Vanity Fair

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 72, Issue 255, 26 October 1929, Page 3

Vanity Fair

"Chronicle" Office, Wanganui, October 26th, 1929.

There are people mho, in moments of crisis, merely lose their heads, and anything else that they happen to possess at the time. Others keep cool, and get there just the same. The whole thing sounds a trifle vague, but Margot is trying to state the existence of some faculty of keeping calm and collected which is given unto a very few, and which is not the least valuable birthday present of the friendly gods. Yesterday (since this story has now reached the stage when Margot will simply have to offer some explanation for all these unscientific hypotheses) a young man who happens to live at the same establishment as that of which Margot’s diggings form a par t, lost something of extreme sentimental and actual Value; to wit, the large gold medal which his uncle had awarded him for not being able to do the Charleston best, or even second best of his class at college. His uncle Was one of those old-fashioned dears, and much preferred the minuet.

Anyhow, io come back to the actual loss of the medal. One moment it Was there, or, if it Wasn't it couldn’t have been far away. The next, it had s imply vanished into the blue. The young man had spent the entire morning in tidying his apartment, arr anging drawers and book cases in the most immaculate order. Having discovered his loss, he promptly, and with profane language, hurled the entire contents of his room into the corridor, and started to rummage. "It must," said a wise little lady Who happened to be near at hand, and Was, as a matter of fact, attending to the well-being of an aspidistra which stood in a neighbouring jardiniere, "be somewhere, or other." The young man merely snarled, and tore a shirt limb from limb. "Anyhow," said the wise little lady, "if you Value it, you should look a ßer it" "I hate it, personally," said the young man, simply. "The thing is the bane of my life. Wearing it on my watch-chain T find it the hardest thing in the world to inspire respect, or even confidence, in my office girls. But my Uncle’s one of those limber old birds—you never know just when he’s going to pop round the corner and say, "Aha, my boy, and how’s the pretty medal to-day?" He has been doing that for ten pears. As he is now ninety, I feel that provided I put up with the same treatment for another ten or so, he can’t very Well get out of leaving me a bob or so in his will; that is, unless he marries again. But if I’ve lost this medal permanently, ev erything’s all off, and I’ve had ten years of fun without any recompense." Whereupon he seized the cat by the hind paws, held it upside down, and shook H; pulled the stuffing out of several pincushions, thrust his head up the chimney, and in other ways pursued the tactics of Sherlock Holmes at his best. "1 think," said the wise little lady, neglecting her aspidistra for a moment," that this is your medal. You dropped it in the bathroom, probably while shaving.” Then she quietly went on with her work; the young man said, "Clairvoyance that is," emJ collapsed. It must have been something like that. Admiringly,

DOWN PETTICOAT LANE.

A Woman Naturalist Lid you know that New Zealand has its own woman naturalist —une, moreover, with an excellent Government position to prove her standingi Miss Amy Castle, of Wellington, looks after the entomological section of the Dominion Museum, and has a collection of creepy-crawlies vihich would send most girls into hysterics. Attired in “waders” and armed with the tools Gf the bug-hunter, she has brought several heretofore unknown species into the museum fold, and is an expert at classification. But her greatest passion is “field work’’ —the actual collection of al Ithat flies, hops or wriggles—and she dreams of a future visit to tropic lands, where flourish spiders large enough to frighten any modern Miss Mullet away. Miss Castle admires the patterned loveliness of her butterflies immensely, and says that in Paris, before the war, the best dressmakers used to keep a showcase of such lovely winged folk, and let customers choose their own colour schemes. The Blazer Cult

These are the days for brightness and beauty in the blazer line, and many a time, mere woman must envy the resplendent plumage of the peacock sex, as she sees something which would have put Solomon right out of business goes rolling up the Avenue. You can do everything with a blazer but sleep in it, for boating, it’s perfect; for beach wear, in yet gaudier tints, you simply can’t be seen without it, and, of course, you wouldn’t dream of picnicking otherwise arrayed. Woman has her smart little “spotty” summer frocks, of tennis or beach persuasion, but nothing quite so gorgeous as the jackets which make Oxford and Cambridge seem just round the corner. A Former Dux

1881 see<is a long time ago, but the lady who was dux of the Queen’s Park {School (which recently held its jubilee) now lives in Pahiatua, and still has in her possession a much cherished report of the in that particular year of grace. The then Miss Gertrude Worgan, dux of the Queen’s Park School, is now Mrs H. M, B. Marshall, of Edward Street, Pahiatua. For thirty-two years, Mrs Marshall has lived in the Pahiatua district, and the old pupils who she taught at Queen’s Park School after her training there will be pleased to hear of her continued welfare.

In the Schoolroom Originality is still to be found in odd corners of our schools. The Wanganui class was set to drawing illustrations of “the Sinking Sun” and most of the fold handed in brilliant efforts with bright orange suns disappearing behind verdant hills, palm trees, or chimney pots. One small boy, however, improvised a little variation. He sketched something intended to represent a pond, and in the centre were two rapidly disappearing heels. The sinking “son” was gratefully ac _ cepted by a teacher grown somewhat blasee about primary colours Another small maid in the same class distinguished herself by writing an enthusiastic essay about Sir Charles Fergusson and “Lady Alas,”

“PROPHETS, PRIESTS AM) KINGS”

People who insist on being—or sounding—wise after the event are merely a bore. They have an uncanny habit of remembering, the night after an earthquake has arrived, that the night before its advent they told somebody, now, unhappily deceased, of its imminent probability. The other sort of prophet usually waxes very dolorous about something that will befall at an unspecified place and an uncertain date, not less than a thousand years ahead. This i s impressive, but not always convincing. But twenty years isn’t such a prodigiously long time ago: a world war, and a peace considerably more argumentative, have occurred in that time, but the men who now hold the reins of our Empire were known, even in those days. Some of the bright particular stars of that lost world where Little Englanders were beginning to be impolite concerning Kipling, and nobody knew whether the Northdiffe cat would prefer the French or German side of the fence from one day to the next, have disappeared into obscurity, or into a tragedy which engulfed some of the seemingly brightest destinies of the day. “Prophets, Priests and Kings,’’ is the of a little brown book *by A. G. Gardiner, It would be fascinating, in itself, for it clear and impartial biography of men who have meant much to our world; but it was written.before the war, and its prophecies concerning the destinies of certain world-leaders—-prophecies drawn from that best of all guide-books, character—are more than commonly interesting, in the light of after events.

