Untitled

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5225, 11 January 1928, Page 2

No fewer than 161 “drunks” spent Christmas Day in the cells in Sydney.

Some support for the edict of, the police in Southland that no fireworks should be set off over Christmas and New Year is given by the Southland Times, which mentions two happenings which occurred, ip spite of the order. Some rash' reveller threw a. lighted cracker under a seat ip the Post Office Square on which, was sitting, with several others, a returned soldier who had been suffering from shell-shock. The explosion which resulted was sufficient to send the man into a dead faint, and it will be some time before he recovers his normal strength. The second incident ;took place in one of the crowded thoroughfares, when a woman’s skirt was set ablaze by a cracker which exploded at her feet. But for the help of other pedestrians the result 'might have been much more serious.

A fond parent’s Christmas gift of a bicycle tol a boy living in one of the suburbs of Dunedin has revealed in the latter a, vein of commercialism c l : f developed along the right lines, should assure him financial independence and a life of ease long betfore he reaches middle-age (remarks the Otago Daily Times). The lad possessed the machine only two days, when ihis father, returning home one evejning, met at his front gate a round dozen eager and clamouring youngsters, one of whom had just returned from a ride on his son’s brandnew bike. The father’s mild rebuke to his hopeful and an expression of doubt as to the wisdom of allowing all and sundry to ride the new machine were met by the explanation that the nominal, sum of one penny (collectejd in advance) was being charged for a ride round two blocks. One of the youthful hirer’s chums (probably for a. consideration) was standing guard at the street intersection to minimise the possibility of any of the clients taking more than his pennyworth, and a comfortable jingling in the managing director’s pockets told of a good day’s business. Unfortunately for the lad, however, his enterprise was looked on somewhat unsympathetically by the parent, and the firm, after declaring a dividend, disbanded.