FRON THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1047, 11 August 1930, Page 8

FRON THE WATCH TOWER

By

“THE LOOK-OUT MAN.”

DRAIN DWELLERS

Waifs and criminals leading liv r es lower than those of the most primitive savages infest the drains and catacombs of Leningrad. The catacombs are lull of empty vodka bottles stolen from State shops. The population of the drains has its own Mayor, and the life of the place begins at midnight.— Cable item Life is easy and life is gay In the catacombs and drains. We all do nothing but drink and play. And we sleep on the water-mains; Our night is day and our day is night . . . Though our morals may be bad. We’ve plenty of vodka to keep us bright In the bowels of Leningrad. AYc steal each meal from a bourgeois plate And laugh at our bold pursuers. For even the Itods would hesitate To play hide-and-seek in the sewers. They say that we lack no perquisite Despite the Ogpu's powers. And even the Soviet must admit That we keep Society hours! M.E. IT IS TO R Y /,’ EPEA TED On the information supplied it is difficult to say whether the Russian drain dwellers are a product of the Soviet regime or of pre-Revolutiou times. Whatever be the case it is worth nQting that history has merely repeated itself once again. The early Christians took refuge in the catacombs of Rome, but these were fairly i clean and extensive, reaching a total of nearly 800 miles. From 6,000,000 to 7,000,000 Christians were buried there. In more recent times Paris became notorious for her ; dwellers in the city sewers, who lived lives not at all unlike those of the human rats of Leningrad. Hiding below the ground by day and emerging at night to haunt the lower quarters, stealing or fighting for what they could, and these people became recognised as a class for whom the sewers provided a normal and proper abode. SAVE THE PENCE . . . Simplicity is the keynote of the ingenious fraud devised by a Lithuanian youth, whose enterprise has landed him in gaol. By addressing his correspondence to fictitious persons and, instead of writing his own address on the back of the envelope, giving the address to which lie desired the envelope to be delivered, he has succeeded in sending unstamped letters. Naturally if postal officials find that a letter is incorrectly addressed they return it to the sender, hence the delightful ease with which the fraud has been perpetrated. Presumably, however, the pitcher returned once too often to the well, and —to change the metaphor in most inexcusable fashion—somebody smelt a rat. During his sojourn in gaol the youth may be able to devise some other method of saving postage stamps. Failing that, when he regains his freedom, he could follow the time-honoured practice of posting his letters to proper addresses and leaving his friends to pay. LETTERS TO MOTHER But, just as there are. more ways of killing; a cat than stuffing its throat with lard, there are other methods of defrauding the mail authorities. In the early days in New Zealand, when postal facilities were comparatively few, and much more expensive than they are today, it cost something like a shilling to have a letter from overseas delivered to a Dominion address. At that time the practice of posting letters without stamps was a common one, the fee being charged at the delivery end. A certain youth, who was away from home arranged with his mother that, all being well, he would send each week an empty envelope. This was done, and when the postman arrived the dear old lady would surreptitiously hold the envelope up to the light. Unless the outline of a letter could he discerned she would plead financial embarrassment and, with simulated reluctance, refuse to take delivery. So, you see, Lithuania cannot lay claim to all ingenious postal swindlers. DOP-R-7M.SU The following correspondence has journeyed to and from the Watchtower:— Dear (I do not mean this) L.0.M.: As a Scotsman 1 resent your spelling of the Gaelic phrase “Doch (or j3och)-an’-Doris.” On Friday you spelt the last word “Dorris.” You ought to know better. -Dear Sir: Stupid' though it may seem, I am no authority on Gaelic. However, Mr. Webster, whose largest and most exhaustive dictionary lies before me, favours “Doch-and-Dor-ris.” To the L.0.M., Sir: Mr. Webster is a fool. Dear Sir: I am afraid I am unable to accept that statement iu the absence of supporting evidence. To the L.0.M., Sir: Mr. XVebster is a fool, and you are a fool if you think that a Scotsman requires an extra “r” in any word he uses. Put that in your bagpipes and skirl it. Dear Sir: I don’t own a set of bagpipes. I wouldn’t be seen dead with one. Ha! Ha! Put that in 'your haggis and get indigestion with it. Dorris. DORRIS.