Familiar Unknown

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 153, 29 April 1940, Page 5

Familiar Unknown

Did you know that it is possible to read in the Wliakatane Public Library the following newspapers: Waikato Times (Hamilton), Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune (Hastings), Taranaki Herald (New Plymouth), Herald (Gisborne), Otago Daily Times (Dunedin), Press (Ghristcliurch), Dominion (Wellington), Star (Auckland), Herald (Auckland), Manawatu Times (Palmerston North).

their wives call them suddenly thev bark "wrong number!" and slam down their tea cups. And while they explain their hallucinations to the doctor his telephone rings; he hurl£ himself across his desk and man-handles the receiver as though it were the throat | of his best enemy or his worst friend. I He is suddenly transformed from a ! benign dispenser of physic and physiology to a Samson disputing the right to bite with Leo the lion.. He is a changed man. It is possible that even his wife might respect him could she see him pitting his courage and cunning against the. horrors oif invention. When it is all over he sinks wearily into his chair and smiles a pathetic apology.. "You see how it is,* he says. "There is no hope for you. Even I ." He buries his head in the filing cabinet, A to J. "It goes like that all day," he sobs. So, when next you see a haggard man spring in the air like a wounded buck at the tinkle of a bicycl-e bell, do not jump to the conclusion that he has looked into a glass damp ly, not wisely but too often. When you espy a gaunt man with a haunted look in his eye and a pack *>n his back making for the nearest, snowline, do not assume that some firm's Imprest Account is unlawfully in the red. Here is a man deserving of your sympathy rather than your blame —a refugee fleeing from the tyranny of the telephone and the baleful burr of the buzzer.