Vanity Fair

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 73, Issue 91, 17 April 1930, Page 3

Vanity Fair

Office, Wanganui, April 17. 1930. This tale, a true one, is a solemn warning to all middle-aged gentlemen whose chests are no longer quite so resplendent in proportions as, shall we say, their'Waistcoats: who look with the eye of scorn upon the modern young man, and with biting contempt at the modern young woman: who write long and awesome letters to the newspapers on the subject of “The Modern Bathing Suit,’’ or “Where Has Maidenly Modesty Gone. For all such, there is a horrid doom in store, as witness the ultimate fate of the Human Porpoise.

Now, there is an extra nice little bit of beach not far from Wanganui, and there, through the late lamented summer days, a small but select collection of our youths and maidens used to disport themselves right merrily at surfing, playing leap-frog, sun-bathing, and, more particularly, at Water polo, which is an excellent and invigorating game. In fact, it was one of those places where every prospect pleases—apd only the Porpoise was, to put it mildly, vile. There’s no particular harm in a gentleman’s being large, pink, bald and rotund, but need he be disapproving of all who don’t go and do likewise? The opinion of the younger fraternity was undivided on this point. He need’nt: when, for instance, a dog appertaining to a lady of the parly mistook him for a likely place for rabbit burrows, and dug frantically beneath him as he lay in slumber on the beach.- Should he not have reasoned with the dog, rather than throwing stones al it and hard words at its proprietress? When some blithe young thing swung by, glorious in sunburn and scarlet bathing suit, need he have made personal and audible remarks? Surely a little gentlemanly restraint Would have come in handy. Anyhow, the Porpoise slowly but surely became a social plague-spot.

His crowning annoyance was this: he could float. He was about as much use al swimming as a fly in a glass of pale ale, but turn him over on his back, and he could wash majestically back and forth with the tides for hours. Now, il is alarming, when you’re engaged in ducking your partner, to see a huge, recumbent body bearing down upon you from the crest of the seventh wave. You always feel that the sea may have given up its dead, or that you migh I possibly be suffering from hallucinations. Anyhow, the Porpoise kept drifting ir and out f polo games, spoiling the sport of mermaids and ruining the disposition of tritons, till at last doom overtook him.

One of the young men was an extraordinarily expert shot at the afore-mentioned game of water polo. Now, supposing for week after Week Hou were to be interrupted at your revels by the sight of an enormous, globular, and utterly unprepossessing form billowing above the waves, and supposing . rat your right hand grasped a large polo ball, mightn't even you be tempted? It was so: one day, the ball flashed through the air in quite the wrong direction, and struck the curve of the floating gentleman with considerable force. Uttering a shriek of agony, he disappeared beneath a Wave, and Was ultimately rescued by a Boy Scout, who dragging him forth with a girdle of seaweed draped rakishly about his Waist and a jellyfish waving its fins coyly from the top of his bathing suit. (The Boy Scout Was later caught and ducked by the United Order of Mermaids and Tritons).

It just shows, anyhow, that even solid and respectable age can presume too much upon its prejudices. , Reprovingly, MARGOT.