FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 243, 4 January 1928, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By “THE LOOK-OUT MAN” WILTED FLOWERS The citizens of Auckland are so delighted with the fine weather experienced during the holidays that they feel it is incumbent upon them to reward the City Fathers, who, it is understood, are responsible for tire plenitude of the sunshine —as they are for the shortage of water and the prohibition of tbe use of the hose. It is understood that a movement is afoot to present each councillor with a bouquet of wilted flowers from Auckland's drought-smitten gardens, with a ‘'button-hole” in the form of a rusted hose-sprinkler, bearing tbe motto, “Let us spray!” WORK AGAIN! Tbe soul-paralysing disease of bacterwurkus has broken out in epidemic form. Shops, offices and factories are filled with people who alternately moan with the burning pain of sunburn or yawn with that wonderful feeling of fitness which follows a refreshing holiday during which one is almost always swimming or walking and eating and almost never sleeping. Bacterwurkus requires always the rest of the week to recover from, and accidents are always to be feared owing to the liability of the patient to fall asleep while attending to machinery or dropping a weary bead upon an upturned pen. Most patients should be recovered by the week-end, however, as the result of the rest which work affords after a holiday, and they should remain almost normal until a week before Easter, when they will begin to prepare for another period of strenuous and unnatural activity. RED RAIN The phenomena of red rain experienced in Melbourne reminds one of Broken Hill, where red rain is not phenomenal. At Broken Hill, all bearded men (and they were nearly all bearded in those days) looked to be red-haired men, after a dust storm. There was an average of three storms a week, and the dust, blowing as from a furnace, filled the nostrils and dried the throat. Fortunately tbe throat trouble could be quickly relieved. Almost every second building was an hotel. Beer was dear, but money was plentiful, so no man's throat went dry for want of treatment. It was a hot shop, was Broken Hill, in more than one sense, and a frightful long way from anywhere. Still, “those were the days.” There was said to be one place in Australia that was hotter than Broken Hill. That was Hay, in the far west of New South Wales. But, as the late lamented Henry Lawson wrote in one of his bush ballads, “Hay is next to Hell.” THE BIG CAT The small boy of London who stroked an escaped leopard and received no more damaging recognition than a growl must have been born in a caul. Leopards are not usually safe things to stroke. It is wonderful how many people saw the leopard which escaped from the Auckland Zoo two or three years ago—hundreds of them, all in different places at about tbe same time. Perplexed policemen, answering call after call at suburban stations, did not know which way to go in search of the escapee. Men with guns and dogs, and small boys with sticks, went everywhere, determined to slay the big cat. Tbe hunt was continued long after the leopard was dead—in fact, right up to the time its body found floating in the harbour, re-

vealing signs to both, eye and nostril that it had been very extremely defnnct for several days. Whether it was drowned accidentally, or committed suicide, was never explained; but for a small beast it caused a very large commotion until its demise was established beyond all doubt. Auckland has not been so excited about anything since. * * * SPORTING GERMANY Seven million Germans are now members of nationally-organised sports bodies and strenuously practising athletics and gymnastics, instead of goose-stepping under the eyes of military martinets, as their fathers did. A German writer claims that his countrymen are going to beat the world at sport, and he contends that the new era is driving out the former warlike spirit which made the Germans mad to fight somebody. Tbe sporting spirit is better than" the -war spirit, and perhaps if military drill was replaced by athletics and gymnastics in this country it would be very much better for the trainees and for the nation. Certainly our young men would obtain better physical results from it—-and anyway, fitness is the chief thing in war. You can make a soldier of the fit man in a few weeks providing he has a good eye for a i ifle-sight. Perhaps the now peaceloving Germans realise this, and hence their newly-acquired and disarming love of sport,