am, after all, the anonymous author of the * Letters of Junius,’ or some other work the name of which I don’t even know. “ On a recent occasion of malice aforethought I did instigate and incite certain persons feloniously to kill and slay by drowning in a bath # certain budding Mozarts and Paderewskis whose satisfaction at extracting horrible noises from a so-called musical instrument is in inverse proportion to the misery and pain they inflict on those | listening to them. THE MAIDEN’S PRAYER. “ Some years ago I lodged in a house, and in the room underneath lived a lady, no longer in her teens, who was very fond of playing the piano. “ After I had been in residence about three months it struck me I had before heard the tune she was playing. “ Lodging in the same house was a friend who thought he was a bit of a musical genius because he played a disgusting wind and water instrument called the flute. “ I said to him, * It seems to me I’ve heard that tune before.’ ‘ Man,’ he said, ' it’s been played every night for the last three months. It’s “ The Maiden’s Prayer.’ ” “ Said I, ‘ Well, go down and ask the lady what she is praying for, and tell her that if she will stop I will give it her.’ ” It was possibly experiences like that which led him to think of the delight of unconventional holidays, said the |J\ dge. In 1880 he was superintending tbr building of his first travelling wagin the front garden of one of the old houses in Euston Road. It was very much like a bathing machine, and had the many drawbacks incident to a first experiment in that sort of architecture. From that day down to last September he had spent many weeks each year in a travelling van. He had had altogether six vans. Caravaning was a most delightful way of getting about the country. When he started he was mistaken for a herbalist, an actor, a prize-fighter, a theatrical manager, a tinker and a hawker, never for an author. “ If you start in the right spirit,” he said, “ you make time your servant. The distress of modern life usually is that time is your master.”