Magazine of the - Bookshelf · PDF fileMagazine of the Auckland Universit Collegy e ... pand an progresd in as doze wayn ims - ... 13 . One Night

Magazine of the

Auckland University College

Editor: E. H . BLOW, B.A.

Committee: JEAN ALISON

DIANA D'ESTERRE, B.A. IRENE TURNER J. M. BERTRAM

D. H . MONRO, B.A.

J . A . MULGAN D . B. PAUL, B.A.

M. G. SULLIVAN, B.A.

VOL. X X V I .

SEPTEMBER, 1931

Printed for the Auckland University Students' Association (Inc.) by D A W S O N P R I N T I N G CO. LTD. , 20-22 Upper Vincent St, Auckland, N . Z .

The BANK BOOK and the DIPLOMA

The bankbook is the first text-book in the new school of experience. The diploma is an honourable discharge from the old school—but the lessons in the new school are much more difficult.

T O BE S E L F - R E L I A N T . T O BE B U S I N E S S - L I K E and S Y S T E M A T I C . T O K N O W T H E V A L U E OF M O N E Y .

And the most important lesson to ensure success in l i f e — R E G U L A R S A V I N G .

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K A R A N G A H A P E R O A D

Contents:

WISE AT LAST

T W O U N I V E R S I T I E S

O N E N I G H T

FOR A YOUNG CITY

— A N D G R E E N G R O C E R

FOLLY

EYES UNSEEING

T H E S H A D O W S H O W

QUO VA 1)1 St

S H I L L I N G S

WHAT BETTER WISH

ONETANGI

6

7

9

12

13

13

14

CHRYSANTHEMUMS

MADRIGAL

PRAYER

36

36

36

G R A D U A T E S O F T H E Y E A R 37

TELL ME NOT IN MOURNFUL NUMBERS 43

BRISE MARINE 44

T H E I N S T A N T A N E O U S T R A N S -P O R T C O M P A N Y 15

AND THE PAIN OF FINITE HEARTS 19

21

22

23

24

25

A P L E A F O R T O L E R A N C E 26

A HARMONY IN DISTANCES 28

IN MEMORIAM 30

A U G U S T U S 31

S P R I N G T I M E A N D T H E S I C K -B E D 33

A F U T U R E F O R O U R L A N -G U A G E D E P A R T M E N T S 45

PSYCHE DESERTED 47

S W E A R I N G 48

J. S. W A T T , R H O D E S S C H O L A R 51

PRA YING CHRIST 51

THE LOVE OF GOD 53

DTJSK 53

G E R A R D M A N L E Y H O P K I N S 55

BECAUSE 60

H O M E T H O U G H T S F R O M A B R O A D 61

F U T I L E N I G H T S

MADNESS

63

63

Wise at Last Long I sobbed at my task:

Now I leave it undone To loll back and bask

In the good sun.

The world goes ill— Or so I am told—

What, the world goes still As it went of oldt

I don't doubt it's a gaby That's Lord of the Press

And the brains of a baby Rule Business:

Still, doubtless, a noodle Is the land's greatest teacher,

And a spaniel-crossed poodle Its most-r&verenced preacher.

Still, the wise and stout Of heart, and good

And strong, are cast out To want for food.

Of all this wrong I have no least doubt,

But I have long Been wearied out:

And I have done With ^striving higher;

I sit in the sun And no more desire:

I sit ini the Sun And take my rest:

When all's said and all's done Negation is best.

— R . A . K . MASON.

13

V o l . X X V I . THE MAGAZINE OF T H E AUCKLAND UNIVERSITY COLLEGE. S e p t e m b e r , 1931.

The Atmore Report has recommended the abolition of the University of New-

Zealand and the substitution of two Uni-versities to be called the Universities of Northern and Southern New Zealand. At the time of its publication this section of the Report was a little nine-days'-wonder in the Common Rooms, and then gave way to the everyday questions of student in-terest. At the Capping Ceremony the issue was raised again, but beyond an enthusiastic approval the speakers did little to influence student and public opinion.

Briefly the Report recommends the establishment of the University of Nor-thern New Zealand with Victoria and Auckland as its constituent Colleges, and the University of Southern New Zealand with Canterbury and Otago as its constitu-ent Colleges. Each University is to be governed by a body composed of represen-tatives from each College Council, and considerable freedom in the syllabuses and -conduct of examinations is proposed. The

actual University will be not a bureau-cracy held together solely by the red-tape of regulations, but a records office which will keep lists of students recommended by the twro Councils as having qualified by College examinations for the various de-grees. Lastly, the Report strongly recom-mends the transference of the control of Training Colleges to the University. This means that Training College would be-come the Faculty of Education in the College.

The Report meets with a good deal of op-position but even the strongest opponent must admit that, as regards the mere ma-terial and financial aspect, not a single ar-gument of any weight can be brought against it. The strongest advocates of the proposal are prepared to claim the same for every aspect of it.

They look at it in this way. At the present rate of progress and increase of population, a provincial and civic Uni-versity of Auckland is inevitable, and therefore the sooner it is established the

13

TWO UNIVERSITIES

better. It is too much to expect at once the establishment of separate Universities in every centre, and so the institution of the Universities of Northern and Southern New Zealand is regarded as the stepping stone to the ideal. With the University of Northern New Zealand established, both Victoria and Auckland will be free to ex-pand and progress in a dozen ways im-possible under the present system. College examination standards will be set up, the staffs will be increased and improved, and the general worth of a College education, if it is not substantially increased, cer-tainly will not be diminished. Then when the time is ripe the weak connecting links can be easily severed and both centres will have strong, well-established and well-conducted Universities to play the part in civic and provincial affairs that they do in other parts of the world.

A good deal of the opposition comes from those who foresee under the proposed scheme a loss of standard and academic prestige detrimental to the best interests of University education. According to them, apart from the question of a degree of the University of Northern (or South-ern) New Zealand will never have the standing in the eyes of the world of one granted by the University of New Zealand. The advocates, however, see differently. They doubt whether the University of New Zealand, with its total lack of personal touch, has (or ever could have) any tradi-tions, and they do not look upon degrees as the be all and end all of University education. With the increased finance available upon the dissolution of the Uni-versity of New Zealand, facilities for study, research and discussion cannot fail to be improved, and with such the standard could safely be left to take care of itself. But they do not propose to leave even that loophole, for they have provided a safeguard.

The prejudice against internal examina-tion, though in some way justifiable, is largely illogical. Surely a man qualified to teach a subject should be qualified to examine; it!

The absorption of the Training College is a very debatable point, especially as the Auckland Training College seems to be much better equipped and organised than its fellows. The strongest argument against absorption is the fact that many of the University courses would be unsuitable as training for teaching in the various sub-jects. It would be useless, for instance, to expect Training College students to be trained to teach English and fostering a love for literature as the result of a pass in English I., with its hide-bound syllabus which intimates quite plainly that English literature ceased about 1830. Of course, with the freedom proposed in the Atmore report this difficulty could be overcome.

Another objection is the possible diffi culty of getting experienced teachers of sufficient academic qualifications to fill the Chairs of Education satisfactorily under the new system. This is a very sound objection, and there is a danger that pre-ference would be given to men brilliant in the theory of Education but poor practical teachers. !Some of us have had soma slight experience of such a state of affairs.

In conclusion it must be pointed out that under the new scheme Auckland does not desire to specialise. We do not wish to establish Medical and Dental Schools in opposition to Otago. All we want is, to be free to develop along the lines best suited for a sound University education. We cannot do it as a unit of the Univer-sity of New Zealand — we have very sanguine hopes of doing it as a unit of the University of Northern New Zealand.

13

One Night (Prize Humorous Prose)

HThis is the story of James Brown. I may as well tell you now, what you

would guess before you got to the end, that James Brown is not his real name. The James is authentic enough, but Brown — well, anybody can be Brown — the murderer in the detective novel can be called Brown without it being necessary to put a note on the title page to the effect that "the characters of this novel are entirety fictitious, and no reference, etc., etc."

It will be best to tell the tale in my own words, using my imagination and my knowledge of Jim's character to fill in the gaps which he left when he told me about it. He was a bit reticent concerning one or two details, and for all I know his version may have been intentionally mis-leading on several very essential points. However I can only go on what I was told.

Jim was coming up to Auckland one Christmas and he thought he'd drop off at Hangatiki and visit Waitomo where one of his friends was taking a job as guide for the vacation. Perhaps you know that the hostel possesses an annexe that they use at such crowded times as the Christmas holidays are apt to be—a fairly large bungalow a few hundred yards away, rather primitive, candle light and all that sort of thing, and two or three beds to a room. It was to one of these rooms that Jim was conducted on his arrival. He noted with approval that so far he had the room to himself, and having a selection of three beds, chose the one nearest the window; then he had a wash and a brush up and went off to dinner.

At just about this time a small two-seater arrived at the hostel, and from it alighted two travel-weary girls who anxi-ously enquired for a night's lodging. There was consternation among the office staff. All the rooms were occupied! Then a bright suggestion was offered. If Mr. Brown in room 3 of the annexe were shifted to room 2 where there was a spare

bed then the two ladies could have room 3. The plan was commended and the porter picked up the travellers' luggage and led the way. Arrived at room 3, the porter, under the mildly approving gaze of his charges, transferred Mr. Brown's bag and other gear to the room across the passage, inquired if anything more were wanted, announced the hour of dinner, and left the ladies to their own devices.

He went off in search of Mr. Brown to inform him of the change in the arrange-ments, but for some reason I do not know of this mission was never accomplished. Perhaps Jim went off to the caves, or was struggling in the boot room, or composing a sonnet for the visitor's book. Whatever the cause the result was the same, and so at approximately twelve midnight we find Jim contentedly making his way back to the annexe after having enjoj^ed a long and brisk walk, following an hour or two of bridge. He hummed happily as he walked, blissfully ignorant of the change that had been made or of the events in store for him.

Coming to the annexe he stepped more quietly, anxious not to disturb an obvi-ously sleeping household. He tiptoed along the passage, paused to make certain that he was about to enter room 3, and turned the handle of the door. For a moment he thought it was fastened, but it silently opened and he stepped into the room. Instantly he was aware of a strangeness; he paused irresolute and listened intently; he heard a faint sound of slow breathing. Opening the door slightly he looked at the number on it; yes, he was in the right room.

"They must have put someone else in with me,'' he thought. ' ' D—n!' '

Making the best of it he closed the door and moved quietly towards the bed by the window. Putting out his hand to feel for his bag he was disconcerted to recognise the feel, not merely of a bed, but of an occupied bed! Astonishment and

13

ONE NIGHT iiinminmnintuuiiiiiniMiunmiMinnminmm

indignation for a moment paralysed his mind then

"The blighter!" he thought, shocked at this breach of travellers' etiquette, "The blighter! He's pinched my place!" For a moment he considered reprisals, but reflecting that he knew nothing of the age, temper or other circumstances of his room-mate, he decided to wait until next day before giving vent to his in-dignation. Making the best of it he turned towards the other bed. Approach-ing it more gingerly he received his third shock of the evening when he realized that it too was occupied. Once more he started on a voyage of discovery and this time was rewarded with success. He sat down on the side of the bed and rested a moment, thankfully.

Then he began to look for his bag. It was not on the bed, nor under the bed, nor at either end of the bed. At this point he glared in the direction of his un-conscious companions and swore softly. He had no matches nor any other way of getting a light, so he began a systematic search of the room on his hands and knees. A quarter of an hour later he gave it up and sat on the bed and considered his position.

"At this rate," he thought bitterly, " I ' l l get about half an hour's sleep if I'm lucky."

Coming to a sudden decision he started to undress. He paused in his operation for a moment to consider whether he would sleep in his shirt or without it. Deciding for the latter he presently slipped into bed wearing as little as he had ever done in his life. He settled down contentedly, turned over in his mind what he should say to his room-mates on the following morning, and closed his eyes. A few minutes later three unconscious heads lay on as many cool pillows.

If I were competent as a poet I could pleasingly describe the slow passing of the night—but I am not. So you will have to imagine for yourselves the dim events of the next few hours—the shiver-ing of the leaves, the queer rustling of

nocturnal creatures, the slow shifting of the moon—all in a hushed world of black and silver; and then the gradual brighten-ing in the east, the stirring of the birds, the fresh morning breeze that sets the leaves fluttering madly—and the sights of the sunrise that are seen only by cooks and such-like fortunate people. As I say, these things you must imagine for yourselves.

In the room that we know of there was silence for long after the sun had risen. Then a sleeper stirred and a slim white arm was stretched—a sigh—a movement of bed clothes as the occupant turned over —silence for a moment. Then in a whisper—

"Al ine ! " No answer. "Aline, there's someone in the other

bed!" Jimmy began slowly to return to con-

sciousness. "Aline, there's someone in the other

bed!" "Sh-h, don't wake her!" He was sufficiently awake by now to

appreciate this dialogue. "Aline," he thought, mildly interested,

"funny name for a man!—and why ' her' — why call me ' her' ? — must be foreigners or something."

He cautiously peeped over the edge of the bed-clothes to view these strange and unwelcome room-mates. Now, owing to the prevailing style of hairdressing among girls it is not easy to distinguish from a distance the sex of the occupant of a bed, snugly settled after a night's rest. Jimmy had a fleeting sight of two brown heads and with that he had to be content. But he was satisfied; he no longer felt as if he were being discussed by disembodied spirits. Lying there idly he suddenly remembered the events of the night before. Moved by returning indignation he raised himself on his elbow and without preliminary announced truculently:—

" I ' d be very glad to know what you've done with my bag!"

12

ONE NIGHT

This produced immediate results. Two heads popped up in surprise—Jim, sud-denly becoming aware of the strange as-sortment of garments in the room, stared with open mouth—he swallowed, his mouth fell open again, he quivered, felt horribly cold inside, stuttered "Good Lord, you're girls!" and vanished under the bed-clothes. Nor was he quicker in this than his companions.

How can I describe the feverish, horri-fied sensations experienced beneath those three coverlets? When he was telling me this part, Jim's powers of description were almost paralysed—the memory of emotions he had experienced was too vivid, and he conveyed his feelings in-adequately by an agonised, appealing look and a few vague and purposeless gestures. But I gathered that he retained enough of his senses to pray for an earthquake, and it says much for his courage and re-source that he soon attempted to re-estab-lish communication with his room-mates.

He poked his head up, holding the bed-clothes closely around him.

" I say," he said plaintively, " I say, hadn't we better do something?"

A pause. Then he was horribly aware that, from one of the wrinkles and creases •of the opposite bed, he was being looked at. He felt it. He drew the bed-clothes more tightly around him.

" I say," he repeated, with a tinge of reproach in his voice. He was rewarded by the appearance of a rather tousled head. For a moment he forgot the seri-ousness of the position. A beautiful face —and a mouth, adorable, trying hard not to smile, trying hard to be stern.

"How did you get here? I'm sure I locked the door. You've 110 business to be in here you know."

Encouraged, her companion looked, wide-eyed, over the edge of the bed-clothes.

"Well, it's my room—" began Jim, taken aback, but he was interrupted.

