ELUSIVE LUCIFER

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 117, 20 May 1942, Page 6

ELUSIVE LUCIFER

PLEADINGS IN VAIN

WOES OF 'RUFUS THE RADISH'

(By F. 8.)

I cannot vouch for the absolute truth of this story, for the gentleman who related it dipped his terse phrases in aconite. He seemed, as he gloomily defrothed his "handle" with a funereal air, to be prejudiced against powers and principalities. He was a small man with red hair and a green sports coat, and looked like an animated radish.

est'jrday," he snarled, poking me in the stomach, "I wanted a box of matches. Just one ordinary sixty-to-a-box sometimes - strike-now-and-again matches. Nothing absolutely unprocurable like two pairs of silk stockings or a gallon of petrol legally or half a dozen eggs. One box of matches, laddie. Simply that and nothing more."

Silently he gloomed, moodily champing a disc of black pudding.

Jiand of Free—and Brave

But you can't get a box of matches—not in this land of the free and the brave you can't. They're as rare as curl papers on a porcupine. But a feller told me blotto voice that you can get them if you buy something else at the same time.

"So I went into the nearest barber shop and had a haircut and a shampoo and a shave. When I paid the barber I asked him casually: "Please could you oblige me with a box of matches?"

No, he couldn't. Very sorry. So off I went to a grocer's shop. I bought just about everything that my coupons could stand, and then I asked the grocery man: 'Please, could you oblige me with a mox of matches?'

" 'Sorry,' said the grocery man, 'no matches. And would that be all?' "

Rufus the Radish sighed, and gnawed reflectively at a pig's trotter. "So off I went again, next door to a florist's. After buying several big bunches of things that looked like dandelions with a college education, 1 said to the girl: 'Please, could you oblige me with a box of matches?'

"She was very, very sorry, but hadn't had one in the place for a week. She told me to try next door. Next door happened to 'be a dental surgery."

He counted out 7d with a depressed air, and raised his recharged "handle." "After I had three teeth out, I said hopefully as I paid the dentist: 'Please, could you oblige me with a box of matches?' He couldn't! Frightfully sorry and all that. Simply imposs. But he told me to try the animal shop two doors further dewn. So off I went to the animal shop."

He wept bitterly into his handle. "Here I bought a bulldog and a parrot named Wilfred, three budgies and a goldfish who looked like Goering. And I asked as I paid them: 'Please, could you oblige me with a box of matches?'

"They couldn't. They said I might get a box if I tried the shop two dcors further down. Thank you and good afternoon."

Psyche at the Bath

Rufus the Radish took a mouthful and sneered. "Bit warmish. The shop down the street was open. So I went in and bought two Venuses Arising from the Foam and a Psyche at the Bath, half a dozen pencils and a book on How to be a Popular Cartoonist in Three Easy Lessons. Then I took the salesman aside and whispered in his ear: 'Please, could you oblige me with a box of matches?'

"He couldn't either. He was going to show me a trick his son who was in the Wolf Cubs showed him. You take two pieces of wood and rub them together for a while. So I went off again. By the time I had bought two copies of How to Influence People and Win Friends I was just about all in. I bought a coffin at the next shop." I murmured commiseratingly and beat him to a mussel. He muttered for a moment, then wrung out his moustache and went cutside. Here stood a purring taxi, and just as the door slammed to behind him I heard him say to the taxi-man: "Gimme a ride to Papakura, and please, could you oblige me with a box of matches?"