FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 239, 29 December 1927, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

i By “THE LOOK-OUT MAN” | WHEN HEARTS WERE TRUMPS \ This is the season of cards—Christmas cards, New Year cards and playing cards. In thousands of homes, nightly, the bridge.tables are brought forth, or the family gathers round to argue over right and left bowers or the extra point that was missed in the hand before last through failure to take “one for his knob” at cribbage. We were reading the other evening (apropos de iottes), of a fair lady who sent to a clergyman her Christmas greeting on a playing card, the ten of hearts. For her pains she received the following neat little jingle: Your compliments, dear lady, pray forbear, Old English services are more sincere; You, send ten hearts—the tithe is only Give me but one, and burn the other nine. And, one hopes, hearts were trumps after that. CAN’T BE DONE The Samoan correspondent of a contemporary writes that the natives of those peaceful (?) isles “cannot stand sitting on the other side of the fence.” Neither, it is understood, can they sit standing this side of the fence, nor are they yet able to lie in a perpendicular position on top of the fence. Perhaps it is just as well. Seeing how the authorities are applying the hob-nailed “military’s” to some of the natives, the safest posture for the said natives is to just sit sitting—and to keep on sitting. THIRSTY CHICAGO The information conveyed by a correspondent of THE SUN that Chicago has a daily water consumption of 275 gallons a head should help somewhat to cool the passionate indignation of Mr. Allum against the wasteful Aucklanders, whose per capita consumption is about one-fifth that of the Chicagoans. It is improbable that Mr. Allum would long survive the worries of this wicked world if he attempted to prohibit the use of hoses, supposing he was chairman of the Chicago Water Committee. He would certainly not be so popular as he is in that Auckland which so reveres its civic administrators and so meekly accepts their rebukes and their curtailments. But then, Chicago is a very wicked city, and its citizens do not know the benefits of being scolded and penalised for the good of the municipality and the greater glory of the municipal administrators. » * * PROTECTION AND INDUSTRY British and American interests are establishing factories in Australia w'hich are expected to give employment to 10,000 additional workers next year. One American firm, engaged in the manufacture of hose, is commencing operations with a capital of £500,000, and a Glasgow company is to open large works in Newcastle for the manufacture of wrought iron and steel pipes, expecting to turn out material valued at £1,000,000 annually. Among other great enterprises to attack importations are two for the manufacturing of linoleums and artificial leaih&n The enormous growth of industriW undertakings in Australia is due to the application of a sane protective tariff. “Those who run may read.”

A NOBLE ART As the ancient Greeks and the Romans used to practise it, wrestling was a noble art. It seems slightly to have degenerated since those “brave days of old.” The other night a modem Greek, name of Pergantas, met Anderson, a New Zealand representative of the mat. “Orthodox wrestling, however, was purely a sideline with the two gladiators, who punched, kicked, and gouged each other in caveman fashion until the referee mercifully intervened,” says THE SUN report of the affair. The New Zealander apparently was the more outrageous of the two. Anyway, the referee disqualifiec} kilo for punching. It must have been very edifying. It might be suggested that when wrestlers of the Pergantas—Anderson calibre perform in Auckland again, they should be allowed to use knives. That might ensure it to be their last appearance on any platform—for which the world should be duly thankful.