" I think explanation had better wait —you'd better go now, and explain after-awards—if you can!"

" I f I can! Well, yes, of course, I sup-

pose I had," agreed Jim hurriedly, and then the full horror of his situation broke upon him. He set his teeth and glanced miserably round the room as if for escape.

" W e l l ! " asked Aline calmly. Doggedly he began to wrap the clothes

round him and somehow struggle from the bed.

"Whatever are you doing?" asked a calm voice, and from the other bed came something very like the sound of a giggle.

He made no reply—there was none to make.

"There's no need for you to take all the bed clothes. For a person who sleeps in a stranger's bedroom you're remark-ably modest you know."

Still no reply. The two girls watched him with undisguised interest and sur-prise. Then Jimmy realised that he would have to gather up his clothes and shoes. He stopped aghast. At this inconvenient moment Aline chose to remark—

"You're Mr. Brown, I suppose, aren't you?"

He was too preoccupied to reply. "Nice manners" was the lady's mur-

mured comment. Goaded to response, he failed to confirm

her opinion. "This is no time," he exclaimed pas-

sionately, " for social chatter!" Her eyes opened. Jimmy began carefully to collect his

clothes; there was very nearly a bad acci-dent, but he grasped the counterpane in time. He struggled manfully for a little.

" I t would be quite easy," said a cool voice, " i f you put those bed clothes down. I assure you I have before this seen a man in pyjamas—not a pleasant sight, and if possible to be avoided, but under the circumstances "

"Yes, but have you seen a man with-out " he began, but the obvious retort remained unfinished. He sat down on the bed to consider his position.

"Will you please be as quick as you can?"

" I 'm not going," he said sullenly. There was a pause.

12

ONE NIGHT

"Please don't cause any more trouble," was the cold reply.

" I 'm not going," he said again, " I can't."

"Can't?" "No, can't—and won't. If you'd be

reasonable and give me a chance—instead of watching me like a—like a "

"Cat? " suggested Aline. " C a t " he agreed, "—and anyhow," his

voice was almost a wail, "where am I to go? I can't wander about the corridor with nothing—nothing "

"Nothing?—go on?" "Nothing." "How, nothing?" He changed the subject. " I can't hold these things round me

and carry my clothes as well," he said sullenly.

"I 've already pointed out " "Oh well," said Jimmy exasperated,

" i f vou must have the brutal truth " "Yes? " " I haven't got " "Go on." "Haven't " A long pause. " I f you will put my bag where I can't

find it, how can you expect me—how can

you expect—well," it all came tumbling out, "do you expect me to carry my pyjamas in my waistcoat pocket?"

"You mean " she blushed. "Exactly!" " O h ! " Another pause. An unmistakable

giggle. Jimmy glared at the other bed. He sat there dejectedly.

" I suppose it is rather difficult " "Difficult!" He stared glumily at the opposite wall.

Then—"Can't you two get up and go and have a bath or something—at any rate give me an opportunity to get dressed!"

Aline considered. "Get back into bed," she ordered,

"and get under the bed-clothes and count two—no—five hundred. Then you can come out and get dressed. It'll be quite safe. We'll be back in about half an hour. What, give you time? Yes. And you'll find your bag in room two opposite. The gentleman there will think you've had a night out. Well go on."

Jimmy obeyed. He counted six hun-dred; then waited; finally poked his head out cautiously. With a sigh he realised he was alone.

—J.I).

For a Young City It is not very long ago That here unburdened winds could blow Sweet breath from off the misty sea . . .

Now busy men have laid this crust Of grime upon the primal dust; These paper palaces, whose strength Will perish wearily at length; Sweepings and scourings from the old Worn nations whose poor days are told ...

God! burn the dirty streets away And give us beauty in our day.

—ALLEN CURNOW.

And Greengrocer (Special Prize Award)

"Tan had not noticed the shop before. It ^ was in a dingy street in a poor suburb, where coarse women with swollen legs carried heavy baskets, and little boys raced their trolleys, whose small iron rims clat-tered unbearably on the concrete. Men bought fish and chips there from the shop with the gold-fish bowl and the parsley. The greasy papers were borne along by the listless wind. At times trams passed, filling the street with noise. Dogs sniffed among the rubbish in the gutters, and brushed the artificial sik stockings of the factory girls. And another drab shop had opened.

There was already a fruit shop there— a prosperous enough place, where trays of apples rose behind each other, and dishes of tree-tomatoes and passion-fruit rested on snug Sturmers and oranges. It was folly for the new shop to open there with only a window full of limp baby clothes between them.

Each morning as Jan passed, she looked at the new shop. It was owned by an old couple with their two sons. They could be seen together in the shop, discussing some arrangement of vegetables, anxiously tidying the counter, or peering for custom. It was not discreet. One knew that that shop was fighting for life, for existence. The family fussed, grew wor-ried about it, seemed almost to plead with passers-by—and killed it!

Jan grew to fear that shop. She had always bought what fruit she could afford from the other fruiterer's; but she could not help feeling guilty as she saw the re-proachful eyes of the boy shop-keeper upon her. For most of the family had

gone. Unobtrusively they had slipped away. At first, as a sideline, there had been igreat piles of short-bread, and "melting-moments," and heavy slabs of fruit-cake set in one corner of the hot window. Jan could not remember when they had ceased to appear. The plates of boiled beetroots had not been shown for weeks.

There was a smell of death on the place. The girl felt it, and passed to the other side of the street. Once she had bought carrots there—once lemons; but now she dared not go in. It was as if the shop would coil itself about her, so that she could never again get free.

The face of the young boy haunted her. She felt uncomfortable if she saw him; annoyed that he should watch her pass; anxious about him if he were not there. It was pitiful that he should stand finger-ing the chunks of pumpkin, or polishing an odd apple with the corner of his apron, his eyes always entreating custom.

Passing at midday, for lunch, Jan glanced at the shop. Of course he was there, just the boy now! The others had disappeared like shadows in fog. He stood behind the window. His eyes were sea-grey, his cheeks round and pink, freckled with light brown. His lips were parted and red. He smiled at her—a long slow smile. The fear and pity in her heart leapt to him, and she smiled back. Jan went on, wondering at herself, and annoyed. She did not see him again. The following day there were only some shrivelled pears and apples among the newspapers in the shop.

The next day the shop was shuttered. T. SANDERS.

folly I could form smoke rings with my lips, They gavotted and flew astray; A notion in my brain did flips— "Can a soul curl off that ivay?"

—V.C.V. 13

The Eyes Unseeing (Prize Serious Verse)

The sombre loveliness of evening Lightened, as if the shadow of God's wing Iiimmed all the sky, burning and magical;

The day was very beautifid in death. The last wind vanished as the day's last

breath, And all the sky was gold and magical.

Then nothing in that pathway of rich light Seemed not a fair and long desired sight Till all the sky grew pale. And magical

Pale clouds slept low above the earth bereft Of light; the last lamp that the day had

left Dimmed—and the dark came, deep and

magical . . .

I thought how men with souls, and eyes to see,

Had passed by, wondering what there icas for tea.

—ALLEN CURNOW.

14 Drawn by KATH. BULL.

The Instantaneous Transport Company

"professor Ling is the holder of the . Chair of Physics at the University of

Cardiff. Unlike the popular conception of scientific professors, he is an exceeding-ly alert young man, and like the majority of young men is quite anxious to make a reasonable (or unreasonable) amount of money if an opportunity to do so comes his way. A scientist, using the word in a broad sense, will, and does, work for the love of his theme, urged on by an insatiable curiosity about all things that be; and having discovered an interesting fact he does not usually waste much time in searching for commercial applications for that fact. That is not his business. Instead, he dashes off on the long trail of theoretical implications which his fact is almost certain to point out. At the same time, when his discovery is of obvious im-portance to the world, he will as eagerly seize the chance to exploit it to the world's and his own advantage as any other man. That is what Professor Ling did.

One afternoon early in 1928, the Pro-fessor was working in his private labora-tory on a small matter connected with the radiation from a Coolidge tube. He had an idea he wanted to test, and in this particular case he preferred to do it for himself. The bench was littered with a bewildering collection of electrical ma-terial, in what, to the layman, would have appeared a most hopeless tangle; but the Professor worked quickly and surely. He connected up circuits, and carefully tested them; he noted the voltages and amper-ages; he adjusted resistances. Finally he set out his notebook, fountain-pen, and watch, and prepared to jot down the read-ings of his instruments.

Now it happened that he placed his watch on the bench quite close to the Coolidge tube where he could easily note the time, and, as his experiment required measurements at definite time intervals, he necessarily had his eye on the watch at the moment he switched on the current. To say that he was surprised at the result

is only mildly to express his sensations. For a moment he was incapable of move-ment or thought. If he could believe his eyes a large portion of his watch had com-pletely disappeared! Mechanically he switched off the current and picked up the remnant. It appeared as if the watch had been cut in two as easily as a piece of cheese, and the larger part was certainly nowhere to be seen. The Professor felt slightly dazed. Presently he noticed that a small piece of the bench was gone, a piece that had been just below the missing part of the watch. And then he noticed something else; on the bench, surrounding the spot where the watch had lain, was a ring, about eighteen inches in diameter, of some curious material. The Professor picked it up and, examined it. It was quite solid and strong. He could make nothing of it.

After a few minutes of thought he got up and, feeling a little self-conscious, fetched a glass beaker and placed it exact-ly over the spot the watch had occupied. Then he switched on the current. The beaker vanished; and he noticed instantly the ring of material that, as if by magic, again appeared on the bench. Snapping off the switches he picked it up. It was of glass.

The Professor sat down to think. He felt extraordinarily excited, although he didn't know exactly why. He ran his fingers through his hair and mentally went over all the circuits. He was puz-zled; and suddenly noticing an apparent lack of air he crossed to the windows and threw them wide. Everything looked normal. The world, he saw, was just as it had always been; but behind him was—what?

He turned back to his bench, and at midnight he was still working.

Six months later Professor Ling called by appointment on Lord Norrey. Lord Norrey was one of those rare creatures, an industrial magnate. As in the case of

13

THE INSTANTANEOUS TRANSPORT COMPANY

most of that class, his fortune had been built up almost entirely by scientists or the work of scientists. But Lord Norrey was practically unique in that he had sufficient intelligence to understand exactly by whom his fortune had been pro-duced. He knew that in the majority of cases a scientist was well worth listening to, and he was quite prepared to listen carefully to Professor Ling.

He rose as the professor entered his magnificent private office, and shook hands cordially. He liked Professor Ling and was pleased to see him. He had met him before at various important dinners and conferences.

' ' This is a pleasure, Professor,'' he said, as he offered him a cigar. "It 's not often that we see you about this part of the city."

The professor smiled. "Commerce is not much in my line,"

he admitted, "but I've got to a point now where I'll need a little assistance."

Lord Norrey looked non-committal. "Such a lot of people want assistance these days," he thought, "What kind of assistance, I wonder?"

The professor did not waste time in coming to the point.

" I have come to you," he began, "be-cause I have just made what is probably the most important economic discovery of several centuries."

Lord Norrey was interested. He had heard very similar announcements from many men, but not such men as Professor Ling. The professor was no fool and Lord Norrey knew it.

"You know," continued the professor, "that it is a well established fact that what we know as matter can be converted into what we know as energy ?' ' He paused, and Lord Norrey nodded.

"Also, that what we know as energy can be converted into matter?"

Again the nod. "Well , " went on the professor, " I have,

quite by accident, discovered a way by which the matter of a given object can be converted into energy, that energy trans-mitted to a given place, and reconverted back to the original object."

He sat back in his chair and looked at Lord Norrey.

The millionaire said no word, but he nodded several times in succession. That nod was very useful to him. Early in life he had discovered that if he nodded, es-pecially with a particularly knowing look on his face, people always assumed that his remarkable brain was working at enormous speed, and evolving masterly schemes for the production of further immense wealth. Actually, he nodded be-cause he knew that, being rather out of his depth, it would be better for him to say nothing. But Professor Ling did not seem inclined to go on, and, to encourage him, Lord Norrey let fall a single syllable.

"Wel l ? " The Professor was nervous and excited.

He jumped to his feet and threw out a hand.

" I don't have to explain to you," he burst out, "how extraordinarily important this is."

To Lord Norrey's relief, for he had by no means grasped the Professor's idea, he proceeded to do exactly that for which he had declared there was no need.

"Just think," he exclaimed, "o f the enormous amount of time, fuel and labour, expended on the mere transport of materi-als. It's colossal! We spend hours of valuable time and tons of fuel to haul a railway carriage from here to London, and I—why I could shift a battleship from one end of England to the other by switching on a ten kilowatt dynamo for ten seconds!" He stopped dramatically. "Forgive this abruptness," he went on more quietly, "but really this matter is so big that I'm hardly aware of my actions.''

Lord Norrey sat staring at him. He had at last grasped the idea, but he could hardly be expected to believe it true.

"This sounds impossible," he stam-mered. " I t is impossible!"

" I can give you a demonstration when-ever you like,'' replied the Professor simply.

The millionaire's mouth had fallen open with surprise. He continued to stare at the Professor for several moments with-

16

THE INSTANTANEOUS TRANSPORT COMPANY

out a sound, and then his lips met smart-ly, a gleam came into his eye, and he leapt, rather than rose, from his chair.

" I ' l l come now," he said shortly. He pressed a button. "Order the car at once,'' he said to the answering clerk, "and tell Jackson to come with me. Come along," he added to the Professor.

He was a man of action.

"Of course," said the Professor as they proceeded in the car, " I know very little about this discovery of mine, and under-stand still less."

Lord Norrey nodded. He was not listening to the Professor, but wondering, first, if there were any chance of these fantastic claims being true, and, second, just how big the thing would be if they were.

"The theory I put to you," went on the Professor, "will hardly explain this effect, because the conversion of even a small object would result in an enormous liberation of energy, and there is abso-lutely no evidence of such a liberation in the cases I have studied. But that the process is something in the nature of the transformation I indicated to you, is al-most certain. But you will see for your-self in a few minutes."

In silence the journey was completed, and the three men made their way to the Professor's laboratory. There was little to be seen except two copper boxes, one at each end of the room, and each of which was connected by insulated wires to its own complicated arrangement of electrical apparatus. As one side was missing from the boxes it was easy to see into them, and they were apparently empty except for a small raised platform in the centre of each.

" I t will be quite easy to demonstrate this to you," said the Professor. " I t would be of no interest to you to describe the arrangement and importance of the apparatus. Perhaps, for experimental purposes," he continued, turning to Lord Norrey, "you might lend me some small object, say a fountain-pen or watch."

Lord Norrey started. He was still rather

bewildered by the ideas of the conse-quences of this possible discovery. Re-covering himself, he felt in his pocket and produced a fountain-pen. The Professor placed it on the platform in one of the boxes.

" I would like you to watch it closely," he said. " I am about to switch on the current.''

The Professor, of course, was familiar with the result of his action. Lord Norrey was at least prepared. But Jackson, knowing nothing of the reason for this visit, was taken completely by surprise, and may perhaps be forgiven his irrever-ent ejaculation, as the pen vanished before their startled eyes.

