THE SEAMY SIDE.

Waikato Times, Volume 102, Issue 17221, 3 October 1927, Page 5

THE SEAMY SIDE.

TAIL'S TO MAGISTRATE A TRUE FAIRY TALE. (Bv R. E. Gorder, in London Daily Mail.) : This is a true fairy tale. It is the i story of an elderly Scotsman who was ■ so fond of flowers that, when he had no money and no home, he went into St. .lames' Park and sought peace in a garden where every bloom was a friend and every plant a neighbour. James Stewart MacGregor is the name of the man, who once was a superintendent of Bushe,v Park'. A big man he is, with a kindly face and farseeing eyes. "For the last two or three months," said an inspector, "he has been wandering abroad, and for the last two _ days he has had nothing to eat. ' Always he turned to the park. Myself, I have seen him there at 4 o'clock in the morning, smelling and touching the llowers.' ' i * * s< * j And it was early in the morning that j P.C. 270 A found the hungry and homeless man bending over a flower bed in ( St. James' Park, lie had spent the j night' with his friends the flowers, [ tending them with the gentle skill of | a mother watching over her first born, j He knew by name every bloom, and j well he understood their moods and > needs. All the flowers he loved,, but ; his favourite was the carnation, the dark red, passionate carnation, dyed in heart's blood, and perfumed with the incense of the morning mist and the evening dew. These glowing carna- j lions were his own children, and he fondled the petals and smoothed the bed of his only friends. Then he had a great temptation. He

was tired and hungry and old. The garden was his refuge, but he must go away into the cruel glare of the crowd- j ed streets, and. sick with loneliness, he | plucked his friends (he flowers and hid j them under his coal, so thai, in the I desert which only crowds can make, he i could take his dower children _to his bosom, and neither hunger nor loneliness could cheat him of.his sense of comradeship. But P.O. 270 A saw him pluck the llowers and produced them —a sweet, pathetic bouquet—in the witness stand at Row Street Police Court, where the usher and the clerk each selected and smelt a (lower that was a child of the man in the dock. He had nothing to say. this elderly Scotsman, except that le loved flowers, and he could not resist the temptation to lake them with lim on his hopeless pilgrimage for ,vork.

He was remanded by .Mr Graham Campbell, the magistrate, and maybe he will soon return to Scotland and to a little garden where dark carnatiosas will bloom in the tender care of the friendless man who loves flowers. Jessie, a plump young woman in pink, comes from Yorkshire, and her one week in London has not been monotonous. I saw her at Marlborough Street Police Court, where she j promised to pay 20s for having been j drunk and disorderly if they would give her lime to find the money. The { Court kindly obliged, and Jessie used her period of grace to get arrested in e the Bow Street area. * "1 have haxl nothing but trouble^

since I came to London," she complained, "but (brightly) you do get a run for your money. I suppose I can have time to pay like the other gentleman gave me." Not to be outdone in politeness to a guest, the Bow Street magistrate gave the usual seven days' credit.

"She was fighting with a man whom she said was her husband," observed a cynical constable, referring to Ellen Margaret, a buxom street hawker. "Do you think I would fight with a man who was not my husband?" demanded Ellen Margaret. "I admit having a few drinks which knocked me silly after working hard all day, but I will have you to know that I am a respectable married woman, and my old man is the only man I would stoop to hit." (Confusion and collapse of the cynical constable.) ■ « • • Betty, a young girl in her early teens, was found on the Embankment at seven o'clock in the morning by a woman police sergeant. Betty, who smirked and giggled in the dock, is one of those young girls who will not work. She is little more than a child in years, but she is of the type that is the despair of women police court missionaries. She was remanded in the faint hope that her parents or friends would reclaim her. • 9 « V "Drink is not a crime; it is a recreation." This unexpected epigram came from James, a hawker, who aTlded: VI am gelling an old man, turned G 5, and I cannot get work because young blood has the first call, and if I have a few drinks I do not see why I should be punished." "You are not punished for having a few drinks," replied t'jo magistrate. 'You are punished because you cannot behave yourself in your favourite recreation, time after time you have been here, and this time it will be 40s or a month."

"Come on, Jimmy," requested the gaoler, and Jimmy philosophically retired for a month.