NEAR AND FAR

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 49, 20 October 1931, Page 2

NEAR AND FAR

"Slips of the Tongue." Sometimes at public functions speakers made "slips of the- tongue" which are highly amusing to, the audience, though embarrassiug, perhaps, to the perpetrators of the faux pas. Af the Stratford Fire Brigade annual social gathering recently one of the civic fathers was addressed as "Brother," no douht on aceount of the speaker having known the councillor as a member of a lodge or friendly society in the town. In another" case a prominent member of the brigade referred to the company during the evening as "the cohgregation." , It was yet early in the evening whe'ig, these matfers were. note^. Abrupt End to Funeral. Funeral ceremonies at a house at Esmone, Portugal, were brought to a sudden end by ' the collapse* of a floor. The mourners fell into a sufyterranean chamber, and were injured. Back to Nature. A J>et mohkey, "Beppo," also called "Horace/' which for yea'rs had been the playmate of children in Tottenham, London, recently f elt the call of -the jungle. It ran riot and, in its back-to-nature orgy it escaped frpm its home, climbed over garden walls, caused terrordn the garcj.en, hit three women", tore a doll to pieces, spoiled flower-beds, and tore up clothes on clothes-liries. The women were taken in an ambulance to hospital, to have their wounds stitched and treated. Magna Charta. Mr. Edward Majoribanks, M.P., deputising for Sir John Si'mon, K.C., M.P., at the annual gathering at Runnymede recently, to celebrate th'e signing of Magna Charta, said : "What is in a name? Some say nothing, but to any who reflect upon the political sequel of the Great Charter the name of Simon de Montfort must occur. At this time of crisis in modern affairs the nation may well look to another Simon as the preserver and interpreter of ancient liberties. The. greathess of Magna Charta lies not in what it afterwards hecame to the political leaders of the future — a battlecry and an inspiration. It was at once a result and a consequence of a great prineiple inherent in British political history.'' Broadcasting Joke. The British Broadcasting Corporation's station had its "leg pulled" recently. During a broadeast talk, Mr. B. H. Jones, author of "On the Road to Endor," achieved a praetical joke. Under the guise of an alleged incantation used by the Turks, Mr. Jones uttered what was, in fact, a sentence in Welsh which, being interpreted, meant "O that Wales had its owh broadcasting station !" The Difference. ' Counsel to witness in the Hamilton Court a few days ago : "You say there was a hole in the back of this vehicle. Was it not an aperture?" Witness: "I don't know the difference betweeh a hole and an aperture." Counsel: "Well, a hole, I should say, is something made accidentally, and an aperture something construeted." The Magistrate: "I have heard of a man getting out of a hole, but not out of an aperture." (Laughter.) "Belly Timber." One expressive phrase in common use a few hundred of years ago "has gone clean out of use. It is "belly timber" for food. How would "Good Belly Timber," in letters a foot high, look over a pie shop. Its uhiqueness should make it a good slogan. But then, no one has a "belly" nowadays; only a "stomach," which is in reality a different thing. The word "stomach" has changed its meaning since Shakespeare's time. Contemporary authors called Elizabeth a "mighty queen of a high stomach," meaning thereby that she would not submit to insult or imposition, using the ford in its Latin sense, which is, proud, haughty, quiek to take offenee." Brief Wills. The queerest will in Somerset House. consists of a sheet of notepapef left by Sir William Hart Dyke. On it he had written in neat characters: "I leave everything of which I die possessed to my wife." Lady Dyke, who died a few days after her husband, merely added: "I renounce my interests in favour of my son." "Up the Spout." "Two pence more and up goes the donkey." This is not a quotatiori from the classics, but a saying attributed to a street shownman of yore whose feat was to balance a live doneky on the top of a twenty-foot pole, given sufficient financial encouragement. I am much in doubt as to the saying's ' appositeness, but it sprang uninvited from my sub-con-sciousness upon hearing this morning that there was twopence more on benzine. It may he that the association if ideas arises from a suspicion that it is a case of twopence more and up 2,-oes the car — up the spout to use ;he old-world phrase, states the Taraaaki Herald.

Sixteen Skeletons Found. While excavating portion of the hillside at the Whakatane Borough quarry for filling for the reclamatiori work in progress near the Fire Brigade station, the workmen unearthed about sixteen skeletons. In one place f our skulls were found close together, and the bones were packed tightly together. It is thought that the spot is an ancient Maori burial ground. "Gone West." The following is another explanation of a phrase current at present, namely, "gone west." One is that -it arose from the Egyptian custom of burying their dead west of the Nile. Here is the other. A remarkable explanation of the term "gone west" is suggested by the statement that iii the seventeenth century condemned men Tbeing taken from Newgate fo Tyburn were euphemistically described as "going west." Eel's Appetite. Sixteen lampreys were found in the stomach of an eel which was caught rece'ntly iri the Makarewa by Mr'. J. Green (says the Southland Times). The voracious monster, which weighed 301b, was displayed in a shop window. Beside it was a very much prettier fish — -a rainbow trout taken out of the Aparima, which contains a fair number of these daintily marked fish.