Lord Norrey moistened his lips. "Where is i t ? " he asked, almost

whispering. The professor indicated the other box. "Perhaps you would like to see for

yourself," he suggested. "This is so un-usual that I can easily forgive you if you think I'm playing tricks on you."

The millionaire walked to the other box and took out his fountain-pen. He ex-amined it closely, turning it over in his hands. He even took the cap off and wrote a few words. Then he turned to the Professor.

"It 's marvellous," he said uncertainly, "but I believe you've done it right enough."

The Professor became animated. "And there's absolutely no limit to the

size of the object," he exclaimed excitedly. " I t takes no more to send a ton than it does to send an ounce. Do you realise, Lord Norrey, that I can move a truck of coal a hundred miles as easily as I moved that pen the length of this room?"

The two men stared at one another for a few moments. Then Lord Norrey held out his hand.

"Professor," he said, and in his voice there were traces of suppressed excite-ment, "this will be the biggest sensation in the history of commerce. The company that runs your invention will run the world.''

16

THE INSTANTANEOUS TRANSPORT COMPANY

The history of the formation of the Instantaneous Transport Company is well known. The whole matter was kept as secret as possible, and Lord Norrey was very astute in keeping entirely in the background. He reasoned that, while the world would naturally laugh at the Pro-fessor's claims, and consider it an excel-lent joke when he superintended the erection of the first plant, yet that same world would begin to think there might be something in it if it became known that Lord Norrey was backing the scheme, and that would not have suited him at all.

As is well known, the Professor's first attempt to apply his discovery was with the Furringdon Coal Mining Company. He came to an agreement with the management to erect his apparatus at their mine in Wales, and a similar appar-atus at the London depot. The directors looked upon him as a crank, and there was some opposition to the course they had taken, but he offered to pay for the privilege of experimenting, and only in-sisted that his company should be paid when satisfactory results were obtained.

He remodelled his apparatus slightly, and it took the form of a large bin at both the mine and the depot. A good many people were present when it was started working, and they were all won-dering how the Professor would take it when the thing fell through. After the first ten trucks of coal had been emptied into the bin they began to look surprised. At twenty they were almost scared. And when finally the managing director re-ceived a wire from London to say that Professor Ling's apparatus was deliver-ing coal at the rate of twenty tons a minute the scene was remarkable.

From that moment the I.T.C. was the centre of the commercial world's thoughts. The potentialities of Professor Ling's dis-covery were not lost on those interested in transport matters. By the time the I.T.C. had had apparatus installed with several large companies handling bulky goods, there was a panic among shipping and railway companies, and their shares fell disastrously. Early in the proceed-

ings speculators had found that Lord Norrey and Professor Ling held prac-tically all the shares of the I.T.C. and were not selling. It looked very much as if Lord Norrey had been right when he had said that the I.T.C. would run the world.

In November 1928 the first I.T.C. apparatus was erected in New York, and it was just at this time that Professor Ling suddenly realised a new possibility in his invention. Mr. Henry Ford had cabled asking for quotations for the de-livery of Ford Cars to the English market, and Professor Ling was wishing that he could conduct the negotiations personally, when it flashed through his mind that he could perhaps go to New York by Instan-taneous Transportation. Fired with the idea, he rushed round to the company's laboratory, and gave instructions for experiments to be carried out on animals. They tried mice and canaries first, then dogs, and finally one of the assistants volunteered to undergo the experiment. He was successfully transported for over a mile, and he said that it was the most astounding experience he had ever had.

"Imagine," he said, describing the event, "that you walked into a shop in Paris, made a purchase, and then walked out and found yourself in London. Well that is exactly the sort of thing that hap-pened to me! I walked into the transpor-tation chamber at , and waited for a few moments. After a little I thought something must have gone wrong with the power, and I called out to ask how long they would be as the strain of waiting was making me nervous. You can imagine my sensations when the door was opened and I walked out into the London labora-tory! No, I didn't feel the slightest sen-sation at all—I just didn't know it had happened."

After that travelling by I.T.C. was a daily occurrence. The fare between New York and London was a hundred guineas return, and businessmen were soon trans-acting affairs in the two cities on the same day. It was through one of these trips that the first indication of disaster was received.

16

THE INSTANTANEOUS TRANSPORT COMPANY

The case of Sir Samuel Loder is really two well-known to need description here, but for the sake of completeness it may be as well to give the main facts. He was, of course, probably the greatest inter-national financier at that time, and, some business in New York requiring his pres-ence there, he arranged for Transporta-tion one Tuesday morning. All wrent as usual and nothing disturbed the London terminus until about an hour after his departure, when the general manager received a cable from New York:—

"Sir Samuel Loder not yet arrived. Advise time of departure as matter urgent."

The consternation was indescribable. That Sir Samuel Loder had left was cer-tain and all the I.T.C. termini were com-municated with, to see if by chance he had been delivered at the wrong place. By two o'clock in the afternoon there was no doubt that Sir Samuel was untraceable. It was unfortunate, too, that there had been some leakage from the cable office, for the midday and evening papers had placards out reading :— WHERE IS SIR SAMUEL LODER?

and dramatic articles on his disappearance were prominent.

Sir Samuel was the last person to apply for Transportation. Within a few hours

complaints were coming in from all directions. Large and small consignments of goods wrere failing to arrive, and there was a great deal of confusion over numerous deliveries to the wrong con-signees. It is on record that the apparatus established at the Rayenne Artificial Silk Company's w orks at Allington for the delivery of wood pulp, produced instead, over five hundred tons of cast iron pipes before someone had the presence of mind to put the mechanism out of action.

On Thursday, December 16th, it will be remembered, the I.T.C. ceased operations. Claims against it for damages for breach of contract amounted to over two and a half million pounds, but, thanks to the extraordinary initial prosperity of the company, these were easily met.

The reasons for the sudden failure of a system that had worked without a hitch for several months are quite unknown. Professor Ling is at present carrying out extensive researches into the phenomena of his discovery, but, in view of the fact that very scanty knowledge of the process is available, it is not considered likely that satisfactory results will easily be achieved.

In the meantime, the problem of the whereabouts of Sir Samuel Loder presents a subject for interesting speculation.

—J.D.

. . and the Pain of finite hearts . .

I wished, like a child, for the moon Where it hung soft white in the sky

And following the sea-frothy clouds Like a busy and beautiful eye.

I wished, like a child, for the moon—-But my body was ready to die.

It was far, so far from me That it spoke of things past desire;

Though my child's heart was crying to be Close, close to its cool silver fire,

It was far, so far from me That my soul knew hope was a liar.

—ALLEN CURNOW.

16

(Prize Serious Prose)

"IT ife," says Virginia Woolf in one of her novels, "is a procession of

shadows.'' That is true enough in its way: and yet one cannot help feeling, as one reads on, that there must be some lurking solidarity in life that Mrs. Woolf has somehow overlooked. For even the ingeni-ous Mr. Curie can hardly provide us with such a shadow show as this. The air is thick with the insubstantial grey figures that flutter in such profusion through her pages. Vague shapes mouth even vaguer sentences as they flit by, neatly eluding the grasp of the bewildered and clutching reader. One finds oneself suddenly trans-ported to a new and uncomfortable uni-verse where there is no coherence and no chronology: no men, but only '4 dazed sleep-walkers"; no women, but only "hazy, semi-transparent shapes of yellow and blue''; and where all, men and women alike, seem blighted by some curious curse which makes them quite incapable of finishing their sentences.

We are introduced to an indiscriminate infant of about four. The introduction is very brief, and at best only mumbled: we are not quite sure whether we have caught the name aright. But it is certainly a shock to meet him again four pages later as an undergraduate sipping whisky in his rooms at Cambridge. Nor does the in-tervening passage help us much. It is concerned almost entirely with something that happened somewhere else to some-body quite different. That is a fair sample of Mrs. Woolf's methods. " I t is no use trying to sum people up," she says. "One must follow hints, not exactly what is said nor yet entirely what is done.'' She seems proud of this remark, for she does not scruple to repeat it. But then Mrs. Woolf differs radically from Lewis Carroll in that what she tells you three times is not necessarily true. And, hint she never so wisely, her characters remain obscure and shadowy to the end.

One feels indeed a little sorry for these characters. Dim, pre-natal shapes, they seem perennially pining for personality and substance, and for ever falling just short of these desirable qualities. Two of

them will meet together somewhere (the setting is painted so uncertainly that one is never quite sure where) and commence a conversation: and they will be continu-ally interrupted by scraps of another con-versation that took place somewhere else fifteen years previously. Mrs. Woolf her-self, moreover, seems just as bewildered as everybody else. Occasionally she will take us confidentially aside and naively enumerate the difficulties that separate her from her subject. "Consider," she cries plaintively, "the effect of sex—how between man and woman it hangs wavy, tremulous, so that here's a peak, there's a valley, when in truth, perhaps, all's as flat as my hand." She admits frankly that there is much about her hero that is quite unintelligible to her; and that what remains is merely a matter of guess-work. "Yet over him," she concludes, "we hang vibrating.'' Which, the uneasy reader can scarcely help reflecting, is a singularly awkward position to remain in for upwards of three hundred pages.

Now I do not wish these random remarks to be interpreted as an attack upon Mrs. Woolf. In many ways I have a profound admiration for her. She uses words ad-mirably, and has a considerable command over what is vaguely known as "atmos-phere." It is only her unfortunate habit of flirting with her characters that jars upon the reader of staid and settled tastes. She herself is so uncertain and coy that she finds her readers hard to please. And even this is not always true: it is not true, for example, of her best work. But what Mrs. Woolf does in her weaker moments, lesser writers will do in their more inspired ones. If I have confined my criticism to one of Mrs. Woolf's earlier and lesser works, it is because I am less concerned with her in particular than with novelists in general. And there is an increasing vagueness about the modern novel. It has delved so far into the depths of psychological subtleties that it is inclined to forget that there is ever anything on the surface. It was Freud, I think, who first pointed out that a man's real opinions are not what he tells you in an expansive moment over a champagne

THE SHADOW SHOW

supper, but what the champagne makes him dream about afterwards. But it is time that somebody pointed out that an account which leaves out the supper will be just as incomplete as one that leaves out the dream: and to the ordinary reader, at least, it is likely to seem more so.

This curious impressionism is very largely, of course, a reaction against the clear-cut outlines of an earlier school. There was a time when the characters in a novel invariably modelled their behaviour on that of the little girl who had a little

curl that hung right down her forehead. When they were good they were very, very good, and when they were bad they were horrid. Writing always as though illus-trated by steel engravings, the novelist would adhere rigidly to the maxim that sheep are sheep and goats goats.

That someone should break with this tradition was both natural and necessary. And yet one cannot help feeling a little sorry that the too, too solid flesh of these earlier characters should have been allowed to melt so very completely. —D.H.M.

Looking Ahead - -

We will be pleased j to have you visit us •

Perhaps not too far ahead in the case of some of our readers — more especially those who leave this term. T h e y will appreciate the unequalled quality and endless variety of furniture and furnishings that w e offer to those young people who are about to make a home of their own.

Y o u can quite safely leave your furniture problems in our hands and be assured that there is no finer furniture than at

Our showrooms are always open for inspection, and we like you to come in. W e shall be pleased at all times to give you estimates on any type of furniture and furnishings.

FUKNIPHING SPEC/AL/PTr

i ugen St duckland

Quo Vadis? Hearts thump with a steam-hammer beat, Men swelter in a clammy heat,

Strangle their fellows to pilfer dirt, Hide it under a laundered shirt; But quiet in this inert chair What use to don a musing staret—V.C.V.

13

Shillings "ITn 1827 the road across the Blue Moun-

tains had been completed twelve years and was still the only link between the coast districts and the great western plains. A road of bitter memories. Think, when you travel it, that every inch was hewn with a curse and every mile cost a man his life. At this time the chain-gangs were still working on it, re-pairing and improving the worst grades and clearing the rock falls. Here and there along the route were inns for the convenience of stockmen, unwary travel-lers, freed-men tramping to the plains for work—the low riff-raff of a penal colony. Decent travellers preferred to leave such places alone, and they pitched their own camps elsewhere. In an odd corner near the road, against the rock face, would be found a lean-to of miscellaneous boards, sacking, canvas—a roof of sheet iron, per-haps stone and clay walls—a clay floor.

On a night in late summer three men sat close to the fire in just such a place. A candle in the neck of a bottle threw a steadier light on cards Jaid out on the table. It showed dimly garments and a whip hanging on the wall near the door; glinted brightly on the barrel of a gun leaning in the corner; was almost lost in a recess where could just be made out the heap of filthy rags and sacks that served the proprietor as a bed. He himself slouched over the table fingering the cards and sipping from a mug.

"Blowing up for a bad night," he said encouragingly. The other two hardly seemed to hear him. One shifted slightly and a blaze from the fire showed up the scars on his wrists and the coarse dis-charged-eonvict's garments — the surly, unshaven face and crafty eyes. The other, the wreck of a fine man, pushed his mug towards the speaker and grunted almost inaudibly.

The latter paused in the act of pouring out more spirits and glanced towards the door. Putting the bottle down he rose slowly with his hand on the knife at his belt. The three men tensed at the sound of approaching footsteps. Then the

rickety door was thrown violently open, a gust of pure air cut through the reeking atmosphere, and in the glittering candle-light stood a strange and menacing figure.

"Orakoff," murmured the host, relax-ing.

The Russian entered and, closing the door quietly, stood grinning. He wore no hat and his hair was dishevelled by the wind; he brushed it back from his eyes and stepped towards the table still grin-ning—a grin like the snarl of a wild ani-mal. The gleam of his white teeth and blood-shot eyes were framed in a dark mass of long black hair and unkempt beard. His good humour seemed to have the incalculable instability of that of a beast; his friendliness and simplicity seemed to cover a terrible ruthlessness.

He stepped forward again and his gaze travelled slowly from one to another.

"Gin, " he said, and grinned again; then his great hand moved forward and on the table he placed a shilling.

The proprietor glanced at him quickly and then moved across the room to a shelf. Returning with a mug he was about to fill it from a bottle when he appeared to be struck by a thought. He turned to the big Russian and leaned forward.

"Where d'ye get them things, eh? Where d'ye get them?"

The Russian looked at him without a word.

"You always pay in shillings—new shil-lings. You're a sly one. Where d'ye get them?—eh?"

The other two glanced at one another and listened intently. The Russian grinned more broadly and motioned to-wards the table again.

"Gin, " he said. "Yes, all right," said the host per-

suasively, "but tell me where you get 'em. It's all right with me you know."

Orakoff suddenly became grave; he looked round the room slowly and search-ingly; then he gazed at the proprietor and seemed to ponder deepty. His eyes had a far-away look in them and his lips moved silently.

13

SHILLINGS

Then he grinned again, suddenly. . " I show you," he said. ..,

The two men by the fire exchanged glances. . ,,

Then Orakoff did a peculiar thing. He held out his hand towards them, palm upwards; holding it thus he looked slowly from one to another. Slowly he closed it, the men staring at it in surprise; then, as slowly he opened it. In the palm was.; 3 shilling. . ,. y.

