TALE FOR CREDULOUS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 85, Issue 11, 14 January 1941, Page 2

TALE FOR CREDULOUS

VARIATION OF tSLAL BEGGING STORY. TOPICAL INVENTION. An ingenious cadger made the rounds 01 a city office in Wellington this week. He did not have the usual tales ot having lost his tram ticket and wanting his fare home, or being starving and wanting a meal, instead, ne tried to catch the popular imagination by stating himseli to be Hie victim of a raider. He had apparently scorned the usual means 01 transport back to New Zealand afforded those recently rescued. Instead, he said, he came by rowing boat, landing exhausted on Petone beach. For this reason he wanted money for a cup of tea to revive himself. He had previously had some other stimulants. The ship on which he had sailed had not suffered the usual fate of attacked merchant shipping. Instead, it had bitten the biter by the simple proces of ramming the raider. The net result of this, said the supplicant for alms, was that both ships went down into the deep more or less locked together. He gave the name of his ship. Unfortunately it was to a newspaper man. who knew this ship had not been near New Zealand for five years. The rest of the story, of course, did not bear up under examination. Main feature of it was the arduous row to the New Zealand coast, and Petone beach. Frustrated at the office, he went downstairs. There in the • foyer he met another newspaper man to whom he told the straightout story that he wanted a cup of tea. Told that it was obvious he had been drinking, he was quick witted enough to say he wanted the tea to straighten himself up. He got a shilling and, under observation, plotted an unerring course to the nearest hotel, leaving his benefactor to reflect on the unwisdom of helping cadgers in a land where no one is supposed to he in want.