FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 782, 1 October 1929, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By

“THE LOOK-OUT MAN."

SOUVENIR After a robbery at a butcher’s sliop, the joker from a pack of cards was found on the block. Upon the block no sturdy piece of ham Rested beside a tender piece of lamb ; No gory carcase, chops or silverside : Instead, the joker’s solemn face they spied. Perhaps they dealt a hand before they took Sausage and sirloin from the laden hook. If so, it’s plain that here, where cleavers hack, Their morals went completely to the pack. Again, the skilled dissection may reveal The converse—that they came intent to steal. If that should be the case, I’d sagely say That they who came to rob remained to play. DIOMEDE'S SALUTE H.M.S. Diomede is to depart tomorrow carrying her tail behind her. That is, she will salute the Waitemata for the last time in ten months with a paying-off pennant as long as the ship itself and perhaps with a foot or two added. To float this majestic banner a balloon may be attached. History does not state where the pretty custom originated, but it may be hoped that the observance is granted better luck than it was last time. Two years ago the slender streamer tangled itself with quays and cranes, and the general effect was not successful. There was a parting in more senses than one. * * * STRICTLY A LIMITED Some people are frightfully hard to please. On the one hand the harassed managers of railways are confronted with the necessity of speeding up their trains or going out of business, and on the other there are people like the deputation which complained to the stationmaster at Springfield that the express on the Midland line, Greymouth to Christchurch, was travelling dangerously fast. Perhaps the passengers remembered that the Te Aute bank railway smash in Hawke’s Bay in 1925 was traced directly to excessive speed. But on that occasion it was shown that the enginedriver had been drinking on the job. The sequel in the latest instance was at any rate not of disastrous shape. All it means, perhaps, is that Mr. H. H. Sterling will be moved to ponder on the inscrutable ways of train travellers. * * * TEMPLES OF TEMPLE As befits a man talking of his home town, Sheriff Bigham, of Temple, Bell County, Tex., points with pride to the two skyscraper hotels boasted by his home town and its 20,000 inhabitants. The hotels are 14-storey and ninestorey buildings. Evidently they have no height limits in Temple. They don’t care if their building promoters go as high as the Eiffel Tower, for every foot of brick and mortar is to the glory and honour of Temple. It is a fine spirit—one that might well be emulated by Auckland’s city fathers next time height limits are being considered. Yet what New Zealand town of 20,000 people would have the sheer effrontery to put up a 14-storey hotel? Suppose Wanganui, which has 27,000 people and is just contemplating with intense pride the erection of a four-storey building in its midst, were to aspire to something three times as high! Many years ago an enthusiast who saw a great future for the rising city of Hastings was led to put up a four-storey hotel. It still stands remotely above surrounding skyscrapers of one and two storeys. If skyscrapers are the skeletons of history, Hastings still awaits a few more ribs.

* * * ROCKBOVND COAST

Noted with dismay that the charts of the New Zealand coast sometimes lie charmingly. This is the sort of thing that makes old-time cartographers beloved of shipmasters. But it is not always fair to blame the men who made the charts. Often the appliances at their hands were of the crudest. Better far to blame governments that allow inaccuracies to survive. L.O.M. once enjoyed a cruise on a warship, and was told by a confiding lieutenant that the New Zealand charts were objects of profound suspicion. The ' extent to which the lead was heaved on the slightest provocation seemed to bear this out. They even swung the lead in the grey dawn when a landing party went ashore in a rowing boat! Some historic misadventures hereabouts undoubtedly enjoin caution. The mystery of the Northumberland rock, somewhere off the East Coast, is a recent instance. The New Zealand naval squadron swept for it in vain. There may be other sinister obstacles, but why should the Marine Department worry about them? It is too busy attending to the whitebait regulations.