" G o d ! " said the ex-convict. "Or the devil,'' muttered the host un-

easily. ,. The Russian said no word but slowly

closed his hand; when he opened it again it was empty. The men stirred uncom;-fortably, suddenly he raised his hand for silence and listened intently. Something dropped onto the roof—a stone perhaps. It rattled down the slope, dropped onto the doorstep outside, and rolled under the door. Swiftly, silently on the elay floor, it rolled in a spiral, tottered in the undecided way that coins do, and came to rest before the four men, glittering in the firelight. It was a shilling. . ;

. They stared at it, fascinated. The ex<-eonvict leaned forward to pick it up but Orakoff kicked away his hand. As the two men glared at one another something fell on the roof. The three men jumped up with an oath. The Russian stood still and grinned. Under the door rolled a coin, round in a spiral and came to rest

by the side of the other. Another shilling. The three men edged away, muttering. The ex-oonviet looked towards the door. Again something fell on the roof—and again—and again. Then with a crash a thousand shillings seemed to strike thfe roof. With a cry the ex-convict rushed to the door, wrenched it open and dis-appeared; with scarcely a hesitation the other two followed him. The Russian lopked after them and saw them running blindly—sheltering their heads with their arms they, ran on through a rain of shil-lings—cold, hard, stinging, bruising. Lightning flashed and the roar of thunder was added to the din of metal pn. metal. He waited until they were out of sight—then with a puzzled expression closfesd the door and moved slowly towards the. fire. He looked vacantly at the gin bottle , and then poured some of the spirits into his mug, filling it up with water j;rom an earthenware jug. He was about to sit. down but paused; putting his hand in his pocket he drew out a shilling. He stood in deep thought for a moment and finally placed it beside the other on the table.

Suddenly the noise overhead ceased; thunder still rolled distantly, but in spite of it the place by contrast seemed deathly quiet, In the warmth of the fire two circles of moisture slowly dried. Outside the road was white with hail. —J.D.

What Better Wish? There is loveliness that waits for me In coming days; Skies that might wake the songs in me Now deeply sleeping— Songs for men who have wondered, and

spoken In praise of beauty;

Sorrowing seas to speak to me Of all old sadness Whose plaint I might tell to the mournful

men Of silent grief;

Nights when I might know sweeter love, Passion supernal To make music for the true lovers, True as their hearts; Loneliness more near to soul's rest Which men desire, Whose story would be kind to them,, Giving them peace . . .

Life would be good in the singing thus The oldest things, So old—yet my end is to give them Tb empty lives. —ALLEN CURNOW.

24;

Onetangi Now, ivhen the long, cool swim is. do,n€, Let us for a little lie, Breast to the warm rock, gratefully, In the sun. Silent, <we gaze across the bay, To sun-scorched hills, their summits high Made hazy by the smoke of distant fires. Beloiv, dark fronds of nikaus sway In a complaisant sympathy With every caressing wind's desires. The curving sand lies like a scimitar Of some rare metal wrought; too gold For silver and for gold too silver-white; Its blade, jewel-studded with the rare Deep ruby fire of rugged bold Pohutukawas, glitters in the light. Rash breakers, by some distant storm made bold, Their ranks white-tipped with plumes of war, Upon the shore make brave assault. But on that stout defence they spend their might In vain. Still, warily they creep To th' utmost limit and then halt And, as at last their waning courage breaks, Turn back to safety with a sweep Of runninq water, smooth and fleet, With grace and loveliness that makes A triumth of defeat. And here, a-quiver, lies a pool Rock-bound and lonely as a world Apart; in its dim depths the cool, Shy, stealthy fishes lurk through shades Of mighty forests. Seaweeds green And brown, like banners all unfurled, Move gentlv with a silent grace; Below, shells glitter with the sheen Of copper. Tranquil it lies, fed By innumerable silver-green cascades Of foam, so delicately pouring That they might serve to veil the face Of Cupid's bride. And overhead A white gull soaring. —J.D.

The Prize List The Publications Committee wishes to thank Professor Egerton, who

judged the contributions. The following is his list of awards:— 1.—SERIOUS PROSE. Prize: The Shadow Show.—D. H. Monro.

Highly Commended: Gerard Manley Hopkins.—J. W Bennett. 2.—SERIOUS VERSE. Prize: Eyes Unseeing.—Allen Curnow.

Very Highly Commended: Praying Christ, Madrigal, Psyche Deserted. 3.—HUMOROUS PROSE. Prize: One Night.—J. Durable. 4.—SHORT STORY. Prize: Spring Time and the Sick-bed.—R. A. K. Mason. 5.—SPECIAL PRIZE, awarded on the Judge's recommendation: —And

Greengrocer.—Rona M. Munro. Owing to the lack of entries of a sufficient standard, no prizes were

awarded for Humorous Verse or for Black and White Sketch.

13

A Plea for Tolerance Hphe present age is usually regarded as

completely tolerant. One is shocked to-day by the thought of persecuting any-one because of his religion, yet our daily life is saturated with that same spirit of intolerance that was supposed to have been eradicated centuries ago. A few random examples may show some aspects of it.

Lovers of classical music are intolerant in their unqualified condemnation of modern dance music (which they persis-tently assert consists entirely of jazz). They ignore the fact that it fulfils its special purpose so admirably that dancing has never before been so popular as it is to-day. The younger generation in their turn are becoming increasingly intolerant of classical music.

The rich man upbraids the poor as socialists who are eager only to get his money, and who would cease to be social-ists as soon as they had any money of their own. He has earned his money, while they have been misusing their time, and is he not entitled to his reward? The poor man speaks of "bloated capitalists" and of all men being equal, and neither makes any attempt to understand the other. In conferences between rich and poor each has the idea of protecting his own interests, and neither side ever ad-mits that it sees the other's point of view.

Even in religion a great deal of in-tolerance, in thought at least, still re-mains. Most Christians would convert non-Christians with no clear idea of why —without examining the other creed, or knowing if they are harming the converts —merely because they feel their faith must be best. The original thinker who sees problems in Christianity which his conscience will not allow him to pass over, is still regarded as a sort of libertine and heretic by many people.

One is loath to raise again the question of the conscientious objector, but the atti-tude shown towards him by most people is one of blatant intolerance. Whether one agrees with his opinions or not, the attitude, observable everywhere, but par-ticularly here, that "no matter what the circumstances, or what arguments he has

on his side, he believes this, and so there is no more to be said" is a completely intolerant one.

The great nations are intolerant, one of the other. Their statesmen under-stand each others' views but refuse to be-lieve their nation is not the only one on earth that openly expresses its genuine policy. The public don't understand, and don't want to. It is surprising how many people look on all Germans as murderers of women and children, and as breakers of oaths, or Americans as "Yanks" with all the implications attached to the word, on negroes, Maoris, Indians, South Sea Islanders indiscriminately as "niggers." It is amazing how many intelligent people talk of "dirty foreigners."

Even these who pride themselves on their fairmindedness and consider Ger-many should be given a chance to recover, are usually, in their turn, intolerant to-wards France. They say she is unreason-able and wrong in her insistence on com-plete repayment of reparations. Buc they seldom examine France's views and see that she also has justification for her opinions. There seems to be a firmly-rooted idea that one side must always be com-pletely right, and all others completely wrong.

In this connection an example men-tioned by John Locke may be elaborated. Wherever the traveller would go there are nearly always several ways he can choose. Some may be along roads, some along lanes, some across country. Each has its advantages—the roads are quicker, the lanes more beautiful, the rough coun-try more full of experience for the lover of nature, and better for building up the strength of the body. Because a man goes along the lanes, is he right to condemn others who wish to hasten along the roads? All the routes lead eventually to the destination and each traveller will arrive with experiences the others lack. But how often is there a perfectly straight road, which is naturally wide and well-surfaced, but which has the beauty of a lane, and in which one can gather the experience to be culled from the hills and moors? Most people seem to think a road

13

A PLEA FOR TOLERANCE

like this runs between every two spots on the earth's surface, but usually there is little more than a number of poor tracks.

There is, indeed, more tolerance in a University than elsewhere. It is only when people learn sufficient to see how little they really know, that they will believe that people with different views from their own can be as right as they are. It should be, then, one of our chief objects while at the University to try to gain that wide outlook necessary for true understanding, so that we can see our-selves, and teach others to see, the other

man's point of view. And it is not suffi-cient to tolerate openly, and hate in the heart. True toleration involves the trouble and humiliation necessary before one can genuinely admit that others may be right.

I seem to have written indiscriminately of cabbages and kings, but I merely wished to show how thoroughly intoler-ance permeates our daily life. If my theories are wrong and my views un-reasonable, if I have condemned unneces-sarily, I can only apologise—for my ignor-ance, and mv intolerance.

r . G .

For you are mountains and great winds Shrieking through light— Columns and bridges And the song of might. Whispering at night— Whispering at night— Rain on the leaves, And the little lost songs.

— T . SANDERS.

Phones:

G E N T S 40-617 L A D I E S 45-487 H A M I L T O N 1384

1Where the Good Clothes are"

Tailors, Clothiers, Mercers and Hatters

W E H A V E T H E G O O D S

27

cA ^Karmony in ^Distance Glittering, glancing lights Of the dismal city; How wretched a thing is a street lamp, But how fair a multitude thereof, (Gold flakes in the dark world) When seen from the far sea or the hills. A tree is a thing for love and for the ages, But there is nothing pretty about bark; A dew-laden branch can make you un-

comfortably wet; Yet the golden poplar on the April road-

side Can light the golden road that glows and

goes whither God only knows— God only? Trees? Only God! I have

heard it all before. The primal blot still fouls the page; Yet men's eyes hold friendship yet, And women's, love; Only the nations and the unions and the

parties are cruel, They joy together according to the joy

in hatred, For they light the street-lamps for the

view from the mountains. They plant trees foi* him that passeth by

on the other side of the valley. —D.B.P.

Tennis The World's Favourite

Outdoor Sport.

Players are sure of a First-class Selec-tion of Racquets at the C.A.C. Sports Depot, 4 Shortland Street (next Wild-man & A r e y ) .

W e stock all of Spalding's and the Best of Hazell's and Alexander Racquets. Full range

of Balls and other Requisites.

Telegraphic: "Arsenal" Teleph m e

44-312 Est. 1884.

R E S T R I N G I N G A S P E C I A L T Y . W E S T R I N G FOR T H E T R A D E .

C.A.C. Sports Depot 4 S H O R T L A N D S T R E E T A U C K L A N D

13

F I R S T X V , 1930.

Back: W . L. Barker, D . N . Mackay, H . Clarke. W . J. Edwards, K. W . Rae. Middle : C D 'Authreau, W . M . Milliken, S. Jolly, K. D . Anderson. R. S. Stacey, J. Jenkin. Front: D . Stotter, R. Stokes, R. B. Hardy ( c o a c h ) , V . C . Butler (capt . ) , Prof . R. M . Algie (President), N . C . Jenkin, J. G . Bracewell.

Photograph by S. F. ANDREW STUDIO ( 0 P P . Civic Theatre) 322 Queen Street, Auckland.

L

In Memoriam Hushed is the noise of all the endless day; The echoes of the last, swift footsteps die

away ; Corridors that we know take on air Of strange unfriendliness, and stare

Unwavering in hostility— Alert and breathless in the fading light

They wait unstirringly To catch the soundless tread of the

approaching night.

Outside the day is dying in the rain; Beyond the deserted playing-fields the

trees Crow dim, but sudden memories Wake the quiet shadows info life again. For now, of everything, Nothing is left but the remembering.

W> strove for victory—now the laurels fade ;

Yon vied with us—unheeded falls the prize ;

Now, when the last of all our games is played,

The cheering dies. You quit you valiently in long argument,

Waged joyously by youth, Rejoicing as a strong man—one who girds

Upon him folly and the shining truth— But now we find no words. We, who through long eternities have lain

Among the quietness of the brown hills while

The clouds passed by, and came, and passed again,

Who in the fulness of the sun's content Have laughed with you—we cannot see

your smile.

But now perhaps, for us, who do not see. You wait between the shadows patiently.

And wonder that we will not take your hand.

To us, who could not hear you now, you try To ivhisper things we could not under-

stand— You shiver for your loneliness, and sigh

To find thai none of us will understand. — P . G . L .

13

Augustus know how one thing leads to

another, and then that leads to something else, and so on, and so forth— well that's how our back lawn got in such a mess. I keep both the back and the front lawn in order—cutting the lawn is the first gardening operation on Sunday morning—but somehow the back lawn got out of hand. I was late one Saturday night and slept in the following morning, so I only had time to do the front—and then the next week-end it was too wet— and the following Sunday I went out for the day—and so, as I said before, one thing led to another, and before I knew where I was the back lawn looked so for-midable that I decided to leave it till next time, and so on, and so on, until at last something had to be done. I borrowed a scythe from a neighbour. When I took it back he said:—

"You've been very quick!" " I t doesn't take long to find out that

you can't scythe," I replied thankfully. '"The grass'11 just have to grow. We'll have to hack our way through tropical jungle to get to the fowl-pen next week— anacondas and pythons waiting for us at -every turn—thrilling. What we want is a self-regulating, automatic mowing ma-chine."

" I know—Mr. Brilling's horse!" she exclaimed.

" Is he really?" I asked, surprised. ""Too bad! I'm sorry to hear " but I was interrupted.

" I ' l l get Mr. Brilling to bring his horse along—he '11 clean up the grass in a couple •of days."

"Oh, a horse? That seems a good idea. Who's Mr. Brilling?"

"The rabbit-man — and bags and bottles, you know—not very much to look at but a good-hearted man. He won't pinch much, and the horse'11 clean up the lawn in no time."

And so it was arranged. Mr. Brilling and his horse arrived at

noon on Saturday. Mr. Brilling looked the part—and so, for that matter, did the horse. I remembered my neighbour's re-

mark that Mr. Brilling had a good heart. After surveying the rest of him it seemed rather a pity that his heart was not visible. Here, if anywhere, I felt, was a man who should wear his heart on his sleeve.

I named the horse Augustus. Some-thing in the line of his nose immediately suggested the bust of that famous emperor, as displayed in the War Memorial Museum.

"Ah, you've come to clear up the back lawn?" I suggested expansively.

"Ur , " said Mr. Brilling. Not a cheer-ful soul apparently. However, we mustn't judge him too harshly; the man spends a large portion of his time in the contem-plation of empty bottles—enough to sour the sunniest disposition.

I led the way through the side gate. "Giddap!" said Mr. Brilling gloomily

—and Augustus followed. Man and horse seemed to brighten at the sight of the luxuriant growth.

" U r , " said Mr. Brilling again, but with a different intonation, and Augustus pricked up his ears and looked about him carefully.

Mr. Brilling became almost animated. " 'E'sa reg 'lor walking lawn-mowwer,''

he declared, "—and rowller," he added as an after-thought.

"Rowll owver!" he said fiercely to Augustus.

To my surprise Augustus lay down and rolled over without hesitation.

"Giddap!" said the remorseless Mr. Brilling, and Augustus got up and began to nibble the grass.

