FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 50, 21 May 1927, Page 10

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By the LOOK-OUT MAN “MARRIED AFT HER ALL!” Down at Palmerston North, correspondents to the local press have been scathingly sarcastic regarding- the demerits of an alleged wretchedly incomplete municipal library. Some comjnunities are worse off —they haven’t hny library at all. Take, for instance, a little river township which shall be nameless. Here dwelt old Mick McMurphy, whose early education had been neglected, but who, in an age wherein even the Maori child must learn to read and write, was ashamed to admit his literary deficiencies and tried hard to be regarded as a man of average lamin’. Every week the skipper of the little steamer which traded to the township would bring old Mick along a book on loan, and every week Mick would return it with “Thanks, captain; ’tis a foine book”; or “ ’Twas a great tale.” At last the skipper grinned wickedly to himself and hatched a plot for Mick’s undoing. He got a coverless old Bible and placed it inside the covers of a novel, and he left this with the unsuspecting old man. On his return next week there was Mick on the wharf to greet him as usual. “Well, Mick,” enquired the skipper, “did you like the book?” “Sure ’twas a great yarn,” said Mick —“a great yarn entoirely. I see they got married afther all!” POOR DUNEDIN! Poor far-away Dunedin, left alone in the cold, how bitterly she repines the glorious past when she had her share of shipping and more than her share of many other things! Now she is the Cinderella of the Four Cities and weeps in the kitchen over the bone of yesterday’s leg of mutton. Her latest sob is over the injustice of the new Island fruit boat, which, it seems, will not .be making regular and. frequent visits to Port Chalmers, but is to feed the fattened North. The truth is that all things come North, as needles to the magnet—even retired Dunedinites, who steal here to live in our ease and warmth and to spend the bawbees they made in a less hospitable clime. Auckland is the swirling eddy into which all is being drawn, and Dunedin would do well to pack up, bag and baggage, and step this way. Far be it from us to boast about it, but these are the facts. * * * THE DIFFERENCE

For having installed machines by which sweets were played for by discs —each disc representing the value of a penny and presented free to a purchaser to the value of his purchase —some shopkeepers were fined £2 each at the Auckland Police Court. It is to be understood that on the part of the customer it was a case of “win something or lose nothing.” Yet the magistrate convicted the owners of keeping a common gaming house! In another case, brought under our humbug anti-gambling laws, 15 men were charged with being partners in a lottery at Ellerslie. Observing that they held sweepstakes in clubs, and that “a sweepstake among friends was no harm,” the magistrate dismissed the case. The Look-Out Man suggests the formation of a new Society of Friends for the “harmless” promotion of gambling by sweepstake. TRADE TO GERMANY

One regrets that the Victorian State Electricity Commissioners have placed a £43,000 order in German hands, but a reason must be sought. After allowing for preference to British goods under the Customs tariff, the British price was found to be 16.7 per cent, higher than the German, representing over £ 7,000. That was a lot, and, moreover, each of the three competing Germah firms undertook to deliver the goods in less than half the time specified in the British tender. Hasn’t the British manufacturer had sufficient lessons in the past regarding this laggardness in point of time? He will need to watch more closely the busi-ness-like methods of his German competitor, and to realise that he cannot depend solely on the favourable Dominions’ preference policy to sell his goods. * * * A VARIED MENU A deputation of Christchurch unemployed has indicated willingness to accept Government rates of pay for relief work if provided with an abundantly varied, nutritive and well-pre-pared food. It is only fair that these men should be given the same fare as they enjoy in their homes. It is understood that the daily menu of the average working man is something like this: —Breakfast: Cream of oats' (with cream), sardines on toast, poached eggs, plain and savoury omelettes, fried crumbed sheep’s brains, lamb’s fry and bacon, undercut steak, pork sausages, toast, marmalade, coffee. Lunch: Chicken broth, oysters on shell, salmon and dressing, stewed lamb and green peas, grilled kidneys and bacon, pork chops, York ham, cold lamb, cheese, salad, ale or beer. Dinner; Toheroa soup, curried lobster, roast duck or fowl, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, roast lamb and red currant jelly, roast pork and apple sauce, trifle Milanese, college custard, stewed peaches and jelly, banana fritters, tea, coffee, cocoa, ale, beer, wine and whisky. The Government should consider this—and it ought to engage only chefs of skill and experience, remembering that “the good Lord sends the food, but the devil sends the cooks” sometimes. The worker would have a proper right to grumble if the nutritive value of the above menu were lowered by inferior cooking.