SOME TALL STORIES

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 957, 28 April 1930, Page 10

SOME TALL STORIES

“BELIEVE IT OR NOT” SAYS AUTHOR FOUR-EYED CHINESE “1 have travelled in 64 countries, including Hell (Norway),” says the author of a collection of newspaper paragraphs now published in book form under the dispassionate title “Believe It or Not!” (says a London exchange). But despite its seeming indifference, the title is at the samtime a challenge to our scepticism—a scepticism which the author warmly welcomes as the noblest tribute to his skill. "Ordinarily when one is called a liar —-well, to say the least, one feels -hurt. But it is different with me; I feel flattered. That short and ugly word is like music to my ears.” And so it becomes almost our duty to be staggered by this Odyssey of Oddities, this “book of Wonders, Miracles, Freaks. Monstrosities, and almost Impossibilities.” The publishers describe it crisply as “a combined Cook’s Tour, Circus, and Encyclopaedia all in one.” It is, indeed —“and then some,” as they say in the country where these paragraphs first reduced their ready readers to a state of unbelieving wonderment. Perhaps it is less of a Circus than a Museum—a museum of Unnatural History, where Exhibit A is a chicken of New Bedford (Mass.) which laid n perfectly square egg; Exhibit B, an aged youth, who reached maturity and grew whiskers at the age of four, and died of old age before he was seven; and Exhi\it C, a Chinese born with double pupils in each eye, who—presumably through his powers of circumspection—became the Governor of a province. How Desdemona would have enjoyed herself in this gallery!— Desdemona whose greedy ear devoured Othello’s discourse of the Anthropophagi and men whose head? Do grow beneath their shoulders. And though we may not be quite so seriously inclined as Desdemona, jet we pass on from one specimen to another with that strange interest which the abnormal always has for the nor mal. Yet, maybe, not strange, for is not idiosyncrasy in another the subtlest flattery of our own impeccable propriety-? A HUMAN PINCUSHION In all his travels the oddest tiling the author saw was Man. “The Lord placed a funny-looking little fellow on the earth without telling him what it was all about. . . . This funny-look-ing little chap has been running about trying to find out ever since.” And in his struggle to solve the riddle, man has done strange things, mainly for religion’s sake. There is the naked fakir, who for fifteen years sotigbt after his gods by glaring all day at the blazing sun, until at last the fiery rays burned out his eyes. A Hindu ascetic walked for three miles with fiftyspears embedded in his flesh. Another Hindu held his arms above his head for twenty years. A Sadhu used to hang head downwards for three hourat a time. Other forms of voluntarytorture in the name of religion arc those practised by the “Everstandinr men,” who have not sat down for ten years, the “Nail-men.” whose nails arc allowed to grow until they pierce the palms, and the “Tree-men,” who hang upside down in trees like monkeys. But the. author also gives us stories of men who do queer things from other motives —gain, notoriety, or sheer love of the bizarre. Here one of an Indian juggler who lifted ■< basket of snakes with his eyeballs, i Attached to the basket was a rope 10 the ends of which were fixed two little hollow leaden cups. These cups the man placed over his eyeballs in such a manner that a vacuum *'* created; then he shut his eyelids firmly over the outside of the cup* and lifted the heavy basket by the grip of his eyelids and the suction on his eyeballs alone! Pleasanter rearing is the story of Henry Lewis, who played billiards with his nose and made a break of 46. A similar kind of skill was shown by an Austria*- ■ musician who played tunes on the piano with his tongue. But even these arc as naught compared the feat of an armless golfer ol Buffalo xvho, gripping his clubs between neck and chin, went round >" | 9S, a score which I, who have tn? usual number of arms, found it lia.'n to better. I think he must have been a neck-romancer. Occasionally- the author brings beck to my mind two cross-talk comedian- 1 of pre-war days, one of whom, Mic--used to interrupt his own tale at the very climax by interjecting. “And believe me. or believe me not": j® ! which Mack invariably replied. “J | believe you—(dramatic pause) not.