" 'E first cuts the grass an' then rowlls it," explained Mr. Brilling proudly.

I was impressed. "He's been in a cir-cus at some time I suppose?" I asked tentatively.

" N o w ! " said Mr. Brilling emphatically. I opened my eyes in surprise—and then

realised that Mr. Brilling had merely in-tended to deny my suggestion.

' ' I learned 'im meself,'' he went on, " 'E's a better 'orse as was never in now circus.''

13

AUGUSTUS

I let that statement pass. Mr. Brilling closed the gate and fastened it.

" 'E's that artful too—you better make sure 'e can't owpen this 'ere gate or 'e'll owpen it," he asserted emphatically.

He moved up the path to the front gate and paused to look at the front garden reflectively.

" 'E'd soon make an 'ash of this 'err," he went on contemptuously, " I f 'e got into it. P'raps 'e will get into i t ! "

I assured him that Augustus would not. He seemed slightly disappointed but still hopeful as he turned away.

"Ur , " he said sourly, and set off down the road.

I went back and watched Augustus. "Roll over," I said tentatively. Au-

gustus eyed me calmly and went on nib-bling.

"Roll over," I commanded rather loudly. Augustus never even stopped nibbling. I looked round carefully to see that no one was about, then—

"Rowll owver," I bellowed. Augustus obeyed — somewhat leisurely,

I thought, but still he obeyed. Satisfied, I went inside to change for tennis.

When I returned at six, or thereabouts, I looked in on Augustus. He had certainly laboured nobly and stood at the bottom of the garden gazing at the results of his handiwork. I thought I could detect in his expression elements of pride, elation and perhaps apprehensive repletion. Re-sisting the temptation to put him through his tricks—for he would hardly feel as energetic as he did when he arrived—I left him to his thoughts.

At about 2 a.m. I found myself awake with the moon shining in on me. I sleep on the front verandah, and by nowr am used to noises of the night that wrould disturb those who usually sleep indoors; it takes something unusual to wake me. This was something unusual. I heard a snigger — a distinct snigger — then a peculiar sound like the tearing of branches from plants. I peered over the edge of the verandah rail and saw Augustus. He had owpened the gate! He stood placidly

in the middle of the rose bed—the large one — and stared at me mournfully. I leapt out of bed and waved my pyjama-clad arms at him.

"Giddap!" I whispered passionately, "Giddap, you brute!"

Augustus blinked at me. Then he sniffed the rose bushes—hesitated between a Frau Karl Drushki and a Mrs. Wemys Quiii, and chose the former. He nibbled tentatively.

"Giddap!" I hissed at him. To my horror he looked at me a moment

in indecision, then slowly bent his knees, lay down and rolled over—on my best Anemone Fulgeus! He flung his legs about enthusiastically and kicked Mrs. Wemys Quin delicately in the ribs.

By now I was down the steps and onto the path—a gravel path and my feet were bare.

"Giddap," I whispered between gasps of pain, and I picked up a handful of gravel and let fly at him.

That startled him! He got up quickly, ruining a couple of bouvadias, and backed hurriedly onto the carnation bed. I picked up another handful and started after him. Then I trod on a rose-cutting I'd forgotten to pick up the week before. What I said about it seemed to impress Augustus; at any rate he moved away and towards the side gate that led to the back lawn and passed through. I hobbled after him and slammed it to—and fastened it securely.

Then, painfully, I made my way back to my bed. Later—much later—I slept.

I woke suddenly to a pricking sensation in my foot — again — and I yelped. In-vestigating I found a rose-cutting at the foot of the bed—in the bed. I threw it out and then looked at the garden, appre-hensive of the ruin I would see. It wras in perfect order—no rose trees were damaged, no carnations ruined or lawn hacked to pieces. Had Augustus—con-scious-stricken—repaired the damage he had done? Impossible! Yet the garden was unravished! I lay back and thought it over.

—J.D. 32

Springtime and the Sick-bed {Prize

TJTe started up fully alert, as is the way with a man who has slept with his

mind impressed to wake for some pur-pose. He peered at the clock—ten past five. He knitted his brows, fillipped his fingers, and far back in his throat uttered an "uaagh" of self-reproach at his own lateness. He tip-toed past the dimly-looming furniture, out into the passage, and into his wife's room. The fumes of asthma-powder, acrid and grey as cigar-smoke, curled slowly by the bed as the current from the opened door reached them. The first rays of the morning sun (her room faced East to catch it), slanting through the Venetian blinds, painted the smoke with bars of bluish light. On a chair by the bed-side amidst the medicine-bottles and pill boxes stood a waxen night-light, its tiny flame growing wan as the light of day increased.

She ceased to breathe—so long that he too stayed his breath, half thinking her dead. Then she groaned and fought for breath, till, with infinite effort, she dragged it down again. He leaned over her. A death's-head of a face, taut on the bones yet wrinkled with lines of agony. Again the catch in the throat, the gurgling struggle, the wheezing, the groaning. He bent over and tenderly wiped the sweat from her brow with a damp cloth. Clench-ing his hands he breathed "Mv wife, mv Jean."

"Waking, she was never far from sleep-ing, and sleeping, she was always half-awake. Now she opened her tortured eyes and knitted her brows, half in pain, half in interrogation.

"Time for the medicine, dear—more than time, but I let you sleep in. Do you good: now, upsee."

He poured out a spoonful from the black bottle, knelt, propped her head up with his arm. The spoon rattled against her teeth, some of the medicine dribbled down on to her chin, she gulped weakly, and her head fell back.

' ' Had a bad night ? " he whispered, close to her ear. "Been burning powders?"

Her lips framed "Yes . " With his arm

t Story) under her head she relaxed and breathed at ease. Then came a stiffening of the whole body and contortion of the face in pain, then the choking, the cessation, the long breath at last drawn in with a groan.

He went outside. The early Spring air was sharp and crisp with a tang of late frost still lingering in it. Larks were melodious in the dark, blue sky, thrushes in the dark-green puriri trees. His heart sang with them. In strength, he raised his arms above his head and with gusto breathed down great draughts, inhaling as an athlete does, high up in the chest. Then he was smitten by a sudden sense of treachery to the one he loved, the one who could not raise her arms and scarcely even breathe. Head, arms and chest fell. He went to get the axe for splitting the kindling.

As he split the kerosene-box, he found words forming in his mind. "When will this agony end? Better to be in the grave than suffer so, poor thing."

He put down the axe to ponder where he had heard it said. Why, he was only echoing what Mrs. Garvin had said. Good, kindly old Mrs. Garvin who never failed to spend the afternoon with Jean; who was always popping in with some jelly or soup or junket or custard; who tidied up for him whenever she thought the house needed it; who was ever ready to come in and sit by the sick-bed till mid-night if he were kept late at the works or at a Masonic meeting—his one amusement. Cheerful, resourceful old Mrs. Garvin walking flat-footed because of her varicose, slippered because of her corns. Uncomplaining, charitable old Mrs. Garvin always so full of sympathy for others that she had no time to worry over her own troubles nor even her own toilette.

Ah, what he owed to Mrs. Garvin! But for all that he could not but feel a slight sense of anger that he should catch him-self echoing her thoughts. What answer could he make to her in justification of that anger? Then he realised that he was doing all this train of thought, as it were, in Mrs. Garvin's eyes. This was even more annoying—an insult to his individuality.

13

SPRING-TIME AND THE SICK-BED

She had no right to come shuffling flat-footed, slip-shod and down-at-heel into the innermost sanctum of his thoughts. Pat old slop.

He sat clown on the wood-block, rested an elbow on his knee, and cupped his chin in his hand. His reverie drifted on easily, yet profoundly and far more chaotically than any words.

If he felt pity for his wife when Mrs. Garvin was the judge of his thoughts, what were his own thoughts—genuine and un-troubled by intrusion of any onlooker? What did he really think? That was the question—what did he really think, not what did he think someone else thought he should think. Then he found he could not think purely to himself alone. Try as he might he could not close himself up in the inner shrine without some watcher slipping in. But he did the best he could. Gropingly he built up for himself the ideal spectator, the self he had in youth hoped to be—the great and famed long-distance runner. In the eyes of that run-ner he probed into his thoughts, holding them up for their mutual examination.

He sat there for a long time pondering. Quietly he came to the realisation that all his life of self-sacrifice was only a sham and hypocrisy. He saw now that for long years he had stimulated sentiments of devotion and allowed the fear of his fel-lows' reproach to force him into transports of pity. He had often wrung his hands for death to give her rest: now he saw that it was his own rest that he wished for. He had fallen down and thanked God that they had 110 children—"no little ones to be asthmatics, Lord": now he was glad that there were no kids to be bothered with. A long time ago, no doubt, when she was young and pretty he had loved her. Now he did not care if she suffered or had ease: he had no true feeling for her, neither of love nor of pity.

He pulled himself up, looked round with a face of terror to see lest anyone were watching his dreadful thoughts. Then he laughed. Rot! This, too, was a pose. He was not really afraid of what anyone should think: he was content now in the approval of that ideal self who had taken u n a i d e d the observation-post

whence Mrs. Garvin and her like had been banished. To Hell with the lot of them —no, they were not worth the damning. A pack of snivelling weak old women, with no significance for a strong man still in the prime of life.

Surely this was—well, at least unusual. Or did men often change from intense love to utter indifference? He tried to see it in some general terms, to find some uni-versal law which might ease him of per-sonal responsibility. He smiled as he re-membered a man's telling him once in a bar that " A man ought always to do just what he damn well wants to—leastways as well as he can." Yes, but even if this were a realisation of that law, surely he should have undergone some agony of mind during the crisis . . . Vaguely it dawned on him that this had not been a sudden crisis: he had not overthrown a sound building but had deliberately waited till it was thoroughly rotten before attack-ing it. He had not been bold enough to come to grips with his mind until he knew that by slow and easy stages it had thoroughly changed. For years he had been drifting and had not realised his destination until he had reached it and was safe in the comfortable knowledge that it was too late to struggle. Again he laughed shortly. No use pretending that he was horrified by a sudden revolution. He had been drifting to this point for years, and now that he had reached it and could safely admit it to himself, he was glad, glad that he had got there.

Ah, well now, and what came next ? Oh yes, of course, breakfast. That had been at the back of his head all the time. He turned his mind to the work in hand, split the wood, lit the fire, cooked porridge, bacon, and toast. Before starting to eat he fetched the morning paper from the gate and propped it against the cruet. He meant to plunge into reading if his thoughts should begin to prick him. But there was no need. His thoughts ran on still pleasantly.

He was secure in the feeling that all must go well, but still one must make some plans. Painfully he emerged from reverie to form a line of action to fit his new outlook—nothing too definite, but at

34

SPRING-TIME AND THE SICK-BED

least some rough sketch. By this time he was resolved — quite tranquilly, but quite resolutely — that he would leave home and friends and wife for ever. That was no longer grounds for debate, but a homely axiom. But the immediate action . . . He could always, wherever he might go, get engineering work enough to keep him—and even if he didn't, a man could always get three meals and a bed . . . sleep under hedges and cadge a bit of tucker until he could get fixed up. Best to try for some little, solitary cottage or hut with a garden and trees, and beside a stream. Rent it, not own it—save trouble. And there perhaps some other woman might come: he pictured her, tall and broad-hipped, and deep-breasted, and sturdy, standing with him at evening be-side the stream. But no, that was asking too much. He had a vague but powerful feeling of balancing accounts before some omnipotent ghostly auditor, who would punish him if he had taken too much happiness.

Heigh-ho then, he had best be going be-fore the sun should grow too hot. But the police? He was no longer tied to his wife by conscience, but the law would use main force to make a man keep his wife. H'm, so he had better be quick and take precautions, too. Well, in his youth the Maoris had taught him the old bush-tracks that no one knew now that the tribe were all dead or gone off to town. By those tracks he could do the 60 miles to Owhango and get to the other side of the ranges without anyone's ever suspect-ing his route. And Owhango was quiet enough: he could grow a beard, stick there till the world had forgotten him, change his name, and then get right out of the country.

He clanged down his empty tea-cup, pushed away his chair, and went to take a last look at his wife. Her room was full of sun now. She was still having trouble in drawing her breath . . . strange it didn't kill her, he reflected, yet the doctor had said she would probably last for years. Strange, too, that an hour ago he had been so troubled when he had omitted a mere shred of his duty: while

now he was exultant, when he had thrown it away whole. He looked on her suffer-ing quite dispassionately, as a spectator on a play which has ceased to interest him. How much life was left in her? Would the news of his desertion kill her? He wondered idly, not caring much one way or the other. And for the last five years he had looked in through the door with feelings of grief and despair—had he really felt that or only pretended to? He could not tell, in fact he doubted if he knew the difference.

He went to the drawer near the bed-side, and pulled it open noiselessly. Turn-ing over some of her faded letters gave him a momentary but abysmal twinge of disgust. He took out a purse of hers and counted the money. Sixteen pounds four and a hapney. He put it all into his pocket bar the hapney. Then he grinned, said half-aloud: "Might as well make a job of it,'' and slipped it into his pocket with the rest. Jean tore at her breath chokingly and opened her eyes, but did not see him.

He took some food in an old rucksack, and his heavy over-coat, and went out into the road. Instead of turning to the centre of the township as when going to work, he turned and passed the straggling houses on the outskirts. While he went his mind turned to his wife—gingerly at first, as a man probes his tooth with his tongue : that one spasm when he had turned her letters made him dread that a ghastly hor-ror might break forth and flood his mind. But no such thing. He visualised her ly-ing on her bed, penniless, suffering, and deserted, wheezing and choking and moan-ing his name, but the image left him wholly undisturbed. Emboldened at find-ing that, the quagmire did not open beneath his feet, he pushed on his search.

A favourite image of his had been that of Jean in agony on her death-bed and himself broken in sorrow over her, lament-ing and wringing his hands, holding his breath and the creeping up with the mirror, then rushing out into the night to sob; then later following the hearse, pale and tormented in his lonely grief, but too proud to break down. Now he tried this as a final test.

SPRING-TIME AND THE SICK-BED

He saw her last movements—at night with the candle-light flickering out, and no Mrs. Garvin nor kindly neighbour to watch over her last moments, no one there to answer her strangled scream, nor give her the drink she strained to reach, nor wipe the sweat from her brow. He saw her half in and half out of bed, with starting eyes, clutching at her throat, mouth gaping, tongue out, head and shoulders swaying stiffly. Then the breath coming in even more impossible difficulty, and at last the straining at the obstacle which this time could not be overcome. "With a sense of utter detachment, he saw the neighbours coming in to find her, and the men . . .

He went bump against the fence at the

end of the road. He was amused to find that he had been so absorbed as to miss all notice of the things about him. So now, he must climb through that fence— look out for the barbs. Only a short walk over the grass and he would be in amongst the trees that fringed the forest. Already he could feel the cool green gloom about him and hear the silence of the central bush. He waved his arms and began to carol. The great bush-clad flanges of the mountains towered almost straight above him. It seemed that there could be no path through those trees and on those crags: it seemed as though those cliffs were unscalable. But he knew the way.

