BY THE WAY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17871, 12 June 1926, Page 2

BY THE WAY.

SOME REFLECTIONS AND COLLECTIONS. (By One of the Boys.) " You’re a better mail than I am, Gunga Din.” Some of our roads have made .motor hoods indispensable. They stop passengers from falling out. Much interest is being shown in the next meeting between Linwood and Merivale. Both teams are in hard training. On the last week they are to try to get as near match conditions as possible, and the trainers are substituting four ounce gloves for the present sixteen ounce ones. Should the Saturday be at all frosty the Rugby Union will call the match off. It is feared the players may be too brittle. !•: sc The Mayor, Mr J. K. Archer, said yesterday: Once it was a great thing to say, “I am a Roman,” and it is an even greater to thing to say, ‘‘l am a Briton.” It would be quite a relief if at one of these functions someone was to brag about bfiing a New Zealander. But as he would probably be found to be the person who swept up, it might, after all, do no good. Mr George Manning, organiser of the W.E.A., in an interview recently. Quoted one of his Greek friends (or was it a Roman one) as saying that man was a social animal. The Greek or Roman, as the case may be, is right, and pondering on the subject I am satisfied the motor car is anti-social. In the tramcar, bus and the train, we come in contact with one another. We may not converse, but our auras mingle. The women study each other's clothes and complexion with a view to imitating or otherwise, the men study the pretty girls, and the __ pretty study their reflections in the opposite windows. All leave their tram or train refreshed. The motor-car does not allow any of this. The going anywhere has lost its pleasure, it is the getting there that counts, so the longer a motorist has a car the faster he drives. It is just here that Providence steps in. She watches the now completely anti-social road hog, and arranges a collision between a pair. They wake up and find themselves surrounded by sweet nurses and friendly doctors, in nice hospital beds, surrounded by other hospital beds. In a day or two all their old friends call and leave flowers, or wreaths, as the case may be, and the motorist has returned once more to his fellows. Why are Scotchmen such good singers? Because they can hang on to a note longer than else. A hopeful business man rang up the “Star” office to ask if these were any stray complimentary tickets knocking around for Pavlova. For his information we may say that stray tickets are so scarce this winter that there was no surplus even for the Indian hockey match.

Last, loneliest, loveliest, exquisite, apart. Your Waitemata Bridge you want to start At our expense. Oh! Have some sense. The nerves of the censor Are getting tenser, He says the movies ■ In a pifflish groove is. A correspondent writes:—• Dear Editor, —Being at heart a lover of all things in nature it grieves me to read time and time again of the heartless sacrificing of the dear, inoffensive guinea pig. Cables yesterday announced that these pretty little animals had been cruelly inoculated with Dr Smallpage's Tubercle Bacilli serum and had died. Would you kindly print the accompanying poem as I feel sure that it will go straight to the hearts of your readers and perhaps awaken in them a desire to better the conditions of these poor little things. O gallant little Guinea Pig, Your services to Science Have caused the doctors, small and big, To place in you reliance. Whene’er they are perplexed a bit About some dope or serum. Immediately ’tis tried on you To disprove some one’s theorem. (Owing to pressure on space the other seventy-four verses have been held over.—Editor.) j.j ♦.* Prior to the rush to Elandsputte diamond field, mounted police swept twelve square miles of country to clear the ground. The great rush they made was accompanied by a horse roar from thousands of throats. There were clouds of dust, The sight was ■witnessed by 10,000 spectators.—News item. These police horses are well trained nowadays. Do not suppose that music is a thing that you can put on and take off without missing, like Oxford trousers or American spectacles.”— News item. Oxford bags are draughty at any time, but a man would surelv have the breeez up if he discovered in the dining-room of a city hotel that he had left his Oxfords with his specs on the smokeroom table ?