FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 81, 27 June 1927, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By the

LOOK-OUT MAN

OBVIOUS “No referee is popular in Spain,” says an English footballer who recently returned from Madrid, “unless he gives at least one penalty kick in a match.” It is better to give than to receive apparently. * * * THE CANON’S OPERA That amusing cleric, George Birmingham (or if you prefer it another way, that amusing writer Canon Hannay), whose light tales have won for him a most of admirers, has turned his attention to light opera, and has written the libretto for "The Mermaid,” recently produced at the Guildhall School of Music. The story was given to the Canon by an old Galway jflsherman who assured him that his mother, as a girl, had actually known a man who had wedded a mermaid. To succeed in his wooing he had first to steal her scarlet cloak which gave him power to transform her love for the sea into true wifely devotion! Tales of leprechauns and the Little People seem mild by comparison. Canon Hannay, by the way, was recently serving as a chaplain to the British Embassy in Budapest. FITTING PUNISHMENT A German builder has been sent to prison for nine months for constructing a roof which collapsed. This is a much more satisfactory way of doing things than resorting to the civil courts to obtain redress. Those who have suffered from quaint pranks of this description will readily subscribe to “making the punishment fit the crime” on the lines of this schedule: —- 1. For disappearing ceiling, 14 days, without option. 2. For disappearance of exterior paints, two months’ hard. 3. For falling tiles, a fine of 10s a tile. 4. For ventilation exceeding a quarter of an inch above doorways, a week’s hard labour for every yard of draught. And should the verandah with the two aspidistra plants disappear from view' banishment to Whale Island seems to be indicated as a just punishment. . * * A HAPPY HOME The release of the Royalist, M. Leon Daudet (son of the redoubtable Alphonse) from prison, following upon a hoax staged by the Camelots due Roi has made Paris hold its sides with laughter. The rest of the world, too, will have a quiet chuckle at the impudence of the practical jokers and the discomfiture of authority. M. Daudet was bearing up under the rigours of prison life with commendable fortitude. He had just finished his lunch and was sipping a mouthful of champagne (probably of a vintage year) when the chief of the prison arrived to announce his release and to kiss his guest goodbye. It is all very jolly, this “matey” feeling between gaoler and prisoner. It recalls an episode in the life of Turgenev, the Russian writer, who was imprisoned by the Tsar for a eulogy he WTOte at the time of Gogol’s death. Turgenev, in gaol, lived on the fat of the land, and his admirers vied one with the other in sending him the choicest morsels from .their tables. One evening he was supping pleasantly with the governor of the prison who had become very mellow under the influence of his prisoner’s excellent wine. “Your health, sir,” said Turgenev. “A Robespierre!” was the astonishing reply.

A BREEZE FROM THE PACIFIC It is refreshing to have the testimony of a trustworthy judge of cricket like the “Manchester Guardian” that our team of cricketers is not playing in the Homeland as though the fate of the Empire depended on a middle wicket. “The New Zealanders are evidently going to hold their own with our best,” says the “Guardian,” editorially, “and they are likely to do it without turning sport into tribulation. They are fortunate in not. carrying any of the sense of national responsibility which lay like galling fetters round the limbs of last year’s Australian eleven. The fate of cricket if there were Test matches every year is dreadful to contemplate. Recurring at decent periods they may be valuable as a check on slackness and as a challenge to the virtue of tenacity, but as routine they would frighten the spectator out of his seat and the sun out of the sky. . . . Our new visitors have ‘jumped to it’ with alacrity, and have given a sorely needed example of the old maxim that it pays to knock a bowler off his length before he starts to find it. We imagine that the way of gallantry will lead more often to success. If that is so the New Zealanders will be not only our entertainers but our instructors. There are some heavy clouds about the game for which the new breeze from the Pacific may be an admirable solvent.”