— R . A . K . MASON.

Madrigal (Chrysanthemums I had forgotten Spring—then suddenly The young green flamed upon the willow

tree.

I had forgotten Spring—then everywhere A myriad blossoms burst from bran-ches

bare.

I had forgotten Spring—until I heard All Spring caged in the singing of a bird.

1 had forgotten Spring—forgot until My dear love laughed—and Spring stood

on the hill. —J.A.

Bronze and lovely raggedness Of petals in a bowl —Squat thing—reflecting firelight To the deepest gathered gloom Where lurk the Nameless Ones! Your tattered pennants wave salute To the old carven wrinkled god Who waits the ages out Watching the leaping fishes fight On hangings of deep blue. A falling log shakes out a flame That startles them. But soon Dying in softer glow, retreats Before the mystery In the Chinese room.

— T . SANDERS.

Trayer Press the hands closer, now that all is

stilled And you can hear your urgent heart Pumping out life;

Try, now, to think that yau are near to God,

A naked soul fall'n at His feet, None standing by;

Remember what you are, or might have been—

Tear out your guts of vanity; Then rise to look

At the white ardent purity above y&u And consider well forgiveness— My God, it's hard!

—ALLEN CURNOW.

36

Graduates of the Year " W e dwelt where youthful brains grow ripe." —Skeai .

MASTER OF ARTS "I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course"—St. Paul.

A D D I S , H A R O L D J O H N (First Class Honours in Latin and French)

" T w o voices there are. One is of the sea, One of the mountains."—Wordsworth.

A N D E R S O N , K E I T H D O U G L A S (Second Class Honours in Latin and French)

"Big, brown and smiling."—Squire. "Last night among his fellow roughs He jested, quaffed and swore."

—Sir F. H. Doyle. B O U L T O N , E D W A R D

" ' W h y , Edward? Tell me w h y ' " —Wordsworth.

H A R T , E S L I E A R N O L D (First Class Honours in Mathematics) "When speculation has done its worst two

and two still make four."—Bagehoi. H O G G , J O H N D A V I D

(Second Class Honours in English) "Haste thee Nymph and bring with thee Jest and youthful jo l l - i ty ."—Milton.

J O H N S T O N , E I L E E N M A R G A R E T (Second Class Honours in Education)

" D o you not know I am a woman when I think I must speak?"—Shakespeare.

K I S S L I N G , F R A N C E S E D I T H S C H W A R T Z " A fair exterior is a silent recommendation."

—Syr us. M I N N S , P E R C Y C R O F T

(Rhodes Scholar, 1930; Second Class Honours in Latin and French)

"All that is simple, happy, strong he is Over the whole world in a little while Breaks his slow smile."

M O N C R I E F F , J A N E T L A U R A "Here 's a first-rate opportunity T o get married with impunity."—Gilbert.

M c G I L L , C O L I N T H O M A S (Second Class Honours in Latin and French)

" A little noiseless noise among the leaves." —Keats.

P E R R Y , L E S L I E W . G. "Historians are like a row of men working

in a potato patch with their eyes and noses in the furrow and their other ends towards heaven."—Meredith.

R A E , K E N N E T H W I L L I A M (Second Class Honours in Latin and French)

"He ' s the livin' breathin' image of an organ grinder's monkey with a pound of grease on his hair."—Kipling.

S A L M O N , H E R B E R T W I L L I A M " W a s never Salmon yet that shone so fair."

—King siey. S T O N E , P E R C I V A L S A M U E L W A L T E R

(Second Class Honours in Latin and French) "Sermons in stone(s)"—Shakespeare.

T H O M P S O N , H E N R Y L E O P O L D "Chu Chin Chow."—Oscar A$che.

W O O L C O T T , A L F R E D D O U G L A S W E N T W O R T H " A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere

of awe about him and walk wonderingly, as if he were amazed at h imsel f . "—Hali fax .

R I C H A R D S , A L U N M O R G A N (First Class Honours in Education)

" K a Whawhai tonu ake ! ake ! ake ! " —Rewi Maniapoto.

MASTER OF SCIENCE " F o r these at least be Science praised, I f all the rest be rot . "—G. K. Chesterton.

L I D G A R D , L O U I S H E R B E R T "And maidens, envious all, Gaze on that sun-like head."

—A. Y. Campbell. L Y O N S , R O B E R T R O D N E Y

" U p ! U p ! my friend, and quit your books, O r surely you'll grow double."—Wordszuorth.

S A G A R , F R E D E R I C K H E N R Y (Second Class H o n o u r s in Phys i c s )

"Even the hairs of your head are numbered." —New Testament.

S H E R W O O D , I A N R U S S E L L (First Class Honours in Chemistry )

" . . I have a right smart pain, A s though of neutral spirits I had drunk, Or mixed the eats with hashish and cocaine."

—E. V. Knox.

S T E W A R T , J A M E S C H A R L E S (First Class Honours in Physics)

"Many did to him repair A n d certes, not in vain, he had inventions

rare . "—Wordsworth .

W A T T , J O H N S T E P H E N (Rhodes Scholar, 1931; Second Class

Honours in Chemistry)

"Just for a handful of silver he left us" —Browning.

13

GRADUATES OF THE YEAR

MASTER OF LAWS "And many a burglar I've restored

T o his friends and his relations."—Gilbert.

BLACK, J A M E S C O R B E T T (Second Class Honours in Roman Law, Contracts and Torts and Company Law)

"Benygn he was and wonder diligent." —Chaucer.

EDGE, W I L L I A M R E E D (Second Class Honours In Contracts

and Torts and Company Law) "The thin end of the W . Edge/'

—Persian Proverb. O'DEA, R I C H A R D J O H N

(First Class Honours in Roman Law. Contracts and Torts and Company Law)

" A youth to Fortune and to Fame Unknown." —Gray.

T H O M S O N , T R E V O R C A M P B E L L

" H e is a very delightful creature. But he isn't a boy any more."—Barrie.

M A C A R T H U R , I A N H A N N A Y

" A man severe he was, and stern to view." —Goldsmiths

M C C A R T H Y , F R E D E R I C K (Second Class Honours in Roman Law

and Criminal Law) "Ruler of lands and dreaded judge of men, Can you see any murderer put to death?"

A D A M S , G E O F F R E Y O W E N " H e argued high, he argued low, He argued all around."—Gilbert.

BACHELOR OF ARTS "Something attempted, something done."—Longfellow.

C A L V E R T , C Y R I L GORDON "Thy mother's treasure wert thou—alas, no

longer."—Bridges. A L L E N , J O H N W I L S O N

"Vaulting ambition."—Shakespeare. A R C H I B A L D , S H E I L A B E T T Y . .

"If she should break it now."—Shakespeare. B E L S H A W , J A M E S P I L K I N G T O N

"Trades Unionism is the modern application of the ancient fable of the bundle of sticks '"

—"Frenzy." B L A C K L O C K , E T H E L W I N

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder." —Song.

B R O W N L E E , E L E A N O R J E A N N I E "Before me—she's a good wench."

—Shakespeare. B L O W , ERIC H A R O L D

"Though I'm anything but clever I could talk like that for ever."—Gilbert. " H e finds in ' T R U T H ' alone his light and

lead."—A. Y. Campbell. BAY, M A X I M U S J O S E P H

"I 'd rather be a dog and Bay the moon." —Shakespeare.

B U N B Y , I S A B E L D U N W E L L " A hate of gossip parlance and of sway Crown'd Isabel thro' all her placid life."

—Tennyson.

B Y R N E S , M A L C O L M P A L M E R "You'd look sweet Upon the seat Of a bicycle built for two.' '—Victorian Ditty. "The modern jazz band depends on its sax

appeal."—Anon.

C A R S O N , E L S I E F R A N C E S " A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye."—Wordsworth.

C L E L A N D , DORIS G W E N D O L I N E "Thy warfare is accomplished; earth and sky, And generous hearts are calling."

C O S T E L L O , D E S M O N D P A T R I C K (Senior Scholar in Latin and Greek)

"He speaks three or four languages word for word without the book and hath all the good gifts of nature."—Shakespeare.

C O U R T , E V E L Y N ROSE "In Belmont is a lady richly left, and she

is fair."—Shakespeare.

D A V I E S , F R E D E R I C K R O N A L D J A B E Z "Yes, Frederick, from to-day you rank as a

full-blown member of our band.''—Gilbert.

D ' E S T E R R E , D I A N A F R A N C E S " A woman's crowning glory is her hair."

—Accepted Fact.

E D S O N , E I L E E N " M y Christian and Surname begin and end

with the same letters."—Spectator 505.

GORDON, G R A H A M N O E L "But for mine own part it was Greek to me."

—Shakspeeare.

H A L L I G A N , F L O R E N C E M A B E L " N o one ever heard a hasty word from Flo, The most she ever said was 'here's a go ' ."

—Squire.

38

From Left—• Front Row: Messrs H . F. Smytheman, LL.B. ; K. M . Rudall, B.Sc. : R. J. Owen, B.Sc. ; N . J. Ellison, B.Sc. ; C. W . Poynton, B.Sc. ; C. G . Pryor, B.Sc. ; R. R. Lyons M Sc ; C W Heyward B.Sc. ; J. T . Poole , B .A . ; G . O . Adams, B . A . ; H . G. Taylor , B .A . ; C. S. W . Yockney , B .A . Second Row: J. D . McGuire, LL.B. ; C . L. Maloy. B.Sc. ; E. H . Blow, B .A . ; L A Williamson", B . A . ; T . N . Hewlett, B . A . ; J. W . Al len, B .A . ; F. W . Taylor , LL.B. ; E. N . W e b b . B . A . : T . C. T h o m s o n , L L . M . ; C. E. Woo l l e r , M . A . , Diploma in Journalism; L. H . Lidgard M.Sc.- E. Belt, B.E. ; D . H . Monro , B.A. Third Row: K. D . Anderson, M . A . ; W . C. R. North, B.Sc. ; A . R. Anderson, B.Sc. ; J. T . Murray, B.Sc. ; G. W . Markham. B.Sc.; W . S. Spence, LL.B. ; L. B. Schnauer, LL.B. ; K. W . Rae, M . A . ; A . G . Adams, B.Sc. ; A . E. Prebble. B . A . ; A . Miils, B . A . ; M. J. Bay, B .A . ; F. C. Jones, Diploma in Journalism; C. G. Calvert, B .A Fourth Row: G. C. McLaurin. M . A . ; P. Jensen, LL.B. ; I. H . MacArthur, L L . M . ; F. McCarthy, L L . M . ; C. T . McGi l l , M . A . ; M. P. Byrnes, B .A . ; J. D . H o g g , M . A . ; R. L. Choules L L B ; J. C. Black, LL .M. ; J. G. Hamilton, LL.B. ; M. C. Green, LL.B. ; A . H . Burns, LL.B. ; H . W . Salmon, M . A . Fifth Row: W . R. Edge, L L . M . ; D . P. Costello, B . A ; A C Marshall, B .Arch . ; L. C. Meiklejohn, B . A . ; F. R. J. Davies, B . A . ; J. K. Lusk, LL.B. ; T . D . Gerrard, LL.B. ; E. Boulton, M . A . ; A . D . W . Woolcot t . M . A . ; R. S. Harroo . B .Com. ; H . S. Dav-enport, LL.B. ; I . R. Sherwood, M.Sc . ; H . L. Thompson , M . A . Back Row: J. J. Wal l , B . A . ; H . A . Jones, B .Com. ; E. Brodie, LL.B. ; M. G . Sullivan, B A . ; C. H . Battley, B .Com. ; D .

Robinson, B . C o m . ; D . A . Gray, B.Sc. ; G. N . Utting, B . A . ; C . W . Smith, B . A . ; A . N . North. B.E. ; J. O ' D e a , LL .M. S. P. Andrew Studios.

WOMEN GRADUATES, i93i "So I wonder a woman, the Mistress of Hearts,

Should descend to aspire to be1 Master of Arts. A ministering angel in woman we see, And an angel need covet no other degree."—NEAVES.

From left. Front Row: Misses N. W . Whyte, B.A. ; J. L. Moncrieff, M . A . ; E. R. Court, B .A . ; S. B. Archibald, B .A . ; M. O. Watson B.A. ; E. J. Brownlee, B.A. Second Row: Misses D . K. Stewart, B .A . ; D . F. D'Esterre, B.A. ; E. B.

Ashcroft, B.Sc.; K. M. Leonard, B.A. ; A. M. Jessop, B .A . ; E. D . Edson, B.A. ; I. O . A. Park, B.Sc. Back Row: Misses E. M. Johnston, M . A . ; A. Hutchinson, B.A. ; L. Roberton, B .A . ; E. F. Carson, B .A . ; D . G. Cleland, B .A . ; F. Kissling, M.A ,

S. P. Andrew Studios. H A R V E Y , K A T H L E E N MARY

(Senior Scholar in Education) "For she was crammed with theories out

of books."—Tennyson. H A T T A W A Y , F R E D E R I C K GEORGE

"Young fellows will be young fellows." —Bickerstaff.

H E W L E T T , T H E O P H I L U S NORRIS "Phoebus ! What a name."—Byron.

H U T C H I N S O N , A U D R E Y "Ah yes! Ah yes! I am a lady of position."

—Gilbert. JESSOP, AILSA MAY

I knew the young gentle-woman, she has good gifts."—Shakespeare.

LEONARD, K A T H L E E N MARY "The staccato buzzing sound indicates that

the instrument is engaged." —Telephone Directory.

LYONS, E D W A R D "I'm a plain dealing villain."—Shakespeare.

MacLAURIN, G R I F F I T H C A M P B E L L (Senior Scholar in Applied Mathematics)

"It's the little things that count." —Old Spanish Custom.

13

MacLAURIN, K E N N E T H C A M P B E L L "My stars, does he go there too?"

—"Mary Rose." M E I K L E J O H N , L I O N E L CONRAD

"A lion among ladies." MONRO, D A V I D HECTOR

"Who will believe my verse in time to come?" —Shakespeare.

MORRISON, C H A R L E S F Y F E "The hamely parritch, chief o' Scotia's food.-'

—Bums. MILLS, A R T H U R

Sitting up like "Jackie." —Nezv Zealand saying.

McDOUGALL, JOHN N E I L "I never felt the kiss of love. Nor maiden's hand in mine."—Tennyson.

PAYNE, MAVIS GRAY "Mighty maiden with a mission, Paragon of common sense."—Gilbert.

PREBBLE, H E R B E R T E D W A R D "History repeats itself."—Accepted Fact.

GRADUATES OF THE YEAR - » -

POOLE, J O H N T A N C R E D (Senior Scholar in Philosophy)

"There are more things in Heaven and. Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio."—Shakespeare.

S M I T H , C Y R I L W A L L A C E "Fate tried to conceal him by naming him

Smith."—Holmes. S T E W A R T , D O R O T H Y

"Earth has not anything to show more fair." —Wordsworth.

S U L L I V A N , M A R T I N GLOSTER "For God's sake give me the young man who

has brains enough to make a fool of him-self."—R. L. Stevenson.

