“THE SPOTLIGHT”

Matamata Record, Volume VI, Issue 493, 29 November 1923, Page 1

“THE SPOTLIGHT”

JOUENALISM AND ECCLESIASTICS. The editor of a bi-wcekly newspaper not a hundred miles from Auckland is also the vicar of the Anglican Church. At the. head of the locals in a recent issue is the following oddity: “A rumour has reaheed us that the present editor of the News intended giving up his parish and devoting all his time to journalism. On the best authority we learn that this is not true at all. Our editor took up the editorship on the understanding that it would not interfere with his life work.” ' Spot ” doesn’t know what work, is entailed in connection with the paper mentioned, but he is quite sure that if editors in general were consulted they would all toll you that theirs is a life’s work and a jolly hard life at that. They, especially country editors, possess the skin Of a rhinoceros and the soul of an angel; they have to commiserate with f the poor and associate with the rich. The result of the latter is that they die poor;' some are lamented, but many avc not. One editor told 11 Spot that he Would like to hold down two jobs similar to the Rev. for the sake of the L.s.d., but an endeavour to carry on both; successfully would mean a prolonged visit to the salubrious suburb of Avondale. He reckoned that his only possibility of carrying out both jobs would be lor ol ecclesiastics to each volunteer to look after the parish for a week each every year. PROFESSORS AND PUGILISTS. A metropolitan newspaper publishes an article which refers to the relative value of news items and incidentally to the amount of space given by American journals to the recent Dempsey-Firpo prize fight. The article concludes: “Those who arc seeking to reform the boxing game, and it certainly needs reform in many particulars, will simply butt their heads against the stone wall of human nature if they ignore the fact that both men and women delight in the drama of physical combat, it is perfectly easy to poiitt out Lull men like Dempsey contribute very much less to human welfare than many professors whose life earnings arc less than Dempsey’s income tax in a single year. The physical perfection of Mr. Dempsey is a much more interesting topic of conversation Ilian the intellectual perfection of the professor, and people will pay most for what interests them most. I ossibly some day we can make intellectual achievements as exciting and as dramatic as a blow to the ohm. Until that time we fear that our professors will find that their income bear about the same relation to thenneome, of boxers which they do in this ycaiv of advanced civilisation; styled 1923. , Just so, and that reminds “ Spot of a little story that he once read m an American magazine* BRAINS v. BRAWN. Two brothers once went to school together. One was wise and the other was otherwise, But just which was the wise one, the stoyy should toll. One boy studied assiduously, eschewing the physical pastimes of the school. The other lad was,, in the vernacular (and in everything else) “ a hard thing.” The first, on breaking-up day, used to bring home his prizes on a barrow. The second on one occasion came home on a bairow, broken up himself. Eventually this one’s, school career came to a sudden termination; brought about by his anxiety “to swing a dirty left on to a master that attempted to administer physical punishment to him. He drifted downward—doggedly going to the dogs, and eventually slipped out of sight. Meanwhile his brother distinguished himself at both school and college, eventually graduating with quite a lot of those hieroglyphics which a university sometimes tacks after a man’s name, and an amount of common-sense in keeping with his physique. A few years of disallusionment and, shabby and seedy, he is dragging his weary and attenuated frame along Broadway, New York, near which he has secured a position as teacher in a boy’s school at the princly, salary ,of twelve dollars a week and found. Presently a magnificent motor car pulls up at the sidewalk alongside him . and a most prosperous-looking individual, .swathed in a costly fur-coat and scintillating with diamonds, peers into his face and then, giving him a slap on the back which just about drives him through a plate glass window, exclaims: “Hello, Willie; how are you?” It was his long lost brother, alias Los Likko, the great prizefighter, and who was engaged in a big million dollar bout the following Fourth of July. This pathetic • little tale closed with the (fistically) famous one shoving a hundred dollar bill into the hands of the man of (academic) ability and fading away in his “ nottaford.” MEUM AND TEUM. An exchange tells a tragic-comic story with regard to a man who owning ’ a section with an empty house thereon in a New Zealand town went round one Saturday afternoon to cul- 1 tivate his garden. He put in quite a number of choice plants and departed well satisfied with his afternoon’s work. Returning a week or so later ho found two. ladies in the garden making, according to the paragraph, “a horticultural selection.” On re' monstruting with them they became quite indignant and claimed that, they had a perfect 'right to despoil his plots as the house was unoccupied. This certainly shows a strange ideaof proprietorial rights, but perhaps not as strange as it seems at, first sight. People have a peculiar notion of meum and teum at any time, and particularly with regard to what the par euphuistically refers to as “ horticultural selections.” One lias only got to live in a large city to see how private flower gardens, public parks and even cemeteries are rifled of their blooms. The prevalent idea, and which was expressed by the lady .referred to, seems to be generally implanted in the minds of people and

! does not necessarily apply only to gardens attached to empty houses. It is possibly a survival of the common law which held that one was not necessarily a trespasser by entering the property of another and only became so on doing something that he was not entitled to do; his trespass or wrong then “ related back ” and he was considered as a trespasser from the beginning. Under the common law, however, the taking of flowers, 'or other growing substances, out ot the soil was not an offence unless the value of the articles exceeded the sum of one shilling, and as it took a fair amount of some vegetable products to make up that sum, people gradually thought that they could take flowers from the grounds of others with impunity. The indictable offences of housebreaking and burglary arc further crimes which people have a hazy conception! of. Burglary is only an aggravated form of housebreaking, or, more correctly, is housebreaking at night and “night” according to law is the interval of time between nine o’clock in the evening and six o’clock in the morning. Which reminds one of a celebrated case where a thief who contemplated breaking into a dwelling waited until one minute past six in the morning in order that his offence might, be nothing worse than house-breaking. As a matter of fact bis watch was five minutes fast and lie was caught redhanded almost immediately on entering the building. He pleaded his mistake as an extenuating circumstance when charged with the major crime, but it was held of no avail. He was a wrong-doer anyway, and as “ all things arc presumed against a wrong-doer” he was found guilty of burglary and not the lesser crime of house-breaking.