Under Currents

Waikato Times, Volume 104, Issue 17586, 15 December 1928, Page 6

Under Currents

IN THE DRIFT OF LIFE

(By " Seeker.")

RULES FOR SUNDAY SPORT. If you're wanting to play The respectable way On the day that the heathen call Sunday. There's an excellent school That will teach you the rule, It's the school of a lady named Grundy Now the first thing to learn Ere you take to the fern With your niblick and mashle and driver Is to make it appear, ;jj By concealing your gear, That you wouldn't play golf for a fiver. For the cardinal crime ■On a day so sublime Is to fail to pretend that you're going To the chapel or church — Inspiration to search— When you're off to the golf or the rowing. So be careful to wear (Lest you fall in the snare . Of the Devil) your best Sunday, breeches, For in golfling array ;| You'd be causing dismay To the good folk — the Grundy law teaches. If on Sunday you're drawn To play tennis, the lawn Must be hidden, and then it won't hurt you, But I pray you to serve With an underhand curve, For the underhand way is a virtue. If you dare have a swim, You should warble a hymn, So that no one may know where you're wending. Thus your children will learn Of religion the kernEl—the beautiful art of pretending.

THE EXAMS.

" Yes," said Aunt Selina, " they certainly did make too much of exams, in the old days. If you happened to have been reading ' The Ancient Mariner' the night before, and you got questions about' that piece, why you had a glorious time, but if all the questions were about pieces you hadn't read for months, oh, what a struggle! And then some children got stage-fright as soon as they saw an exam: paper. One of our best boys always came out near the bottom in exams —just nerves. The teacher ought to have a sav. But I'm thinking they're going too far the other way now, wanting the teachers to have all the say. There are some teachers that don't hit it with some children, and those youngsters get to feel that teacher has a down on them, and they'll do far better for an outsider." " It's the same often with parents," said Dad. " You'll see kids that behave perfectly until their parents come along and then they go out of their way to show what little devils they C 3.11 1)6." •• No', that's different," said Aunt Selina. " You remember, William, how Alfred, when he was at school, could never get to the top of his class and he gave up trying, but he beat the other boys easily in the outside exams. There were only one or two of the teachers he liked. It was his fault, perhaps, but how he did revel in the exams ! He felt he could show there what he was really made of. I hope they won't change things so as to do awav with exams, altogether." • * » •

MR LAFFERTY'S CORNER.

" Circumlocution " in a letter to the editor contends that the trouble over the sale of Councillor Lafferty's land to the borough is just an exhibition of red tape. His amusing story was hardly analogous. It is true that a purohase of land is different from a purchase of meat or groceries cr benzine. There is no choice of vendors when a certain piece of land is wanted for the town's use. But is not that an additional reason for having the price fixed by an outside authority? The price of butcher's meat cannot be varied to any great extent when there is competition in the trade, but when land has to be valued —why, you get such a varied range of opinions as was indicated in the case of the Tebbs' estate. The buvers at auction valued that land at about one-fifth the assessment placed on it for rating purposes. If a local body can pay £350 to one of its members on its own valuers' assessment, should it be permitted to nav £3500 or £35,000? Where should the limit be placed? If there is no machinery to get an independent valuation made at small expense in such cases, there ought to be, and the sooner the better. ■ * • • SHAW'S ENDEARMENTS.

Bernard Shaw delights to win people's affection by slapping them in the face. The Duchess who invited him to lunch and to whom he sent an insulting letter refusing to eat her "dead animals" or to show off for the benefit of her guests, was so delighted that she published the correspondence. Lately an American wrote to Shaw proposing to establish in the United States a "Shavian Society: Asylum for the Sane." The writer, Mr Daniel Archer, received a reply from Shaw's secretarv as follows: "Mr Bernard Shaw desires me to say" that an Asylum for the Sane would be empty in America." The American joyfully published the . note. Shaw enjoys a slap in the race himself It is recorded that at the first showing of one of his plays the crowd applauded, but one member of the audience loudly booed. Mr Shaw, on the stage, remarked to the booer, I quite agree with you, but what are we among so many?" * * » » TYRANNY OP MOB OPINION. "Protection, therefore, against tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendenoy of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development and, if possible, prevent the formation of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all , character's to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence ; and to And the limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition or human affairs as protection against political despotism." —John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty."