BY THE WAY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19240, 29 November 1930, Page 9

BY THE WAY.

SOME COLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS. (By One of the Boys.) The New Zealand Butter Importers’ Association has resolved to advertise—- “ Buy New Zealand butter and live on the fat of the land.” It is reported that the Reds used table legs in a fight at the Sydney Trades Hall. This is apparently what is known as turning the tables. Wild animals which escaped from a wrecked circus train in Mexico City, damaged a town and terrified the countryside. The inhabitants at first suspected another revolution. A well-known tennis player is engaged to another tennis player. It should be a love match. x There’s to be a “Learn to Swim” week this month. Thank goodness! It will take me all my time to keep my head above water over Christmas. Bishop Wade says there still are wild men in the Solomons. Yes, and there are still wild women right here in Christchurch. What of it?

The Masonic Benevolent Fund stands at £177,000. The Masons are not all stoney. The maddest man in Christchurch. He has been trying all the week with his home-made three-valver to get the new Auckland station. To-day he found it was a railway station. There is no intention, although Lord Bledisloe has become Grand Master of the Masons, to ask him to decide the Square question. It would hardly come within his Compass. This is on the Level. Should the Hospital nurses retire at 55 years? Yes, of course. Twentyfive years should be the extreme limit. This is a question that affects all. It is a serious matter. In these days of two enthusiastic free ambulance brigades in Christchurch a man never knows but that the next hour he, himself, will be a cot case. Byron once wrote: “And thinking there, an hour awhile, I dreamed that Greece might yet be free.” Somehow I, too, dream sometimes that Christchurch will yet be free. At every street corner are bowsers calling the motorist to free crankcase service, free water, free air. I went out to the races as few days ago and saw the Free for All and Free Holmes. Fred Freeman designs the roads. There are two Free Ambulances, and now on top of that the town is full of Freemasons.

The local branch of the English Speaking Union at Wellington held a big reception to Messrs Stannage and Oscar Garden, which reminds me that they tried to form a branch of the English Speaking Union in Christchurch. The first two who turned up to the meeting were Mr W. E. Leadley and Mr Jock Lockhart, and the organisers got discouraged. “I see the Papanui Beautifying Association are having another go at trying to get the high fences out of Papanui Road,” was Ham's greeting to me when I took my seat at the pie cart last night. "The fences give of-fences,” I said with an attempt at being humorous. Flam ignored my remark. "The Papanui Beautifying Association,” he said, “may as well give it up. Those high fences will remain. Why? Because they are needed. Behind all those fences are society’s mothers and society’s most stylish daughters. There is also a worried looking man somewhere there. He is ‘ dad.’ He raises the cash that buys the every-aay-a-new-dress. He has another use of which I will tell you later. The daughters and

mother spend ail the money he raises and grumble for more. Drive in at any of these homes. Standard roses, neatly pruned border, the well weeded drive. There is a nice lawn and well kept flower bed. You remark to Dora or Maisie or Joan or Margaret: “ * How glorious the flowers are! ’ “‘Yes,’ she will reply, with bored politeness. ‘ Our gardener is very good.’ ” Ham paused. “And why is it,” I asked, “that the high front fences will not come down? Surely they should like the world to see the beauties of the garden.” “The world will never see those gardens,” Ham said. “The fences are needed. On Saturday afternoon and Sunday mornings a lone figure pushes a lawnmower and weeds the It is ‘dad.’ ”