"The merit claimed for the Anglican Church is that if you let it alone it will let you alone."—Halifax.

ROBERTON, L E S L E Y "Oh, saw ve bonnie Lesley?"—Burm.

TAYLOR, H E N R Y GORDON "And fools rush in where angels fear to

tread."—Pope. T R E A C H E R , K E N N E T H NOEL

"The same whom in my schoolboy days I listened to."—Wordsworth

U T T I N G , GORDON N O E L "Still they gazed and still their wonder grew That one small head could carry all he knew."

—Gola smith. W A L L , JAMES JOSEPH

"I have made up my mind, I shall live and die a solitary old bachelor."—Clare.

W A T S O N , J O H N "The conclusion is obvious, my dear Watson."

—Conan Doyle. W A T S O N , MARY O L I V E E V E L Y N

"Who's this coming down the aisle? She is a regular snorter.

Hold your tongue, you son of a gun, She's the Vicar's daughter."

—Old Egyptian Saying. W H Y T E , N A N C Y W A T T

"Wisdom borne on fashion's pinions." —Fanshaive.

W I L L I A M S O N , L E S L I E A L F R E D D A V I D "I am monarch of all I survey, My right there is none to dispute."—Cowper.

Y O C K N E Y , C L I V E S A M U E L W H I T E H O U S E "Young blood must have its course, lad."

—Kingsley.

BACHELOR OF SCIENCE "The energy developed represents, Expressed in foot tons, the united forces Of fifteen elephants and forty horses."

—Hilaire Belloc.

ADAMS, A L B E R T GEORGE "Oh, George, I thought this time would never

come."—Squire. ANDERSON, A L F R E D REID

"John Anderson, my Jo, John."—Burns. ASHCROFT, E D I T H B E A T R I C E

" 'You told me you were fair as gold.' 'And, master, am I not so?' "—Gilbert.

B R E W I N , BERYL IRIS "Methinks she is too low for high praise,

too brown for fair praise, and too small for great praise."—Shakespeare.

CONOLLY, JACK "Sport went hand in hand with science."

—Tennyson. ELLISON, N O R M A N JOSEPH

"The glass of fashion, the mold of form."' —Shakespeare.

GRAY, D O N A L D A R T H U R "He had a clean-shaved face, But kept a hedge of whisker neatly clipped."

—Browne. GUY, GEORGE

"I'm gonna dance with the Guy what brung me."—American Folk Song.

H E Y W A R D , C H A R L E S W I L L I A M "He's a bit undersized, And you won't be surprised When he tells you he's only eleven."—Gilbert.

P O Y N T O N , C H A R L E S W I L L I A M (C.U.C.) "Five shillings a day! Up goes the price of

a haircut!"—"Frenzy." MALOY, C Y R I L L L O Y D

". . . A trusty hand, A merry heart and true."—R. S Hawker.

M A R K H A M , G E O F F R E Y W I L L I A M "I never did repent for doing good.'

—Shakespeare. M U R R A Y , J O H N T H E O D O R E

(Senior Scholar in Physics) "Fair Science frowned not on his humble

birth."—Gray. N O R T H , W I L L I A M C H A R L E S R A Y M O N D

"Gone West."—Digger Saying. O W E N , ROY JOSEPH

"Fat little fellow with his Mammy's eyes.'' —Negro Spiritual.

PARK, IVY O L I V E A U S T I N " A shy and lonely girl, Whose face is sweet with thought."

PRYOR, C H A R L E S G E O F F R E Y "He hath the prior claim."—Bad Pun.

R U D A L L , K E N N E T H M A C L A U R I N (Senior Scholar in Zoology)

"I have loved the musty reek that lingers About dead leaves and last year's ferns."

—A. N. Other.

13

GRADUATES OF THE YEAR

BACHELOR 'How did these two come to be

tombstone inscribed 'Here lies BRODIE, ERIC

" A kind of boy, a little scrubbed boy no higher than thyself, a judge's clerk."

—Shakespeare. BURNS, A L A N H A R O L D

"Chubbiness exerts its sway over my whole exterior."—Gilbei't.

CHOULES, ROY L Y D E A R D "You're thin on the top."—Barrie.

D A V E N P O R T , H O W A R T H S A M U E L "Sweet Auburn!"—Goldsmith.

GERRARD, T H O M A S DOUGLAS "Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer?"

—Shakespeare. GREEN, MORRIS C A M P B E L L

"Watch this Green stay Green." —Popular Ad.

H A M I L T O N , JOHN G R A H A M "Think of a town about eighty miles away."

—"Frenzy." JENSEN, P E T E R

"Peter stood up among the eleven and was bold."—New Testament.

OF LAWS buried together?' exclaimed the cynic on seeing a a lawyer and an honest man.'"—Cole.

LUSK, JOHN K E I T H B U T L E R "Yon Cassius hath a lean and hungry look."

—Shakespeare. S C H N A U E R , L A W R E N C E B E A V E N

"Of legal knowledge I acquired such a grip, That they took me into the partnership."

—Gilbert. S M Y T H E M A N , H A R O L D E D W A R D H E N R Y

"I stand for judgment: answer shall I have it?"—Shakespeare.

SPENCE, W I L L I A M S T A N L E Y "And one that knows the law, go to! ' '

—Shakes p care. T A T T E R S F I E L D , JAMES N.

"When I was a youth I served a term As clerk to an attorney's firm."—Gilbert.

McGUIRE, JAMES D U N C A N "Duncan comes here to-night."—Shakespeare.

T A Y L O R , F R E D E R I C K W I L L I A M "Tinker, Taylor !"—Nursery Rhyme.

BACHELOR OF COMMERCE "I don't believe in principal, but oh. I do in

interest."—/. R. Lowell.

B A T T L E Y , CECIL H E N R Y "Demurest of the tabby kind."—Gray.

HARROP, R E G I N A L D S T A N L E Y "Find your own pennies and then you can

steal them safely."—Anon. "And his big manly voice."—Shakespeare.

JONES, H U G H A L E D "Though I look old, yet I am strong and

lustv."—Shakespeare. ROBINSON, DOUGLAS L I S T E R

"Here lies the clerk who half his life had spent

Toiling at ledgers in a city grey."—Epitaph.

BACHELOR OF FORESTRY SCIENCE "It will never rain roses our longings to

please, If we want more roses we must plant more

trees.—George Eliot. H A L L , N O R M A

"Do you know Treiza Green?"—Anon. LIDGARD, LOUIS H E R B E R T

"Woodman spare that tree."—Whittier. POOLE, ALEC L I N D S A Y

"Instead of the fir shall come up the thorn tree."—Old Testament.

BACHELOR OF ENGINEERING "Swarte smekynd smethes smateryd wyth

smoke Dryue me to deth with den of here dyntes."

—Fourteenth Century Verse.

BELL, EDGAR A L E X A N D E R "Ding Dong Bell."—Nursery Rhyme.

N O R T H , A L A N "Here comes the little villain."

—Shakespeare.

BACHELOR OF ARCHITECTURE "Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, . . . Leave thy low-vaulted past."

—O. IV. Holmes. M A R S H A L L , A R T H U R CECIL

"You will build with stone well, but with flesh better."—Ruskin.

BACHELOR OF MEDICINE AND SURGERY

"Off with his head! Off with his head!" —Lewis Carroll.

M c N I C K L E , H E R B E R T F R A N K "I'd like to slit a throat or two ere we return."

—"Frenzy."

42

G R A D U A T E S O F T H E Y E A R

DIPLOMA IN EDUCATION

H A R V E Y , K A T H L E E N M A R Y JOHNSTON, E I L E E N M A R G A R E T

"The more we are together." —English Folk Song.

"Being dead is the most boring thing in life if one excepts being married or dining with a schoolmaster."—Oscar Wilde.

W O O L L E R , E R N E S T C Y R I L "Spare the rod and spoil the child."

—Old Testament.

DIPLOMA IN SOCIAL SCIENCE "For the cause that needs resistance And the wrong that lacks assistance, For the future in the distance And the bad that we can do."

—Newspaper Cutting. LYONS, E D W A R D

"The naked every day he clad (When he put on his clothes)"—Cowfier.

RUDALL, H E N R Y A L E X A N D E R "Oh, peerless Alexander!"

DIPLOMA IN JOURNALISM "Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote."

—Chesterfield. W O O L L E R , E R N E S T C Y R I L

"Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more, Ye myrtles brown."—Milton.

D'ESTERRE, D I A N A FRANCES "Great is Diana of the Effusions."

—Unauthorised Version. JONES, C O L W Y N F R A N K

"For e'en though vanquished he could argue still."—Goldsmith.

Tell me not in Mournful Numbers . .

Winter was upon the town, And men's little wet souls Moved earnestly Before the window, up and down, Eyes as high as tramway poles— All they would see. . . .

Grey and raining the day long, And clinging, uncomfortable water On hands and face— That is outside; but some belong To a nicer world! They have sought a Pleasanter place

Where are lights of their own making And heat not of the sun— Arid they are glad, Warm and unworried; they are taking Leisure and tea. . . .

When all is done Life's not so bad.

— A L L E N CURNOW.

13

Brise Marine La chair est triste

Dark eyes, come Far, 0 far from here

(I am weary of this place, The coming and the going of dull days);

. . . But further out Are white sands, and the stinging ocean

breeze,

Full of blown spray, sea smell.

Let us go Beside the setting sun; And there, along our track, Curving the fringe of each receding wave, The yellow foam— Soft foam.

Come running! We will scatter it in flakes to the seagulls With our bare, damp toes.

—J.M.B.

The Auckland Business College

Specialises in Teaching:

Phone 40-639 for a Prospectus

Director: T . U. Wells, M.A.

SHORTHAND TYPEWRITING BOOK-KEEPING, Etc.

Principals: A. W . Shepherd, P.C.T., F.P.S.A. Mrs. N. H. E. Shepherd, B.A. (Hons.) , LL.B.

13

A Future for Our Language

nphere are times and places when literary scholarship counts for something. Colet

and Erasmus were not entirely without fame. In the nineteenth century Jowett was a name to conjure with. In our own day much of the finest creative criticism has come from similar sources — the Universities. Quiller-Couch, H. W. Gar-rod, Bonamy Dobree, Irving Babbitt— these are instances of living scholars who have combined teaching with literary work of a very high order. But it seems that in New Zealand, where we are original in so little else, it has been decided that this ideal is either unattainable or undesirable. And we gather from bitter experience that, whatever the function of our University, it is not to encourage creative criticism of literature or of life.

True, the groves of Academe are not the quiet places that they were. Few de-partments of the University are now totally hidden from the gaze of the pro-fane. But one temple remains inviolate. Over the shrine of literature sepulchral silence reigns. So the crowd, rarely curi-ous, never suspicious, passes on. Alone among University departments, those of Classics, English, and Modern Languages have nothing to do with creative thought. They tell the hungry generations that "Shakespeare is beautiful; Goethe is wise." Sometimes, more boldly, that Tennyson is beautiful and Anatole France is wise. And still the sheep look up and are not fed.

In criticism of the present order of things one possible misunderstanding must be removed. I am not pleading for a kind of educational "Free-for-all." Recently there has grown up a conception that the word "university" is a vague synonym for "universe" or "universal." Such ama-teur excursions into generalities are to be deplored. The essence of a University is that it is not for all but only for those fitted by previous training to enjoy its benefits. A University is a society, and like any other society has aims and privi-

leges. The cause of education suffered enough during the last century from per-ambulating educationists who informed wondering audiences that Shakespeare's career was divided into five periods, and that in 1603 he was in the depths but by 1611 he had risen to the heights. One is inclined to accept the Spanish proverb: "These twopenny saints will be the ruin of the church."

But it nevertheless remains probable that the present apathy of the outside world to the work of our language de-partments is merely a reflection of the con-ditions obtaining within these departments.

There are, of course, several cant objec-tions to any change in outlook or organisa-tion. "This," we are repeatedly told, " is a young country (oh youth, what crimes are committed in thy name!) and the main function of our language faculties is to inspire a love of literature in the rising generation." Now it has been wisely said that only God can "inspire" a love of literature. If He employs anyone to help Him it is surely the primary and second-ary school teacher. So long as such "in-spirational" work is the task assigned to the professor, and not to the teacher, the failure of our language departments is assured. One grows sceptical, moreover, of personal inspiration. It usually rises no higher than that attitude of mingled re-spect and affection conveyed in the term "old dear." This does not mean that our professors are lazy or inefficient. It is the intention of this article to be

Seraphically free From taint of personality,

and most of us can, in some measure, claim Matthew Arnold's lines for ourselves: "Rigorous teachers seized my youth And trimmed its lamps and purged its fire: Showed me the great white star of truth, There bade me gaze and there aspire."

But the deplorable fact remains that our intellectual guides are ridiculously ham-pered by a set of effete and inadequate con-

13

'iiiiiuiiiriiiMMiiiii»iriii*iiiiHini4MtMi»iitiiiii»tMii*itiii«iii>i»tirMimiiiii«iiniiiiittiMii»n4iiiiitiiiiiiiniiiiiiii»iitiiiiiiiitiiM Hii»»i>»iitiii*iiiiHiiiiHiimHtriutuiti»iiiiii»ii»ititiMiiiititii>rttii»ritiiiiiiriiititttiiut»iiii

A FUTURE FOR OUR LANGUAGE DEPARTMENTS «i»mmimiiHunHMHHmMtmmuiu>mmtHum»Mi»ii»iiinnm>m 'iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiMiiiiMiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiimiiiititiHiuiiiniiinmiim/'

ventions. Most of these conventions are based on the ' ' inspiration'' fallacy. Theor-etically, there is opportunity given for original work. But the amount of such original work produced by our professors does not always encourage the student. They have no time 1 Then the system must be changed to provide them with time. At whatever cost, this must be made clear: " A good University teacher is of necessity a productive scholar." The duty of the University professor is not to inspire, but to analyse, and to teach his students to analyse literature as a phenomenon in the history of the mind, to understand what Spengler called its morphological signifi-cance. The function of a professor will always be a strenuous one. The tragedy of our generation is that the function is made doubly strenuous by the necessity imposed upon him of devoting most of his time to providing mental fare for imma-ture and "uninspired" undergraduates. The only desirable system is that in which oral teaching is synonymous with the ori-ginal work. This is the European tradi-tion. It is a sound one.

The "young country" objection remains to be answered. It is best countered by example. The Universities of Western Canada probably provide the nearest parallel to our own. In their libraries and staff they are immeasurably inferior to their older sister institutions of the East. Yet in literary research they have done far better work. May the gods preserve us from an American Ph.D. mania! But let us not be blinded to the failings of our own system because of the crudities of foreign methods. A generation ago imma-ture Ph.D.'s poured forth a flood of dry-as-dust theses, not really on literature, but on obscure problems of pedantry. We are now suffering the inevitable reaction. The Canadian Forum summed up the situation a few months ago:— "During the Ph.D. epidemic the inference was: ' Damn teach-ing and let's have fine scholars': now the story runs 'Damn scholarship! we must have good teaching.' ' ' But there are some who insist that good teaching and good (that is, productive) scholarship go

together.

