SHAMELESS GRAB.

NZ Truth, Issue 75, 24 November 1906, Page 5

SHAMELESS GRAB.

"Stand and Deliver" Act at

Christchurch.

Pungle Up m Advance and Submit to Bleeding Afterward. '

Two Wellington business men— one of them being himself a restaurateur—who have been doing the Zibishun, have returned full of stories of the pub-pirate, the boarding-house bandit and the restaurant robber, | who, they (as countless others have done) aver, are literally driving visitors out of town under the lash of their impudent extortion. They give annirisi&ance of the sort of imposition practised by the proprietors of pie parlors, which would be amusing if it were not enraging. They proceeded .to enter a hashery known as the Commercial, and run by a man who drags around the highly significant name of Fail, which it is to be hoped he won't soon act up to, and ,were surprised to find the doorway stopped by a turnstile and to have a demand for eighteen pence made by its custodian, presumably the ingenious Fail himself. Demur, on the ground that they did not know yet what they might order, was met by a pointing finger and they read a legend that all meals were eighteenpehce, to be paid m advance. They dug down m their jeans and coughed up the white 'uns and wete then allowed to wriggle through the turnstile and take a seat. They ordered fried flounder and the waiter stolidly remarked : "Thruppence extry." "Wotcher mean? We've paid our eighteen pence-, and the poster reads •All meals eighteen pence.' " "Flounders thruppence extry." , The would-be diners expostulated, but one of them, sick of the impetrtinent and outrageous imposition, threw down a sovereign, saying, "Well, take two out of that." "Cawn't change no sufferin' 'ere," was the imbecile remark of the troglodytic sorerfoot. . "Well, that's the smallest I've got." "Cawn'.t change no.sufferins. Yous'll 'aye to order somefih else," barked the cave-dweller. Eventually a sprat was fished up and the now fairly boiling Wellingtonians got their fish, such as it was. But they took the boat home that evening. It was the last sandbag.

They acknowledge that their fellowtownsmen are pretty dam shrewd on the make-all-that's-coming-to-you-and-a-tyit-qver aot, but the Christchurch traders make their efforts m the grab line look puny m the extreme.

A glance at the me and you the angry pair hauled away from Fail's fryery shows that besides all these dinky little extrys, every blessed dish is advanced from 33 to 50 per cent, after 10 p.m. And yet the philosopher has said there is no such word as faiM He's a liar ! There is. You'll find it m tho Ohristchurch directory.

Beyond a question, the idiotic policy of imposition on visitors has practically emptied Chrititchurch already and will, go far to keep wouldbe patrons away and seriously damace the Zibishun, if it is not, checked somehow. . ;