FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 931, 26 March 1930, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By

“THE LOOKOUT MAN,

HEIGH-HO Hairpins, according to a Sydney merchant who passed through on the Niagara, are “coming hack.” In the days of heaped-up tresses, When romance its fragrance blew Through a world of hats and dresses, Nineteen-thirty never knew You could always trace its magic In the parlour, in the dell, By tile clues, divinely tragic, Where the faithless hairpins fell. Reckless wisps that made a riot In a most attractive way, Falling softly in the quiet, Yet occasioning dismay. How they gather to remind us When the wheel of memory spins Of the trail we left behind us In the golden days of pins. Yesterday, so fine and dandy. Even hairpins got their dues. Now—heigh-ho—they’ll come in handy To repair a blown-out fuse! HALF WAY TO HEAVEN Major Annie Gordon’s idea of Heaven is a place without sin. Other people’s ideas of it might he a place without sin parades. GULL’S GREED I was much interested in the paragraph about the greed of seagulls. At the Mansion House at Kawau there is a large black-backed gull that has been a favoured resident for years. The other day I prepared to go out fishing. I caught two cod for bait for a start. They were fairsized. cod, each eight or nine inches in length. Before going' out X turned my back for a moment, looked round, ana both had disappeared. The blackbacked gull had swallowed them in one gulp without turning a feather. * * * THE DIPLOMAT Mr. Hall Skelton is a diplomat. Charged with starting a meeting of the Samoa Defence League on an Onehunga street corner, and thereby breaking up a Salvation Army gathering, he states .that the Salvationists “did not have a single person as an audience. They were just finishing a very discordant piece. I could not diagnose whether it was ‘Auld Lang Syne’ or 'God Save the King.’ ’’ On top of this Mr. Hall Skelton remarks that he would “never dream of offending the susceptibilities of the Salvation Army.” Of course not! SENDING OUT THE MESSAGE The fact that a street corner gospel meeting lacks an audience cannot be taken as an indication that the revivalists would be just as pleased to go home. With ordinary individuals it is enough that they are not listened to. Applause they like, jeers they relish, but the cold shoulder they simply cannot stand. But it is different with the earnest people who proclaim the Gospel from street corners. Not a few of them never have an audience other than a few incurious loungers. But somewhere, somehow, they expect their message to filter through. May be the Salvationists at Onehunga thought at first that Mr. Hall Skelton had come to listen. * * * THE TRUNDLER Mr. N. Thompson, who is a finalist in the Auckland Bowling Centre’s tournament, is a major phenomenon of the day in that he is a successful bowler at the immature age of 19. It is well known that bowlers are becoming more youthful. Originally bowls was a game for the middle-aged and senile. Now it is played by active young business men. Nevertheless, Mr. Thompson’s success seems to be starting an unwelcome precedent. Where are our All " Blacks of the future to come from if active striplings are weaned from Rugby by the gentle seductions of the game of bowls ? Considering all things, it should b# rather easy for a boy who takes up bowls early in life, in those salad days when the eye is keen and the muscles supple, to excel over much older men who have devoted their best years to more virile sports. EPICURE'S LAMENT Epicures will sympathise with Mr. J. J. Cridlan, of the Empire Farmers’ delegation, over the shortcomings of New Zealand beef as represented on the tables of our hotels. Yet somehow it is doubtful if the beef served in hotels is a . fair test. It seems to be the exception rather than the rule for a nice piece of beef to find its way into an hotel kitchen. One gets the impression that when it does so, someone has blundered. Accordingly it is hardly fair to slander New Zealand herds on this basis alone. Nevertheless Mr. Cridlan is quite right in airing the matter, and eminently justified in sighing for a good piece of the Scottish beef of his homeland. There is just a chance, however, that Mr. Cridlan may be committing himself to a paradox, just like the English tourist who bewailed the quality of mutton presented to him in a Christchurch hotel, and said, sadly: "I wish I were home again, so that I could get a good piece of Canterbury lambi” .