COMEDY OF TWO HYMNS

Hokitika Guardian, 22 July 1931, Page 2

COMEDY OF TWO HYMNS

WINSTON CHURCH HILL

A CONVICT’S CHILDREN’S VERSE

LONDON, July 1. •Mr Winston Churchill, as Home Secretary, is .said to have displayed a thirst for information and to have made demands for figures and statistics which drove prison governors well-nigh to distraction. There came the day of his appointment to the Admiralty, and the general relief was voice by a witty chaplain’s choice of hymns for the following Sunday’s service, “Now thank we all our God.’’ chanted the convicts with fervour, following this up with “For those an peril on the sea. The authorities were scandilised, and sent an inspector down to inquire about it. Mr Churchill's sense of humour is much too keen for him to have had anything to do with the sending of that inspector. Tragedy and comedy hustle one another in the lives of our prison population. Mr Herbert Arthur has had opportunity of studying the life of the malefactor from both angles, and his rather hotch-potch volume, “All the Sinners,” of reminiscences of great and little crimes, and the eccentricities of the people who committed. them, abound* in stories, some of which are vary sad and others Irresistibly comic.

i . A RIVAL FOR MR MILNE. Mr A, A. Milne will probably read with surprise that he has a potential rival somewhere in one of his Majesty’s establishments. By profession a housebreaker, too well known to the police, by inclination he is a writer of children’s verse, which would appeal to the author of . “When 'We t\\ ere Very Young.’’ Witness the effort dedicated "To Baby Jim.” Little Boy ; Impatient sort, Says to me: “Write something short.”

This will not Worry you. Lines are- short, Words are few.”

Story here- ? There’s no need; Because, you know You cah’t read.

'Mr Arthur reproduces a number of these effusions, wistful and humorous. The housebreaker writes, on his own confession, “to rest his nerves,” and stationery.. is hard to come by, but his output has reached forty poems, and he has another two and a half years of his sentence to serve.

Crippen, also, though this will not be so surprising to those who had some chance of observing the tragic little man, had a turn for versifying. His essays in this direction were rather more ambitious than those of the house-breaker-child lover. Mr Arthur selects the following specimen as proof that “some of it was not too bad.”

When the hrart is breaking, and the way is long In seeking' rest, with no accompanying song, Scorn of the world, by cruel Fate undone, Friendless, yet pot alone—for there is one— Who truly loves this soon admitted ■' clay, . Who truly dreads the sure and awful day When mortal soul shall fly to realms aloft, T n life—in death—she still shall speak .< r me soft. THE SENTIMENTAL MURDERER, Presumably, also Norman Thorne was, possessed by what he himself would regard as the poetic .instinct. When the poor girl whose body he had . buried under his Surrey chicken-run was finally laid to rest, he insisted that a wreath should be sent. It took the form of one white lily resting against a Background of palm-leaves, and it bore the inscription : “Till we meet again.” It is a relief to turn to the lighter humour of the 900 convicts who, as one man, dropped their hymn-books with a bang when a famous preacher, with a burst of eloquence, told them that, having at last met them, he hoped he would be “spared to come and see them for years to come.’’ Or of the new arrival who, being put into the boxmaking shed, complained to the governor that he ought to be allowed to carry on with the work he had been doing outside. “What were you?” inquired the governor, ready to oblige. “An airman, sir,” was the disgruntled one’s reply. And it is impossible to resist a chuckle of appreciation of the ingenious gentleman who, having managed to escape, evaded recapture for over ‘ a year by the simple expedient of living opposite a police station near the prison.