THE LAW OF THE SILENCER
“Roar and Rattle and Rasp!” That is the hahit of the motorbike rider. He delights therein. He causes shudders, shocks, and shakes. The whole population protests, prances, and prays. Its cries are as various, vain, vapid. Never was such outrageous disregard of public feeling or such heartless disturbances of the public peace. Never was such suffering of nerves, such subordination of wills. But the demon in goggles and hideous overalls goes on with'his Roaring, Rattling, and Rasping—regardless, reckless, rampageousThe Mayor has discovered the existence of this outrage. He has made up his mind to stop it. He will force the goggled demon to use a silencer. How? Will he step resolutely into the roadway and take the rattling creature by the throat? Or will he fix him with his eagle eye and pump a brief but bitter sermon into his amazed ears? Nothing of the kind. The Mayor’s weapon is a by-law. He will enforce that by-law. That instrument can he used to compel the goggled demon to use a silencer. Then all will be well.
But ljpw amazing! The by-law has been at hand for years of roar, rattle, and rasp. All that time the goggled demon has been roaring, rattling, and rasping right over the by-law. The citizens have been all that time a prey to irksomeness, inconvenience, and boredom incalculable. Nevertheless, the by-law weapon lay inert, and the demon flashed joy through his goggles, set up pride upright in his hideous overalls, banged the welkin, and bustled and deafened the townsfolk with his rattling pace of inconceivable miles per hour.
We are thankful that the eye of authority has at last spotted the by-law. Still more that he has determined to put it.to its intended use—to make it a weapon to suppress tne gqggle-eyed demon who has ruled so long. We are even too thankful to ask why the weapon was allowed to remain useless in spite of the notorious, long-tolerated misbehaviour. We can only beg the Mayor to use the weapon at once. Hit this strdet demon hard enough to stop his awful noise. That is the major evil. If the demon will not mend the minor ones, we can have patience enough to mend the by-law.
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZTIM19261202.2.36
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12619, 2 December 1926, Page 6
Word count
Tapeke kupu
376THE LAW OF THE SILENCER New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12619, 2 December 1926, Page 6
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Stuff Ltd is the copyright owner for the New Zealand Times. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Stuff Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.