THE COPPER MAORI PERIL

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 740, 13 August 1929, Page 8

THE COPPER MAORI PERIL

I FINALLY ran Sam lo earth in I restaurant where he was alien}. ately wiping soup off his dickey and calling an indignant waiter “Garsongf: The fellow was obviously the worse for food and as I sat cautiously beside him he regarded me with Slightly glazed and bulbous eyes. “You were going to say . . _~" said Sam. I denied it. “You were going to say." said Sam firmly, “that a display of Maori cook: ing, held in conjunction with a-speciu week dealing in the Maori history, was given at the Normal School attached to the Auckland Training College on Friday afternoon. Pupils of the school and parents and many of the students and staff of the college Were present. News item." He blew some soup of! his mo“. tache. the better to hear himself speak.

“Listen,” said Sam. “Heed. Contemplate. They talk about the perni< cious influence of wildqvest pietures on children, don't they? And they'd like to blame juvenile misconduct on to trashy novels, wouldn‘t they? And they go and demonstrate Maori cook~ ing to innocent young sch'ools girls, isn't it?"

All right. Very well. “And to do that,” said Sam. throwing his spoon at the waiter. to give emphasis to his remarks, “is to fly slap in the face of Providence.

"What do the Maoris know about cooking? Unhappy nation! What dn they know about a. piéce dc resistance dc bcru! (111.1: pommes nature.’ Can a Maori chief supply you with a. sausage au Chien noir.’ No, Sir! And why? Because they don‘t know the language.

“Consider." said Sam. earnestly, “the Child, and what it will become. “She grows up imbued with false ideas, brooding on the grim scenes she has been forced to witness at that Maori cooking demonstration. Her mother. perhaps, has never lifted the false veil of secrecy that surrounds these things. The child doesn't know what real cooking is. “Some poor devil. unaware of her ignorance, marries the miserable girl.

_“All tod late he finds'out his fatal error.

“He comes home from work, tired. hungry, his whole alimentary system begging for aliment. He finds his bride on her knees in the front garden. digging something that resembles a smoker's heart out of the ground, which she hands to him on the end of a hat-pin. .

“ ‘Darlirfg,’ she says, ‘Kai! Kapni to poaka! ' ” Sam wept a. little at the thought of it. "There’s nothing more to be said. Hubby goes home to Father and gets put up as a life member 0! the Alimony Club, while Wiley runs round telling people what a monster she married, and then goes from bad to worse, gets soured and writes letters to the papers about the depravity of modern youth. “Pipis,” said Sam. thickly, and shuddered: “Poaka, Shark, Tuna, Rewl, Kumera, ‘Toheroa—” “One moment,” I asked him. coldly. "what, exactly, was that soup that you were putting on the air when I came in? Sam reddened. “Consommé de Toheroa d m Rangutira,” he murmured. I threw a. bottle at him and left.