Modern Babel
\VHEN I was in England last, I spent an hour or . two in Hyde Park on a Sunday afternoon. Here were speakers galore giving vent to their feelings. As I passed one of them I heard him advising a few youngsters to blow up the Bank of England, and when I passed him a second time he was talking
to nobody about bootlegging in ‘America. Men and women were holding forth on every conceivable subject. It was a regular Tower of Babel, and I asked a policeman if there were any restrictions imposed on these orators. He smiled and said that there was safety in numbers. He suggested that’ I should stroll round and listen to bits and pieces from each and everyone
of them and then come back and tell him what they had all been talking about. I tried, but it wasn’t long before I sought out this friendly policeman again and told him that my mind was all jumbled up. He smiled again and told me that most of these speakers had no great things to say and if they had they had said them so often that most people never stopped long to listen-also that those who talked the most actually had the least to say.-("Just Characteristics," Major F. H. Lampen, 2YA, October 9.)
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 122, 24 October 1941, Page 5
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220Modern Babel New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 122, 24 October 1941, Page 5
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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