RAILWAY HUMOUR.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2173, 7 September 1920, Page 4

RAILWAY HUMOUR.

EEX IX Tlilvs-EWEKIHT HOOK

BISCITi’K AXD SEAWEED

There is a lot behind that ancient and inimitable Joke of Keen s in Punch about the pn/./.led railway porter and iiis "eats is dogs and rabbit.- is dugs,” as he ran over in bis puzzled head the analogous rales (says the Auckland Star). The ways of the official tavill are a tiling apart, and of a delphic mystify. The bulky book out of which the Customs Department confounds the luckless importer is a snare 1 and a delusion to I lie unwary, and a railway time-table is much more entertaining than the maze at Hampton Court, and quite as intricate. But the most Joyous publication of the kind is undoubtedly the tome wherein is set out the amount of freight yon must pay if you wish to sendanything by railway. To the ordinary person, the obvious thing would be to make sin-h a well-used service as simple and businesslike as possible. Yon would think it quite a simple matter to have three or four classes of goods at the most. I lie

ofTieial mind scorns such straight methods, and the railway people simply revel in ctassilical ions whose headings seem to require two or three alphabets to enumerate. They don’t believe in •‘direct action. ihe simple unuouneemen! that the charges for freights and lares will he raised means hours and hours <>i work for the business people who forward goods. .1 he railway ,1 reign! hook of a well-run establishment is a hefty volume, wiflt all the multifurious classes and suh-emsses id. goods linked up like a regiment of soldiers, And even this is not the end. The freight varies aeeordiag to the weight of the package—the smaller the package the more the freight in proportion.

Some of the chissiliealhms imo which things reliable are divided are quite amusing, Por instance, you (.jin send seaweed (who on eatlh would want to send seaweed ?at so much the lon under class “Z,” or whatever its letter may-be. But if« it be a question of “edible seaweed," that is quite another matter, and yon must look perhaps under Anyhow, who ever heard of anyone in this country eating seaweed.’ In old cookery hooks you will come across a receipt of the way to prepare samphire, but even with the cost.of living as high as it is in this Dominion, one can’t possibly imagine enough people resorting to the ultra-vegetarian fare in such quantities as to need a special section and description in the archives of the people who charge up things on the railways, ilicu again, the ordinary common biscuit goes at so much the ton, but “settlers’ biscuits,” like the seaweed you can't eat. is in a region apart and exclusive, with special letter of the alphabet and a speed til scale. Anyhow, what are settlers’ biscuits? Are they, like so many home-made productions, heavier than the machine-made kind, or is their distinction due to the desire of some dead and forgotten .Minister of Railways to foster homo industries? iue settlers biscuits certainly opens up a lot of interesting speculations, but who would have thought of unearthing sitelt nice culinary distinctions in a Government publication ? M c can safely recommend the book to anyone who is tired of the American novel with its loud cover and its silent hero, and has had enough of Punch and similar sober publications.