From The Watch Tower

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1049, 13 August 1930, Page 10

From The Watch Tower

By

"THE LOOK-OUT MAN."

O KA Y IX MALAY According to a resident of Kedah, in tiie Federated Malay States, the natives have copied the speech in American talkies. Dusky villagers speak with a pronounced accent and say: “O.K. Baby!” Then: Pidgin English not so good— Hard to understand: Cannot learn it, never could— Very vaguely planned . . . The trouble is that, in Malay. They chatter nothing else all dav. And If you do not know sufficient The boys will rate you inefficient. Now • Talkie English! Say, that's great— AVhoopee Kid, and Ha-owl Gee now. Baby, wlradda break— O Kay, O Kay, na-ow! . . . They’re talking sense out in Malay, You understand each word they say— Prepare to settle down for good And take a course at Hollywood! ( M.E. CLA Stilt'A L SWIMMING In the light of recent long-distance swimming achievements the crossing of the Dardanelles is a comparatively trifling feat. Yet it remains an exceedingly romantic thing to do, ar.d, because of this, one can understand the eagerness of Miss Mercedes Gleitze, now Mrs. Patrick Carey, to vary her honeymoon in the Near East by making a breaststroke or overarm journey from a point on the Asia Minor shore to the Gallipoli peninsula. To Miss Gleitze, who has conquered the Channel, battled with the Irish Sea, and crossed the Strait of Gibraltar, this will constitute merely an aquatic jaunt of from one to four miles, but (and here's the romance) she will follow the path taken nightly by passionate Leander who ploughed across the Hellespont with one moist eye on the beacon light hung out by his beloved, the priestess Hero. One night, so the legend goes, a gust of wind blew the light out. Leander was drowned. Grief-stricken, Hero threw herself into the sea. Byron, whose career suggested an affinity with Leander, once swam the Helles pont. Recently 26 touring American students made the crossing together. Now comes Mrs. Carey. It is typical of the advancement of women down the centuries that in 1930 the young bride should do the swimming and the obedient bridegroom wait anxiously, albeit eagerly, on the shore.

CEEERRA TIQySi The return of Amy Johnson to Hull has been the signal for a stirring of old bones in a gruesomely literal sense. Overcome, apparently, by the gaiety of the occasion, youthful citizens tore up tombs in a disused cemetery and careered about brandishing human bones and skulls. The cabled report of this monstrous behaviour adds somewhat naively: “The indignant lesidents are aghast at the disclosures at a period when they wanted the youth of the city to ho acclaimed throughout the world.” And well they might be. Grave robbing is far from being a savoury business; least of all is it a suitable form of celebration in honour of a heroine who has faced death much too often to need any reminder of its ultimate material aspect. The most fitting method of dealing with the young offenders would be to let "them take a medical course at the nearest university. There they would be given an acquaintance with human bones, old and new, that might more than satisfy their inclinations. SOMEWIIA 7’ GRUESOME As all medical men know full well, the first university year of a young undergraduate “med.” is a sort of Grand Guignol experience under startlingly intimate conditions. It is necessary to “harden” the students to unpleasant sights as speedily as possible, and, because of this, the authorities are inclined to wink at practical jokes of nightmarish variety. After a young man has opened the door of a clothes closet and found a corpse wearing his hat and overcoat, and carried sundry anatomical specimens about as if they were bundles of firewood, he is ready to face that awful place (usually a cellar) wherein specimens recently to hand are prepared, preserved, and kept for the use of the school. REAL ’ORRIBEE Incidentally, a certain Auckland surgeon in his expansive moments relates a story of the days when he acted as demonstrator in anatomy at his Alma Mater. Occasionally after a long day, he forgot to put away his specimens. One morning he arrived to find the lecture room in a state of overnight disorder. Clearly no broom or scrubbing brush had been active there. Then he found the ex planation. On the table were portions of a human form. Near them was pinned a note from the charwoman: "I can’t find won’t do r.o work with them ’orrlble things laying there.” Most of us would agree entirely with those sentiments.