NUMERICAL TASKS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10017, 13 April 1910, Page 4

NUMERICAL TASKS.

In Syria, when a child has measles, whooping-cough, orany'.other of those ailments which qualify the joys of youth, its parents avert any further trouble by promptly changing the child's name. Fate having evidently shown a disagreeable feeling towards a small Ali, Will oe thrown off the track when you address the child as Mustapha. But there must be some awkward moments when a small boy used to thinking of himself

as Tommy Green (or Its Syrian equivalent) goes back to school as little Harry Smith. Mow Christchurch householders art: able to appreciata, in a slight dfgiee, the trials of an Eastern school after some epidemic has changed the names all round. We may not have altered our names, but we have our addresses. To cure some evil, or to avert future trouble, in the body politic, our City Fathers have already sought the expedient for naming many familiar streets, and now are insisting that every house should take a new individual number. The immediate inconveni-

ences are ereat, however pionounced the ultimate convenience may. be. Lists of addresses must be revised. Distant correspondents must be notified. The Post Office ought to supply free forms on which the necessary information can be conveyed to all friends and acquaintances. But the mere information is of little value to unmathematical minds. To these the correct number of each friend's residence has been a separate study laboriously acquired—how are they, all at once, to face the problem of mastering a new set of figures for which set Zangwill's hero raging at a comrade's lack of consideration in moving from an address well learnt by heart, "109, Little Turcot street, Chapelly road, St. Pancras," to the unfamilar direction, "22, Albert Flats, Victoria Square, Westminster." But here, as his friend represented, the number was the redeeming item. Twenty-two was easily remembered as "a symmetrical number, the first double even number; the first is two, the second is two, too, and the whole is two two, too." It is part of our grief that any such memorising device may be rendered useless. Even persons who have obliged t heir correspondents by an easily acquired sequence, "123" or "234," may come out now as "276" or "398," with no salient feature at all to commend them to memory. The neat "50" or the distinguished "100" has slipped from a familiar doorpost to adorn some stranger's further up or down the street. If asked suddenly for his number just r.ow the Cfiristchurch citizen is not sure even of hia own address. As to the rest, We can only suggest the somewhat funereal course of directing in doubtful cases to "late 109," or whatever may lave been.tha

accustomed number; leaving Post Office and City Council to shoulder their new responsibilities between them.