NIBBLES FROM FISHER.

Digger (Invercargill RSA), Issue 24, 27 August 1920, Page 4

NIBBLES FROM FISHER.

To-day, I will begin this hook — not an autobiography, but a collection of memories of a lifelong war against limpets, parasites, sycophants, and jelly-fish — at one time there were millions sterling of 'em. At times they stung, but that only made me more relentless, ruthless, and remorseless. Think in Oceans — shoot at siglxt. What I want to rub in is this : The man who reads this in his chair in the At-hen-aeunr Club would take i.t all quite differently if I could walk up and down in front of him and shake my fist in his face. It was a lovely episode this recalls to my mind. King Edward — God bless him ! — said to me once in one of my moxnents of wild enthusiasm : "Would you kindly leave off shaking your fist in my face?" I don't mean to urge that King Edward was in any way a clevea* man. I'm sure that he could not do the rule of three, but he had the heavenly gift of Proportion and Perspective. Brains never yet moved the masses, but they will remove mountains !

Never fight a chimney sweep, some of the soot comes off on you. An old woman eating a penny bun asked a friend of mine, called Buggins, when she was passing through Trafalgar Square, "What are them lions a-guarding of?" Buggins told her that her penny buns would have cost her threepence if it hadn't been for the man them lions were a-guard-ing of. "Tact" is insulting a man without , his knowing it-. Prayer is as much misunderstood as charity. A splendid parson in Norfolk replied to his congregation, who asked him to pray for rain, that really it v»as useless while the wind was east! Also it appears to me that one farmer, wanting rain for his turnips, doesn't have any feeling for the other man who is against rain because of carrying his crop of something else. Indeed, the pith and marrow of prayer is that it must be absolutely unselfish. Repetition is the soul of journa-lism. It is really astounding that Nelson's life has not yet been properly written. All that has been written is utterly unrepresentative of him. The keynotes of his being were imagination, audacity, tenderness. Yes! my thankfulness, I hope, is equal to, but hardly as wonderful as, that of the almost toothless old woman who, being commiserated with, replied : "Yes, I only 'as two left ; but thank God they meet!"