OBSERVATORY.

Putaruru Press, Volume VI, Issue 230, 29 March 1928, Page 4

OBSERVATORY.

Defying Superstition. Bad luck was challenged by the Thirteen Club at its annual dinner held in London. The club has 13 members, who met on the 13th hour of a Friday, which was also the 13th day of the month and of the year. Members met their guests under a ladder and superstition was defied by deliberate devices which included the bat of ill-omen, the inverted horse shoe, broken mirrors, crossed knives on the table, robins on a tray, and peacock feathers. Two decorated donkeys were solemnly paraded in the diningroom because in Sardinian folk lore it is unlucky to see two asses. Later the guests were introduced to an unlucky feast in which the main dishes were out of season. The Lucky Thirteenth. A great blow to the 13 superstition was dealt by a small English village, Woolley, in Somerset. It sent 13 men to the war, and its 13 men returned safe and sound after wide service on many fronts on land and sea. The fact is recorded on a tablet in the village church. A prominent writer recently described how he left Riviera on Friday the 13th, to find that his berth on the P. and O. liner by which he travelled was numbered 13. On the following Friday he arrived at Monte Carlo, where the room of his hotel was 13. He and some friends formed a dinner party of 13 that evening, and, to crown everything, when they went to the casino after dinner he put 5 francs on 13 and it turned up. He was so excited that he omitted to take his stake, which remained on the table, and 13 turned up again and he made 350 francs therefore from 5. Most Polite Village. Barnack, a delightful village in Northamptonshire, England, with a population of 548, claims to possess the nicest-mannered children in the country. Every year Mr. Robert E. Clark, of London, and an old boy of the school, presents a freshly-minted sixpence to each of 12 scholars—six girls and six boys—who are selected by their schoolfellows as being worthy of the title “ Nature’s Ladies and Gentlemen.” To help the children in making a wise choice the headmaster annually addresses them on the true characteristics of a lady and gentleman. Their general manners and behaviour throughout the year are taken into consideration. Apart from the desire to obtain a new sixpence the honour of being a successful candidate is keenly sought after, and Mr. Clark, by his novel gift, has made Barnack the most polite village in the country.

Women’s Food Ban. How women can affect the imports of a country in an astonishing degree is shown in a report issued by the Manchester Chamber of Commerce. The report attributes a decrease of nearly 6,000,000 hundredweight in the imports of refined sugar and sugar-candy to changes in the fashionable demand which have resulted in a greatly-decreased turnover among those engaged in the chocolate and confectionery branches of trade. There is concern at hotels and restaurants, not only because .women are passing by the sweet things, but also because they are refusing all manner of dishes which they used to delight in. Curate Harbourmaster.

“ I am. well aware of the fact that I am rather an out-of-the-way sort of parson,” said Rev. J. A. Smart when acknowledging a presentation of £l5O to him from the people of Pollock, Somerset. “ Christianity,” he added, “ was not founded by conventionalism, and I doubt whether it has ever been forwarded by it.” Mr. Smart, who has completed 21 years as curate of Poriock, has every Sunday in all weathers walked to the lonely moorland church of Stoke Pero. He is unorthodox in garb and pursuits, and can often be found in seaboots and sou-wester yarning with fishermen on Poriock pier, of which harbour he is master.