FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 960, 1 May 1930, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By

“THE LOOK-OUT MAN.”

CROCODILE TEARS Concern is felt at the news from the north that a mysterious affliction threatens to wipe out the toheroa. At certain times nomadic bands Set out upon the northern sands, And plying- spades with eager hands They delve for toheroa s. And while the stately seabirds wing; Across the sky, the hunters sing, Or make the spacious welkin ring With ardent “View Halloas.” But now that quaint but toothsome fish Which yields us such a welcome dish Is smitten by some devilish And sinister affection; No more the loud, exultant whoop Precedes the skilful hunter’s “coup” Of shellfish destined for the soup Or some such warm direction. But though we sorrowfully burn When ghastly news like this we learn. It's hypocritical concern Without unselfish reason. We pity not the shellfish grower, The hunter with his View Halloa, But merely mourn the toheroa We might have had—next season. SALVOEN “One of the ground-floor departments of our morning contemporary was shaken by the thunderclap, causing alarm among the employees.” And yet the employees ought to be inured to thunder. They get enough of the editorial variety. PICKING THE GOOD ONES The idea that Chinese are unemotional is just a myth. A colleague states that two Chinamen who participated in Grand Tea’s monster dividend at Avondale yesterday were as merry as sandboys. Their faces were wreathed in smiles. Perhaps the substantial sum means a trip home to Shanghai, a temporary release from the rigours of hoeing a suburban garden, or the means of venerating an ancestor with a larger tomb. Whatever the result, no surprise will be felt at their participation in the dividend. It was inevitable. All we should like to know is their system of picking a winner. ♦ * * v COVERED German engineers seem to employ their talent in strange directions. The latest evidence of their curious ingenuity is a machine for giving a penny or sixpenny insurance policy to travellers, who merely approach the requisite machine much as a portly person approaches a weighing machine —though without the same feeling of dread—and having inserted a penny and left the imprint of the fingertip walk away fortified against all risks of travel. It seems a splendid idea; but cautious patrons would be well advised to insist on an actuarial investigation of the ratio between the premium and the benefits. The alacrity with which railway companies are installing the new device suggests that it will be more profitable than philanthropic. ... A NIGHT IN ’.07 On the Marine Parade, Napier, is a monument to victims of the famous flood of ’97, when a boatload of men engaged in rescue work was swept out to sea through the foaming mouth of the Ngaruroro, all being drowned. The other day two men who have worked beside each other for years in Auckland discovered that both had been in Napier at that period as boys. They fell to talking of the stirring days of the ’97 flood, and one told how water had entered his father’s house in Carlyle Street, until finally the furniture started to float about, and his father had carried him to the safety of a brick house on the other side of the street. “A brick house in Carlyle Street?’’ said the other man. "Why, that was our place. You and I must have met that night.” And friends who were friends in any case found that a new bond of sympathy was established between them. DUNEDIN DOINGS By this time America will have formed a poor conception of Dunedin as a city, and it is too late to undo the damage. When the Byrd Expedition returned there recently, one American paper reported that, as the town's two hotels were fully occupied by woolbuyers, members of the expedition had to be quartered in private houses. Now comes a further infamy, an American artist’s impression of Dunedin architecture as portrayed in the accompanying sketch from the “New York Times.”

Showing the route taken by the entire Byrd Antarctic Expedition immediately after landing in New Zealand last week.

As a matter of fact the “New York Times” is all wrong. Even if there were only two hotels in Dunedin, one of them certainly intervened on the above route, and it may have been the first port of call!