FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 345, 4 May 1928, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By

“THE LOOK-OUT MAN.”

ALTERED THE CASE A constable, having been accorded a most fearful curse by a “lady,” was asked by the magistrate if she ms an Irishwoman. “Mo,” replied the defendant, “I’m English—l was born at Brighton, Sussex.” “Then you’re a disgrace to your country,” said the magistrate, Mr. Mosley. A XEW XAME FOR IT How extraordinary a coincidence that Messrs. Jones, Mouat, and Mason should all feel the urge of their years and ask to be retired on superannuation just when the Minister of Railways decides that the new idea must be Mr. Sterling as general manager, in place of a board of three. Mr. Coates is a real hypnotist. * * * A WRONG IMPRESSION “Dear L.O.M., —The manner in which cabled news is condensed often traps the reader into wrong inferences. For instance, when I read that Mr. Henry Ford and his wife embarked on the Majestic for the United States as ‘Mr. and Mrs. Robinson,’ but that in no time everyone on board was ‘looking for Mr. Ford,' I thought it must have been with the intention of throwing him overboard. Apparently the man is popular. Strange! Loosebolt.” THE GAY CAROL The ex-Crown Prince Carol, who would hav been King of Rumania if he had not loved Madame Lupeseu more than he loved a crown, occupied the Royal box in a London theatre the other evening, and presented the leading lady with a bouquet and a silver cigarette case. Madame Lupeseu should be careful to keep her Carol well in sight, for, as Sam observes, “if he gives an actress a cigarette case in the presence of madame, he might give her something very much more valuable if he could slip around to the stage door on his own.” It is suspected that Sam has had more than one experience of stage doors. » * * “CRAYFISH!” In Auckland, where lovers of the carnivorous “cray” may go down to the wharf and secure a fresh-boiled crustacean for a “bob” upwards, the value of such food is not properly appreciated. In Melbourne and Sydney a fair-sized “Cray” is worth several shillings. The fishermen of Hobart used to send their crayfish catches to Sydney for sale, but since the withdrawal of the Zealandia from the Hobart-Sydney run, as the result of the cooks’ strike, the fishermen are in a quandary as to what to do with their catch. Recently two bold mariners set off in their fishing boat on a voyage of several hundred miles to Melbourne, hoping there to profitably dispose of 200 dozen “crays.” If these intrepid chaps reach Melbourne in safety, they should "net at least £3OO as their reward. * * * PIANO “ COLLECTORS » Was there not a musical campaign commenced in our schools some time ago? We have not heard any great result from it—no remarkable number of converts to the classics delight the ear. If you hear a boy whistling, or a girl humming, ten to one your ears are assailed by jazz. The schools in Australia are said to be “moving” in this matter. “There is a small revolution going on in our schools in the matter of music teaching. Classes are being formed, not to play, but to listen to good music,” writes an Australian correspondent. “One public school found recently that only one girl could recognise the ‘Peer Gvnt’ suite, and the headmaster swore that he would not rest till the main operatic airs were as familiar to his students as ‘The Elegy in a Country Churchyard.’ Perhaps in the course of a few years we may remove the slur cast on us when a famous Italian gentleman remarked that he could not understand why such unmusical people collected so many pianos.” * . ♦ TEACHER-DOCTORS A brilliant idea has been conceived by a New Zealand schoolmaster. It is that school teachers should be given “a certain amount” of medical training, so that they may aid in checking disease. The Minister of Health considers the sugestion to be valuable. Isn’t there a Doctors’ Union or something to protest against this “cuttingin” on the medical profession? If the doctors retaliate by opening schools and teaching the young idea how to write indecipherable Latin, it will serve the teachers jolly well right. Each man to his trade. If we are to have teachers meddling with medicine and diagnosinging appendicitis as colic, or pneumonia as “flu,” the mortality rate for school children will necessitate new cemetries. ONE FOR JOHNSON It is obviously useless pretending to be secretary of the Seamen’s Union unless you behave like a firebrand, and so Mr. Jacob Johnson is forwarding a vitriolic note to the steamship owners threatening to precipitate a shipping crisis that will involve the whole Australian coastline, including inter-state and oversea vessels, wrote the Sydney correspondent of the Hobart “Mercury” recently. Mr. Johnson accuses the owners of adopting a hypocritical attitude in regard to the delayed resumption of the conference with seamen on the issue of wages. Obviously one of Mr. Johnson’s objects is to convince the seamen themselves that he is the best qualified man to keep the owners in a state of industrial anxiety—for almost before the letter was put into the post Mr. Johnson saw to it that its contents reached the light of day. Considering that Australian seamen already get double the pay of men on English articles, the owners cannot fail to regard Mr. Johnson’s outburst as further justification for the stand taken by the shipowners.