CANNIE DINNIE.

NZ Truth, Issue 73, 10 November 1906, Page 6

CANNIE DINNIE.

The Scotland-yard Scot Saves Sundry Saxpences.

"Now, this is a treat of a par, W is worth perusing, and pasting m '.the lining of your sleeve, and telling to your ybii have any. •At €hristchu.rch > this • week,- and last Ve^k— Exhibition, races, show— there lias been much, top- hat and frill, an overdose m : fact; -' And .there have been many -■ private carriages' to races, adorned "with -humanity ' superbly dresse4. Game theret o .Christchurch Commissioner • Dinriie,' boss of the Maoriland police 7 the nabob of^ the Brass Button Brigade ; the ' Sultan of the Blues. And he. went but to the Riccarton meeting- wearing a top hat; and why shouldn't .he ?• seeing the salary "the colony nays him to look, "the thing." •And does he not get a pound, or a guinea; a- day m the shapie of travelling expenses? Well, that's all right, but what do you think of him- travelling out, not m a carriage, but m Black Maria ? Was there anything: so superbly ridiculous? There are two "Black Marias" m Use in v Christchurch, and unfortunately, for ■.this ; writer, who is an Irishman, and who- forgot it when he penned the last few lines, one is painted green. However,

THAT DON'T. MATTER as the girl said when she lost . her garter m a ball-room ! The green vehicle: is a . small open one. that might pass- for some kind of. third- i class 'of nothing' -m particular if ; everybody- didn't know it. The big' B'.M.. is' a' closed sable structure that carries .gloom. 'With it and spreads' waves of darkness on both sides, of the "street. : Dinrae going out 'in, the Green Maria, attired m, a top tiat-^---he had other things. on,, of course^ but they don't ! count > m; this 1 : cqnnection—wajs. a ! 'sight 'for; thte I; pqpii-' lace. And' most- of the ;tbp-h&tted populace grinned and sniggered, '■ and Inspector GilliSs , who had vto accompany him, ahd.lehd him the. sight of his wrinkled countenance ep route, ,, didn't like it, and tSe 'urbane drivet;,' who is übanity itself and eight ounces over, and who is always used ■to j driving prisoners, didn't care about the trips worth ■ anvthinV; He should I at least have been given -a nail-can; and a /'straight thing" for the first race. Commissioner '

DINNIB WASN'T AFFECTED by any feeling of disoomfiture, however, and sallied ,out m .similar style on more than one day.. Also, he did not stay at a high-class pub, so far as this scribe knows, but had a bed put up for him at the police station where he slept the sleep of the man with a 'fat income and a guinea (or is it a quid ?) a day expenses. It v is absolutely the first time that Green Maria— who wears a toque of that jcolor, which js pretty fast running— has ever careered out to Riccarton under such circumstances, and it may -be suggested that the next time she is asked to carry a top hat and a tip-top suit on the cheap, at the. expense of the country, and that a highsalaried officer, should deign to make himself so abominably /cheap, she should at least be given a new coat of paint, and that" decoration should harmonise m color with the togs, or have brass buttons starred round it by way of novelty..