In Lighter Vein

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 12, 20 March 1902, Page 18

In Lighter Vein

(By 'Quip.')

„"# Correspondence, newspaper cuttings, etc., intended for this department should be addressed ' QUIP,' N.Z. TABLET Office, Dunedin, and should reach this ofQ.ce on or before Monday morning.

'There's nothing like a little judicious levity.' R. L. Stevenson. Demosthenes Jnr. One of the proudest moment" in the history of our family was that when our heir apparent made the announcement that ' the teacher had learned him to recite.' Most homes, I know, have this happy experience. But it can only be in a modified way, because, though I s*y it myself, there is no other boy in the Colony that can recite like our Henry. His mother seems delighted with his accomplishment. Give her only the opportunity, and she has him giving a full-dress rehearsal. There was a rehearsal for me— a score of them. There was one for the people opposite, and another for the people next door, and another for the people near Dooley's, and another for the policeman, and another for Mr. Ryan, and another for the man that conies to examine the gas meter. And there were others. The boy appeared to like it for the first hundred times or so, but it was evident that at the end of the second day the business was beginning to strike him as somewhat monotonous. * The greatest day of all was the one when our esteemed parish priest called . Mother ran out to the back and called ' Hen-r-r-ry ' a few times with a rising inflection. Henry came at last, and after having the footprints of his last piece of bread and jam obliterated from around his mouth with the aid of a damp pad of flannel, and his hair plastered to his poll with a wet brush, except one little recalcitrant tuft near the crown, which insisted on standing up like a demoralised tussock with a grievance, he was ushered in to Bpeak his piece for the priest. His repertoire consists of ' The warrior bowed,' ' The boy stood on,' and a piece in which a good little bo" says : ' She's somebody's mother, boys, you know.' This constitut^J an emharras Ac ricliesse. There was no earthly reason why he should tell all about ' The boy that ' stood on, and say nothing about ' The warrior ' that ' bowed,' and he couldn't in politeness,

leave ' Somebody's mother ' on the kerb in the snow, where that estimable but unfortunate old lady is always found when the Ahdience makes her acquaintance. Anyway, he kept studying the pattern of the carpet, until the promise of a sixpence caused him to change that occupation for the more congenial one of figuring out how much damage he could do with two packets of crackers_ The outlook must have been promising, because he stepped forward^ took the coin, examined it, deposited it in the depch of his only pocket and began. He worried through the whole three pieces ■with a superb disdain for punctuation that makes me think he will some day be a reporter. And he mixed up 'The boy ' that ' stood on,' and ' The warrior ' that ' bowed,' and the maternal progenitor of some person or person* unknown so inextricably, that you needn't be surprised to read of a marriage one of these days, in which ' Somebody's mother ' will be made Mrs. Casabianca, and at which the Spanish Champion will be best man.

1 Teddy ' Roosevelt. If history repeats itself, and if our Henry does not wish to be a reporter, he may become President of the United States. It appears that Roosevelt, when at school, was not exactly what the boys would call a 'dab' at reciting. Once he had to recite a piece beginning : At midnight, in his guarded tent, The Turk lay dreaming of the hour When Greece, her knees in suppliauce bent, Should tremble at his power. ' Teddy ' only got as far as ' When Greece, her knees,' when he came to a halt. Twice he repeated ' Greece, her knees,' ' Greece, her knees,' and then broke down. The old teacher beamed on the future President over his glasses, and remarked . ' Grease her knees once more, Theodore ; perhaps she'll go then.'

Signalling: Mars. A number of ipeople, who would be better employed weeding purple-tops, nre ' worriting ' their one-donkey power brains trying to signal to the peop'e on Mars. Just fancy, and they haven't been introduced I Such awlully bad form 1 I shouldn't care to be introduced, anyway. The only native of the fiery planet that has passed thif- way \\;n a travelling play-actor in Mr. Hawtrey's Company, lie was very deficient in ' bong tong,' as I read in the newspapers that he used to identify himself Avith Tom, Dick and Harry in every town he passed through. Those who kno.v say that a signal made with a mirror 3,000 feet in diameter could be seen in Mars. Anyone who doubts it can make the experiment for himself some sunny day — that i«, if be happens to have a mirror of the requisite dimenbions about the house. He may find one hidden away in some drawer. But even if the signal could be seen, the Martians would Dot know what it m 'ant. There ought to be a code. I suggest that a code be ananged, and that Marconi be requested to make the preliminary arrange oients. Shoildhe ba too busy, a message-boy might be despatched with it next time Mars is in apposition. It would be just as well, however, to wrap up a bit of lunch for the boy to take with him, because, considering that Mars in apposition is 3."> 000,000 miles away, and that message-boys are prone to loiter, it is hardly likely the little fellow would be bask by dinner time. * H. G. Wells, in the ' War of the World.B,' depicts the Martians as very undesirable acquaintances ; so it might be well to warn the scientists, even as the ' Skibberoen Eagle' warned the Czar of Russia. According to Mr Wells's night nare, the Martians are flabby monsters, who mount themselves on huge tripods and discharge flabhes of light that shrivel up buildings like brown paper in a furnace, and whose only mission on earth could be destruction. Wasn't it Flamraarion who proposed that there should be drawn upon the earth a huge diagram of the forty-seventh proposition of the first booK of Euclid, containing an imperishable mathematical truth that the Maitians would instantly recognise and 'cap' with the forty-eighth ? If the quasi-scientific guesses about Martian development are at all near the truth, the inhabitants of the fiery planet must be as far beyond the forty-seventh proposition as ordinary terrestrial people are beyond the numeration table, and they would find great difficulties in getting down to our level of intelligence.