FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 698, 25 June 1929, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

WOMAN’S SPORT The following conversation was overheard at a municipal banquet in England: Very Superior M.F.: And have you had any sport or shootin’ this season? Homely Mayoress: No —the only sport I’ve had lately was a long day last week with a vacuum cleaner. TEARFUL, MONARCH So Amanullah took farewell of his followers and his kingdom with tears. The lachrymose monarch managed to have a suite of 25 cabins set aside for him on the Mooltan, so he has evidently not been deprived of all his worldly goods. Chatting things over in Italy with the local ruler, who has been deposed in everything but name by Mussolini, some sweet consolation may be his. LOST THE BET An ardent supporter of the University Rugby team is cycling from his suburban home to his office each day this week, leaving his comfortable, closed car in the garage. He hasn’t ridden a bicycle for years, and in this kind of weather is not doing it for choice. The truth is, he lest a bet on the match against Ponsonby on Saturday, and this is the chosen method of expiation. It’s most unpleasant, but possibly some good will come of it. At the last American Presidential elections, an enthusiastic Democrat engaged to roll a peanut five miles with his nose if Alfred E. Smith didn’t “make the grade.” He got so much publicity from the fulfilment of his unusual wager that it proved a very advantageous financial proposition. He has now become a peanutroller by occupation, and has started to nose-push a peanut to the top of Pike’s Peak. REAL MODESTY One can imagine the curiosity with which British radio fans listened-in recently to a statement by “Audax,” the man who contributed £105,000 to the Thank-offering Fund for the purchase of radium. Would he talk with the arrogance of millionaires or of men with great possessions? There was nothing of that sort. “Audax” merely said that he was just an elderly man, not a millionaire, who was so grateful for the skilful saving of the King’s life, that he thought of starting a thank-offering fund. And so it was agreat pleasure to devote a large part of his taxed income for seven years to the relief of suffering and distress. Not everyone can afford to be an “Audax” in this country of moderate incomes, but the distress caused by the recent earthquake in the South Island ought at least to inspire those who escaped the disastrous shock to emulate in gratitude the spirit of “Audax.” QUEEN CITY Beautiful though Auckland and the Waitemata indisputably are, the present weather conditions do not favour their charms. The visitors aboard the Emden must he polite indeed if they received anything but an adverse impression. A friend, who is now an Aucklander, but once was proved to proclaim himself a Southerner, saw Queen Street, New Zealand’s finest street, when its perspective was dimmed by rain. For two yea#-s he told atl and sundry that Queen Street was the meanest and most squalid street in bis acquaintance. Then another Southerner ventured to echo his views. At once the friend rounded on him. “Queen Street,” he said, “is the finest street in New Zealand.” His metamorphosis was complete. He had become an Aucklander. MOULDING THE LANDSCAPE Most school children are required at some time or another to watch a practical demonstration of some of the ways in which the features of a landscape are moulded. Mostly the demonstration is made with a sandpatch and the school hose. Water is perhaps the most powerful agent in Nature’s architectural scheme, hut next to it come earthquakes and eruptions, neither of which can be readily duplicated to order. So school teachers should find the effects of the Murchison earthquake of great value in lessons on physical geography, it is not every generation of school children that has to revise its maps to include new lakes and the altered channels of important rivers. Without these convulsions the same changes would take centuries to execute. The method of showing how the contours of mountains may be altered, and streams sent off at a tangent from their time-worn courses, is perhaps too salutary to he agreeable. But it is interesting all the same—and especially from a distance.