FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 672, 25 May 1929, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By “THE LOOK-OUT MAN.” THE QUEST A man charged with being on Sanford’s wharf in the small hours yesterday morning gave as an excuse that he'was looking for fish heads. You know that frigid eye, that glassy stare, That piercing iris in its orb of grey . Such -was the jewel that he sought for there, On Sanford’s wharf, about the break of day. Spurn not his humble guest. Perchance it fills Your breast with loathing and a cold contempt. Yet why should fish, beheaded at the gills , From dignified attentions be exemptt Be sure that when the lifting mists revealed That shallow skull, those cold , unwinking eyes , Those cruel dentures, scantily concealed, The quest was not unwerrthy of the prise. And though 1 must admit that, in the main, These fish heads smell indubitably dead, If fishes’ flesh can stimulate the brain, What price a fish’s head f T. TOHEROA. AMANULLAH AWAY Amanullah, deposed Afghan monarch, has given up the struggle with his water-carrier successor, and is off to Europe. His case illustrates the ■frailty of human institutions. Scarcely a year ago Amanullah, visiting Europe, was feted by the great ones of kingdoms and republics. Now, shorn of power, he won’t stand a chance as a counter-attraction to the British general elections and the Derby. ... NO KICK Mr. A. Matthewson. a Scottish angler who has been fishing New Zealand streams, complains of objectionable practices on the part of local anglers, such as monopolising river pools by fishing from boats. Talking of monopolies, Mr. Matthewson caught 240 trout in five weeks, including 45 in three successive days, an unprecedented feat. He doesn't seem to have any “kick” coming. BREAKING THE NEWS Magistrate F. K. Hunt sustains without apparent difficulty his reputation for making pointed remarks, and his intimation to an erring motorist whom he was about to deprive of his licence that next time he went to the Hauraki Plains he would have to go on a bicycle stands unrivalled as a means of breaking the news. Brighter court rooms in New Zealand are unfortunately rare, but sometimes a little life is imparted by Mr. Wyvern Wilson, the Hamilton magistrate, who is to relieve in Auckland. Three scribes sharing the latest jovial tale in the Christchurch Magistrate’s Court will long remember Mr. Wilson’s blithe intimation to “the gentlemen of the press” that they were in a court room, not the press club. THE REMEDY A new and apparently efficacious remedy for troublesome fevers has been prescribed for smitten Zulus by a more than usually ingenious witchdoctor, who ground up gramophone records, which he administered to make the patients talk, and also tendered water from an engine, to make them go. The cures were successful, which goes to show that there are more ways of working cures than are mentioned in those weighty tomes, “Simple Remedies for the Home.” Of course, the shock to a good nigger of digesting a pulverised edition of Layton and Johnstone, or “The Two Black Crows” might be enough to make him recover anyway, or at least to shift him from contemplation of present misery. In that respect the witch-doctor’s one regret may have been that he could not pulverise the whole engine and administer that as well. THE CAT’S PYJAMAS Mussolini’s ban on the frivolous garments known as Lido pyjamas may impose a serious handicap on the illustrated papers. Turning idly the pages of a London eociety journal to encounter a picture of an earl and someone else’s lady taking lunch in the airiest of “sleeping suits” is sometimes a shock to the conservative soul acquainted with nothing more revealing than a bathing costume. Mexican hats and other innovations are already popular at Milford and Cheltenham—not at the moment, of course — so unless Mussolini’s ban extends it will be only a: year or two before seaside pyjamas are amongst us. The average male is behind the times in his ideas about pyjamas, and the feminine interpretation therefore startles him. In a district where pyjamas for ladies are the vogue, the display on the clothes lines on Monday beats the spectacle at the naval base when the ships are “dressed” for ceremonial occasions.