FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 545, 24 December 1928, Page 10

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

"THE LOOK-OUT MAN.”

.SO THIS IS NEW YORK They cable brings the information that prices in New York are soaring, and that such a homely commodity as lamb stew costs 10s. Where, in other cities, you need money to be in the swim, the New Yorker needs money to be in the stew. A DISMAL YULETIDE They have been having high times in High Holborn. Flames 30 feet high leapt from the roadway, and astonished all London. It is quaintly narrated that one butcher kept his shop open—brave merchant—though it resembled nothing so much as a, cavern. In a phrase, he probably kept his shop open for the simple reason that he had no way of shutting it. A NEW PLANK It is reported that the British Labour Party has adopted, as a plank in its platform, a proposal to send 250,000 unemployed men to the Dominions. How this will be arranged, as far as New Zealand is concerned, without treading on the corns of the local Labour Party, is not clear. Labour’s criticism of immigration in the past few years has been severe. There will have to be some earnest colloquy between Mr. Holland and Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, or whoever it is that the British Labour Party charges with the duty of putting the plan into operation. * * * IN THE SUBURBS It was at a suburban tennis party, and the ball, as tenni3 balls do at suburban tennis parties sometimes, had soared over a neighbour’s fence. Through a gap squeezed a squad of 1 brave men, who searched energetically in the long grass. At hand there were some attractive-looking fruit trees and raspberry vines; but no one laid a finger on the fruit. In spite pf this heroic abstinence, there capie a voice from the nearby dwelling, “Leave that fruit alone.” Their innocence outraged, the party decided to leave the lost ball where it was. But there was a Parthian shot from the last man: “I wish you’d cut your - grass,” he said, as he climbed back through the fence. IN LOW GEAR Motorists off for their holiday camping trips will expect to' encounter some steep pinches on backcountry roads, but there are steeper grades on one or two secluded streets in the city than are likely to be mpt with anywhere. One of them is Liverpool Street, which nominally runs through from Karangahape Road to Airedale Street, roughly parallel to Symonds Street and Queen Street. Part of its length is flat, but it suddenly dips into the- gully, and is so steep that, though nominally a negotiable thoroughfare, it would take a phenomenal car to traverse it. Two other very steep grades are in the heart of the city—the upper ends of Kitchener Street, beside the Northern Club, and Chancery Lane, where it runs up behind the Grand Hotel. Exceedingly severe though these littleused thoroughfares are, they are tame compared with Liverpool Street,

CHRISTMAS IN THE COLD

The idea of a cold Christmas is strange to New Zealanders; strange, at any rate, to Aucklanders. But it is no more strange than the idea of a mid-summer Christmas is to new arrivals from England. "I have never yet been able to reconcile myself to Christmas in summertime/* said an Anglican minister recently. He has been in New Zealand six years; and a conversational barber—perhaps "conversational” is redundant—told this column that he could not believe Christmas was at hand. He has been in New Zealand six months, and thinks Brown’s Bay beats Brighton hollow. England has had one or two Christmastides that were more than ordinarily cold. The worst within recent history was in 1860, when icicles formed on horses’ noses, and the abundant whiskers of the period were an embarrassment to their wearers, as they became frozen stiff if the owner went out of doors. The Christmas of 1848 was another very chilly festival, while in 1776,* so a hoary chronicle informs us, all Europe shivered, and the Danube bore five feet of ice. So intense was the cold that various melodies centring round the blue Danube probably originated on this occasion.