FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 621, 25 March 1929, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By “THE LOOK-OUT MAN.” i DEFEAT In a bowling match between four j Auckland members of Parliament and j a West End club rink, the members j suffered defeat. They fell —but not in statesmanlike debate, j Nor while division bells around them shrilled. No party machinations sealed their fate , Or hostile moves their honest bosoms filled , With cold resentment and a smouldering Their Waterloo was but a stretch of lawn. Only a lawn, yet here a shrewder craft Than any in the book of politics Matched their poor guile , and even Kitty laughed To see the simple substance of their tricks. The men who wooed and conquered at the polls Were beaten by the bias of the bowls. Beowulf. THE OLD FI Rif A Mr. J. B. Hobbs is stopping at a city hotel. It is unfortunate that the bearer of this illustrious name hails from Los Angeles, or it might be possible to assume that the senior partner of ‘‘the old firm” had come to town. A LANDING AT MAT HUH Mersa Matruh, where Owen and Moir made a forced landing in their Vickers machine in the course of their flight from England to Australia, has historic interest for New Zealanders, for it was here that the first battalion of the New Zealand Rifle Brigade went into action on Christmas Day, 1915, and sustained its first casualties. The brigade was in camp at Matruh from December 23, 1915, until February 15, 1916, when it returned by sea to Alexandria. AUSTRALIA GFTP THE BIRD A booklet issued by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, which is organising a Round-the-Pacific cruise in the liner Malolo, calling at Auckland in the course of the voyage, has reached the local representative. Handsome and informative, the pamphlet is an admirable product. But Australians will no doubt look askance at a picture of a kangaroo, with the title, ‘‘The national bird of Australia, in repose.” COLD WATER Though Easter and the end of the bathing season are indisputably approaching, the average swimmer continues to find the water pleasantly warm. There is a shade of doubt about it, however, in the hearts of some gallants who decided to take advantage of last evening’s full tide and enjoy a plunge in a secluded corner of Judge’s Bay. They lacked bathing costumes, but the coast was clear, and they were no sooner undressed than in. Then the/ unexpected happened, and a party of ladies took station near the clothes. The water was delightful for the first five minutes . . . but it was desperate for the last half-liour. PIECART PLEASANTRIES The patrons of the piecart were concentrating on their supper when an untoward interruption occurred. ‘‘Now then, there,” cried the pievendor to a gentleman on the off-side, “Don’t think ’Eaven give me a swivel eye for nothing. Put back that bottle of lemonade.” The gentleman addressed replaced rather sheepishly the bottle of lemonade he had furtively abstracted. Then he went his way, but not without a parting shot. “Anybody’d think it was blinkin’ champagne,” he cried out from the darkness of Victoria Street.

FICTION COMES TRUE Many wildly-improbable talcs of fiction come true in the case of the Earl of Egmont, the hardbitten Canadian rancher who has become owner of a fine old English mansion and all that a title conveys. Just as the old novels had it, the new earl, who naturally conceals a heart of gold beneath his rough exterior, and is, of course, a man from the great open spaces where men really are men, was welcomed to the ancestral hall by a butler who looked down his nose and a dowager countess who was a model of queenly dignity. His son, poor wight, betrayed a dislike of reporters and photographers, thereby fulfilling the wildest hopes of his interlocutors, who would no doubt have been bitterly disappointed had the stripling from Alberta said: “How do you do? Oh yes, I am going to Oxford. Is there anything more you wish to ask me?” Instead of that he expressed resentment at being pestered by “Newspaper guys,” which was like pouring water on a duck’s back, only more so.