Nicholas the Tsar sat on the throne of Russia, 41 Little Father” to his people by the gentle title of tradition; yet unable, and seemingly unwilling, to keep the wolf-pack that ranged his country at bay. Hear what a prophet said of him in 1909.

i 1 It is not only the fierce, barbaric subjects to which he is subject. He has the credulity which makes him the easy instrument of the imposter and the visionary, whether of the spiritualistic type, or of the type of the eccentric adventurer.’’ (How the shadow of Rasputin, then unheard of, looms up over those words!) 4 ‘He will live as the man who made the greatest refusal in history. He might have been the founder of a new and happier Russia—the “Commons’ King” of his youthful vision. He has chosen to be an autocrat and a prisoner in his forty palaces. In ten years, his rule has exiled 78,000 of his subjects, and driven all the best of the nation’s sons that have escaped Siberia to take refuge in other lands. But he himself is the saddest exile of all e for he is exiled from the domain of our common humanity—a prisoner in body and spirit, suspecting the cup he drinks, receiving his guests at sea, for he dare not receive them on shore, a hapless, pitiful figure, “Perked up on a glistening grief, And wears a golden sorrow.’’ Doomed and tragic, the last of the Romanoff rulers an idealist who became a slave to his fears and his enemies, where a strong fool might have conquered; one could almost read the story of the Revolution into that character-sketch of Nicholas 11, written before Russia was stained red.

Still more significant is the writer’s summing of the man who was once the most hated, and is now the most impotent ruler of old Europe—the Kaiser, whose military moustache* so well-be-loved of the wartime caricaturists, has been almost forgotten for the grey beard of the lonely old man at Doorn. 4 ‘lmpulsive, imperious, dramatic, a militarist from his cradle, a statesman trained in “the indirect, the crooked ways of Bismarck, governed by one passion, the passion to make his land great and powerful, how shall we cast his horoscope Let his past be his witness. For twenty years he has had the peace of Europe in his keeping, and for twenty years not a German soldier has fallen in war . . , The truth is that he wants peace because it is his own and the nation’s chief interest. . . Beneath all this rattle of drums and love of the drama of government lies an undercurrent of purpose, making, it is true, for the ag-

-SIM is ■MM .1 i 11; .A u I v i s i j Miss M. A. Stevens is a Wellington visitor for the golf tournament, and is staying with Mrs W. Craig. Wickstged Street. Miss Bessie Gaisford, of Marton, is the guest of Miss K. Lewis, Fordell. Miss Marjorie Curd Stratford, is spending the week-end in Wanganui.

grandisement of Germany, but making also for the peace of the world. If he fails in his policy of peace, it will be because of the incurable air of falsity which is the besetting vice of German policy—a policy which has been well described as “incalculable, untrustworthy, and disturbing. It is a policy which always wears a mask, and the mask is a menace. Its words are smooth, but its acts are sinister. .. It is incident to a government which is personal and secret, and Germany will not cease to be a disturbing element in world politics until the Kaiser has stepped down from his mediaeval throne, and derives his power from a free and self-governing people.’’ Written five years before the Kaiser became the most universally execrated figure in Europe—driven, at last, into an exile which was a refuge from the death to which the people would have condemned him—is there a possibility that the prophet is right, aid that the man whose indiscreet and outspoken militarism judged and executed him in the popular mind was the scapegoat of a more secret force?

A few months ago, broken in heart as in body, General Booth, once the great leader and father of the Salvation Army, died in England, the things which had been his pride reduced at last to mere bones of contention. He would not lay down his sceptre; it took death to unclasp that old and trembling hand. At heart a Royalist, he visioned himself, at the least, as a sort of sectarian King Charles, surrounded by a little loyaly and devotion in the midst of a rebel world, but sure, nevertheless, to come to his own again. Is there not a shadow of that unconquerable optimism in these words, which he spoke in the days when the world was young? “He has the dauntless spirit of youth.” How old do you think I am? Seventy-nine years —what nonsense, I am not old. I am seventy-nine years young. I have heaps of time yet to go around fishing—fishing for souls in the same old way, with the same old net.” He is like an idea, an enthusiasm, (the writer adds), that lives on, independent of the flesh He will go out with a roll of drums.”

The Labour Party holds sway in England now; and Mr Ramsay Macdonald is the prophet thereof, acceptable, it seems, both to England and to America, which is almost a contradiction in terms. But in 1909, not Ramsay Macdonald, but Philip Snowden, his lieutenant was singled out by the writer of this prophetic little book as Socialism’s greatest knight. Ramsay Macdonald is mentioned, certainly, as “Not a Socialist first, but a politician —not a Socialist first, but an Opportunist. ” But of Snowden, this is spoken. “Whatever happens, Snowden will stand where he stands to-day. Ho will not prune the tree; he will uproot it. He will fight out his battle on these lines, though it takes all his life.” It will be rather interesting to know if this comes as uncannily near the mark as other of the prophesies in this out-of-date little book