ROUND ABOUT

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 1, Issue 99, 11 December 1939, Page 5

ROUND ABOUT

(By Aitchel)

A certain weekly paper features a "Did you know" column and reading it suggested to njp..jyiat I could try something on the Sjjamc lines. Of course, having a horror of anything copied, 1 will merely take the suggestion. Before the curtain lifts on the first, I must mention that anyone not interested in horse-rac-ing had better skip a few lines. There will not be many because, according to an old English reverend gentleman, even the lambs gambol on the turf.

Do you know the winner of the Auckland Cup? I do. Not being class ed as a racing tipster 1 can't tell you which liorsc it is, but if any of you care to try guessing, just drop me a line c/o the BEACON and I will let you know. Should it happen that no correct solutions reach me. I will give the answer on December 27th.

I have riot had the time before to reply to the hundreds of letters I received lifter my announcement that I was prepared to deal willt readers' problems, The fact that I Successfully fixed the affair of Mafoole seemed to draw the troubles from all Whakatane. The only thing that I can do is to reply to one at a time. A foreigner, T. E. Rribletempa, writes: I tirtka sumtime I go crerzy. Anything but so small, she annoys me.. My wife says somthing...X lose my nuts, or how you say it? do my block. I yell for teenist, weeniest tings. All da time I grab da plates and saucers and throw them to da floor. Only time I peaceful is when da sleep she lies 'eavy upon me... etc.

Now, you know, that is .rather a terrible thing to hear of. This is my answer to the chappie: Dear So—and—so etc. Dashed sorry to hear that you are bats. Try throwing the crockery at the ceiling.

I remember that some weeks ago The Outsider treated, in his masterly manner, a certain incident connected with a boarding-house. Do you recall it? Something about hutter.

Now I have ho, ocasion to refer to local incidents. But in other-andJess happier days I have had experience of boarding-houses. So, apparently, has Stephen Leacock. Do you know Stephen Leacock? No? Well he is Professor of Economics at McGill University in Canada. But that doesn't stop him being one of the world's foremost humorists. And this is where I do a bit of cribbing. [ can't transcribe the whole of his famous Boarding-House Geometry for copyright leasons, but I'm going, to let you in on some of it. Anyhow, I suppose he cribs a bit of my column now and then. « « v « "All boarding-houses are the same boarding-house." "A pie may be produced any number of times."

"A bee line may be made from any boarding-house to any other board-ing-house."

"Any two meals at a boardinghouse are together less than two square meals."

Note: For the better appreciation of the last., quotation, it would be just as well if you were to brush up on your Euclid. Do you remember the mathematics master reading out a silly problem, and at the end saying, as you had already decided half-way through, 'Which is absurd?" To continue with the Professor. "If there be two boarders on the same flat, and the amount of side of the one be equal to the amount of side of the other, each to each, antl the wrangle between one boarder and the landlady be equal to the wrangle between the landlady and the other, then shall the weekly bills of the two boarders be equiat also, each to each. • For if not. let one bill be the greater. Then the other bill is less than it might have been—-which is absurd." I may have occasion in the future to quote Stephen Leacock. I hope not, but it's worth it.

And what is the world coming toi when a woman, separated from her husband, says to their child: "Now vnu must not i*cfer to him., again as but as 'That heel'; or 'snake*.**