FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 329, 14 April 1928, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

“THE LOOK-OUT MAN.”

By

XATIYE XUMEXCLATURE Residents of Coonabarabran, in New South Wales, are much perturbed. Someone has discovered that Coonabarabran is the anglicised form of Coora-bara-bri, a native term, meaning water, dirt and abundance. One suggestion is that the name of the town should be changed to Bavin, in honour of the Premier. This, however, would be anathema to the large Labour population of the district, it is said. The difficulty might be got over by simply calling the town Coora, or water. This would be an indirect reference to Mr. Bavin, who has pronounced views on the temperance Question. If the source of a good many aboriginal names was traced, other Australian towns might also desire a change. The same thing might be said in relation to New Zealand,* for in this blessed Dominion there are native names which, if translated into English, would sound far from delicate. THE EARL AND THE SHOP The nobility is no longer contemptuous of trade. Earl Beauchamp has opened a butcher’s shop at Malvern, England, with which is combined poultry and fruit and vegetable departments. But the trading of the elderly earl is not for mercenary purposes; he proposes to show that it is the profits of the middlemen that starve the producer, and says he can prove that farming is profitable (to the farmer) if the farmer is fairly treated. “From Farm to Shop” is the motto of Beauchamp the Butcher,” whose shoj> will be supplied direct with produce from his tenantry. Earl Beauchamp was the noble lord who, interviewed at Fremantle on his way to assume the Governorship of New South Wales, made an injudicious remark about Australia outgrowing its early “stain.” This reference to the convict days was doubtless kindly meant —in a spirit of congratulation that a country should so soon outgrow a vivid past—but it greatly exasperated many Australian people, and Lord Beauchamp, amiable chap as he really was, never became popular, and returned to England iD less than two years. * . * THE FLAPPER The word “flapper” came into vogue with the war—nobody w:eem.to have heard of it before. Only recently there was quite a controversy as to its derivation. As to that, the L.O.M. knoweth not; but of this he is certain, that it was in use a score of years ago—-set down in black and white without quotation mark or capital letter to denote it as a word out of the ordinary. Reading lazily through the pages of the tragic Barbellion’s “Journal of a Disappointed Man,” this was discovered as having been set down in the “Journal” on August 17, 1908: “ . . , On the rocks was a pretty flapper in a pink sunbonnet . . . My services were secured to pronounce judgment on a ‘fish’ she had caught. It was a squid, ‘an odd little beast,’ in truth, as she said, ‘Does it sting?’ ‘Oh, no!’. ‘Well it ought to with a face like that.’ She laughed merrily. .. . She’s a dear—and she gave me the squid. What a merry little cuss!” So even twenty years ago the flapper (barring the sunbonnet and, one may venture, the long skirt) was much the same as the flapper of to-dsCy, with her joke and her laugh—a “dear” and “a merry little cuss.”

NINE WOMEN MAYORS The United States is not the only country to have women mayors. In England recently nine women mayors from different parts of the country paid a visit to Miss Margaret Beaven, the first woman Lord Mayor of Liverpool, who holds an office that has been filled by some eminently distinguished men. All except two of the visiting mayors wore their robes of office and tri-cornered hats, and they are reported.to have made a picturesque group. Their “Worshipesses” were the guests at lunch in the town hall of the lady “Lord” Mayor, and each had “a few words” say in response to the toast of “Our Guests.” Lest scoffers scoff at the notion c£ a woman saying only “a few words” when given the opportunity to talk, let us hasten to add that on this occasion each lady mayor was allowed only three minutes in which to reply. Now, when Miss Ellen Melville is “Lord” Mayor of Auckland —a distinct possibility—she will . Well, Miss Melville never wastes time, anyhow. When she has anything to say, she says it distinctly and succinctly. if she occupied the chair and assumed the red robe and the “gold” chain of office, she would probably, and in the most polite manner, check the verbosity of some of our male councillors.