There is still another "cant" objection to any re-orientation of our language de-partments. All the important work of research, we are sometimes calmly told, has been done. All the authors, down to the fifth-rate ones, have been unearthed, studied, edited, and re-edited. Grant, for the moment, the correctness of this assump-tion, which, it is worthy of note, ignores entirely the vast and relatively undiscov-ered country of comparative Literature. The admission of these facts regarding the thoroughness of former research does not in the least weaken the argument for fur-ther activity. Far from indicating finality, it serves rather as a gateway into fields hitherto entirely unexplored. For the real task is as yet unattempted. All the material has been gathered, all the ground has been cleared. With these materials, and on this area, it remains for the present generation to build a worthy superstruc-ture. Here are some of the questions (selected from the article in the Canadian Forum mentioned above) which immedi-ately present themselves: —

What is the meaning for us moderns of the great body of Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance and Romantic literature?

What is the spring of the creative genius ?

Are there laws of poetry or not? Is there a poetic truth? What are the relations between econo-

mics and "pure" literature? Is literature an unconscious form of

propaganda? Is it an expression of the libido ?

It is obvious that our language depart-ments, so far from isolating themselves, must join hands with all the other facul-ties of a modern University. What can be accomplished under such conditions one realises after a study of such critical works as Babbit's Rousseau and Romantic-ism, Middleton Murray's Studies on Keats, Havelock Ellis's Dance of Life, Garrod's Profession of Poetry. In the noble words of Sir A. T. Quiller-Couch:

"To discover the fulfilment of a great work of art—that is a task worthy of the greatest University . . . " And, again.

13

A FUTURE FOR OUR LANGUAGE DEPARTMENTS

"Neither Oxford or Cambridge nor any other University can study literature, to understand it, unless by training itself to consider a living art."

The task we are faced with is clearly formidable. Its implications are too mani-fold to be discussed adequately in a single article, or even a series of articles. We can hope to do nothing more than create thought and criticism. But there . . .(?) To the high priests of the Sacred Wood

this sign of life from the Waste Land may seem as futile, and as pathetic as "The supplication of a dead man's hand Under the twinkle of a fading star."

But there remains the grim determina-tion :

"Let the victors, when they come, When the forts of folly fall, Find our bodies by the wall."

— J . BENNETT. (Some of the statements in the above article may give wrong impressions—the English professors quoted lecture

only to Honours students—Lascelles Abercrombie broke down after four years at Leeds University where he " c o m b i n e d teaching with literary work . " Again our professors do more than simply mention Tennyson, Goethe and Anatole .France. — E d . " K i w i . " )

Psyche Deserted He came light-footed with the dusk, Most fair, Oh my Delight; He came with every dusk— Oh Night—that fled from his footsteps— Oh Day—that came with his coming— Where are you hiding him?

J clung to the Negress pleading by her tresses,

Troubling the secrets of her luminous eyes, Oh Mother Night, Where is he, my Beloved? Where are you hiding him? But she folded her cloak about her and fled.

I captured the young Day by his coat of flowers;

Oh, smiling Day, does my Love lie drugged with roses?

Where is he sleeping? But he laughed, and the dulcet showers Shattered the young blossoms on the

grass— But under the soft wreck my Love lay not.

And all the warm noon I waited him— Why docs he stay, fair lover I have never

seen? The sun despoileth all the garden.

The dews have vanished, the fresh rain Waiteth for him. When will he come?

And after dusk, After the gentle twilight, Night came in tears— But still my Love comes not, comes not.

— J . G . M .

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Swearing IVTow that compulsory military training •L ^ has been abolished, the military camp, once the stronghold and nursery of bad language, has become a mere mockery of its former self.

Gone are the days when unkempt youths from Freeman's Bay, callow lads fresh from Grammar and young Varsity stud-ents ate, slept and swore together for ten days. Gone are the golden hours when we stood in silent admiration of the practised ease with which the Sergeant Majors roared forth volley after volley of curses, foul imprecations and murky similes with-out double banking once in twenty-four hours. And gone, too, is the influence of that acme of filthical perfection—the R.S.M. How we envied him and how in the tents at night in the fitful flare of an army candle we would strive in our crude, territorial style to emulate him!

Truly the old order has changed. There is, however, definite evidence that the students have determined to revive some of the old glory of the past and a persistent rumour states that their efforts have been so successful that the Executive has become interested in the sudden raising of the standard of Common Room profanity. It is popularly supposed that a system of fines has been adopted and during the last few weeks many of the leading amateurs have been inquiring anxiously whether three B's will be allowed at a cut rate.

Now this shows definitely that the old spirit is not dead and that our young men are still eager to pursue knowledge for its own sake and moreover that they are willing to pay for the privilege! The Executive must, therefore, take the matter up on a definite financial basis and if the following scheme is adopted it should by the end of the year have collected enough to pay off the losses on Craccum, Kiwi, Grad. Ball, Carnival Play and the Cafe-

teria for five years back and still show a substantial profit.

Let the Executive institute the Conces-sion Card system, not only for the three B's, but for all forms of swearing, and arm its House Committees with punches to clip out a space every time a word is used. There would, of course, have to be a series of colours corresponding to the tram cards' colours for the various sections. The fol-lowing types instantly suggest themselves. First, a white or "one degree" card to be used by the E.S.F. for words like "hang" and "bother." Second, a blue or "two degree" card for the S.C.M. to be clipped for "hel l" and "damn" and so on. The average student would require the pink or "three degree" card, while members of the Law Society and certain Training College students would need the scarlet or "four degree" card. There is nothing against transferring the Twelve Trip system and calling it the Twelve Re-lief system. The scale of charges may cause some discussion, but the following rates will probably be adopted. One De-gree 1/6, Two Degree 2/-, Three Degree 3/- and Four Degree 4/6.

Of course, the difficult question of sex will arise. Will there be a reduction or an increase for women ? Apart from the actual financial question, think of the ig-nominy some girls may be put to. One can imagine this sort of thing:

"Say, Jean, you're not going to get much of a thrill at Grad. Ball with Peter Primose! I saw Mrs. Odd sell him a white card yesterday!"

And of course there'll be plenty of this among the men.

"Gee! (one degree) You're not taking Gracie Gartermark to the Football Dance, are you, Alick? Didn't you know she's the toughest thing at 'Varsity—she buys four degree cards!"

—E.H.B.

13

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J O H N S T E P H E N W A T T , Rhodes Scholar, 1931.

Photo S. P. Andrew Studio.

13

Rhodes Scholar, 1931 nphis is to bid an exceedingly tardy official

farewell to John Stephen Watt, who is now studying at University College, Oxford. As he sailed from New Zealand in January, a couple of days after receiv-ing notice of his appointment, A.U.C. had no opportunity of extending an official farewell to Jack Watt, but wTe hope that this little note will express its good wishes.

Jack Watt was born at Boulder, Western Australia, in 1908, but was educated in New Zealand. He received his primary education at Remuera school, and in 1921 entered the Auckland Grammar School, where he had a distinguished scholastic and athletic career. In 1923 he passed the Matriculation Examination and gained a Senior National Scholarship. In 1926 he was awarded the Tibbs Memorial Prize for excellence in Mathematics and Science, and gained a Junior University Scholarship. His sports record was equally good, and he took a prominent part in athletics and football. In 1926 he broke the school half-mile and mile records, and was cap-tain of the Second XV.

In 1927 Jack Watt began his B.Sc. course at A.U.C., and in 1928 he was appointed lecturer-demonstrator in Chemistry. He graduated B.Sc. last year, and was also awarded the Sir George Grey Scholarship in Science. In 1930 he was elected to the Students' Association and filled the port-folio of Sports with distinction until his departure during the vacation. This year he graduated M.Sc. with Honours in Chemistry.

Jack Watt's athletic record at A.U.C. is a very fine one, as he was Auckland Provincial half-mile and 800 metres cham-pion in 1927-28 and in 1929-30. He also won the T. K. Sidey Cup in 1927. He is the present holder of the College mile and half-mile records, and has represented A.U.C. at Tournament in 1928-29 and 1930, gaining his Blue in 1929. He was Chairman of the Athletic Club for 1930.

At Oxford Jack Watt is engaged in research in the Organic Synthesis of qui-nine. He has had a fine career at this College and we feel sure that he will do her honour wherever he goes.

In the day I had seen in a window a figure of the praying Christ

Stammering wind this night TJtters gustily Its hesitant breath And the rain, The rain is urged unwilling against the

windows: There again, there Someone alone without, sighed The scrabbling sigh of harsh unpartner'd

pain . . . Dark it is, and dark within my heart And still the sighing, and the rain Dropping . . . dropping . . . The bloody sweat down-dropping, O God, Poor, poor God, Strange God to ask man's pity.

—ALLEN CURNOW. 51

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The Love of God This do I know, who love God:

I am a lover of life—and so of death, Of beauty—yet of all things foul

And horrible that seem, to be, Perceived by the unguarded soid,

A momentary blasphemy. I love, as others do, the strong Brave gestures of a noble mind Caught in immovable despair;

And yet, besides, I love the whine Of cowardice too weak to hear,

Unwavering, the task divine. I love the rose, poised to the wind

That thrilling with the joy of life, Blithe to the morning light unfolds;

And in its delicately-curled Sun-tipped, dew-spangled petals holds

One half the beauty of the world; And yet I love that other half That pitifully grows beside; Weak, stunted, earth-defiled withal,

Worm-riddled, withered, wretched, mean,

A ghastly mockery of all That seemingly it might have been.

This do I know, who love God: 1 am a lover of joy—and yet of pain Of laughter, of the gay, fine, free

Response of eye to eye and heart To heart, that grows unwittingly,

Untroubled by the touch of art;

And yet I love the pain, no less Of those I love than of myself; The long, slow, bitter grief of hope

Denied; the pain without surcease That sends the blinded soul to grope

For ever for the light of peace.

I love above all else the maid Whose face so clearly holds the light Of truth that it will surely fill

The heart with tears. Loved is she Who by the knowledge of her will,

Which is the will of God, is free; And yet but little less I love That other maid—the treachery Of her poor soul—the very w&und

Of the dull wretchedness within Her being, blasted, cursed and bound

By the vile fantasy of sin.

Dost thou give thanks to God for the lark's song f

Why curse the devil for its scream of painf

Dare ye to judge, for God, this right, this wrong,

This good, this bad, this holy, this pro-fane,

Who never judges, merely makes to be the final content of eternity f

—J.D.

Dusk Dim hills against the distance, a sulky,

cloud-grey sky, A plain of sleeping waters; a sea-gull

sailing by; Pale house-tops dimly peeping through

mist-encircled trees, A world grown old with dreaming; a

gently sighing breeze.

I would that my life's ending were like the dusk of day:

A calm that can't be broken, 'neath mists of sombre grey;

A journey o'er still waters; a Pilot in the sky;

The Haven in the distance; and then a sweet good-bye. —A.M.L.

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Gerard Manley Hopkins Poet of Surprise

Tn the matter of poetry the Oxford Uni-versity Press is not far from being a

judicial body: no one, for instance, can afford to scorn Lascelles Abercrombie now that he has been canonised as an "Oxford Poet." If the people at Amen House are wrong about Gerard Manley Hopkins, whose work they have just re-published (with notes by Robert Bridges, and an introduction by Charles Williams), then it is their first mistake.

I have but a nodding acquaintance with Hopkins. I speak ignorantly, but not in unbelief: I am still curious about him. Biographical facts are easily enough ob-tained from G. F. Lahey's first study (Oxford Press again). Hopkins was an undergraduate when the Oxford Movement was at its zenith, at the age of twenty-two, he entered the Roman Catholic Church, he was a friend of Newman and Coventry Patmore, and he died in 1889. But chro-nology is his sole link with the Victorians. Hopkins seems to stand quite outside his age and even outside of himself. Here is part of a poem called "The Windhover," described by his biographer as his greatest metrical achievement. Hopkins thought it "the best thing I ever wrote," and he dedicated it to " Christ our Lord' ' :

" I caught this morning morning's minion, king-

dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding

Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding

High there, how he hung upon the vein of a wimpling wing

In his ecstasy! Then off, off forth in swing As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-

bend : the hurl and gliding Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding. Stirred for a bird—the achieve of, the mas-

tery of the thing!"

Now by all the rules this poem should have been written about 1920. It certainly

suggests a Georgian experimentalist in prosody rather than a member of the Society of Jesus writing in the blessed peace and prosperity of the Seventies, while Tennyson was rolling the noise of battle all day long, and Swinburne was singing songs before a sunrise that never came.

Chronology is only part of the puzzle. Forget it, for the moment. How was it possible for a devotee of the most tradi-tional institution left on earth to write this volcanic, disrupted poetry 1 And why, when his religious fervour was so strong and his severity so uncompromising that for many years he did not write a line, is his poetry so free from doctrine and dog-ma? Bridges, who did much to obtain recognition for Hopkins' genius, did, in-deed, attribute his errors of taste to "efforts to force emotions into theological or sectarian channels." One scarce dares to disagree, but may it not be more prob-able that for Hopkins poetry and religion were inseparably intertwined!

"Anchorite, who did dwell With all the world for cell."

No poet of this century exulted more in the world around him—in the colour of sky and clouds, of flowers and water. Blending colour, sight, and touch, he de-scribes poppies as "crush-silk poppies aflash." Bubbles on a stream are "bubbles bugle-eyed.'' A common weed becomes—

"Lace-leaved lovely, Foam tuft fumitory."

Of this delight in all things lovely, "May Magnificat" is perhaps the finest expression— '4 Wlien drop-of-blood-and-foam-dapple Bloom lights the orchard apple, And thicket and thorp are merry With silver surfed cherry,

13

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

And azuring-over greybell makes Wood banks and brakes washwet like lakes And magic cuckoo call Caps, clears, and clenches all."

Hopkins, it is evident, was abnormally aware of the shape and movement of things. He coined a word—"inscape"— to express his awareness—

"But as air, melody, is what strikes me most of all in music, and design in painting, so design, pattern, or what I am in the habit of calling inscape is what I above all aim at in poetry." And he sacrificed everything to that end.

He is not overwhelmed with the mystery of the falcon riding above him, he enters intimately into its poise and sweep, we seem almost to touch it, it is so near. Here is "the rise, the roll, the carol, the crea-tion" of which he speaks. So Swinburne, though contemporary, hardly existed for Hopkins, whose verse seems almost con-sciously part of a wide-spread and deter-mined revolt against ' ' pretty-pretty poems." For this reason alone he is de-serving of patient study even by those who pride themselves on their modernity. He lias had to wait for the world to catch up with him.

Hopkins' devotion to Keats is manifest. He has something of Keats' keen sense perceptions; there is an element of Keats in his epithets—"whorled ear," "lack-chained." Like Middleton Murray (who, significantly enough, is the only notable critic who has written of Hopkins) he strove to destroy the myth of the "senti-mental" Keats, and he insisted on his in-tellectual vigour. The conviction that "Keats' genius would have taken an aus-terer turn in art" if he had lived, gains in interest when it comes from Hopkins. And one is tempted to speculate whether Keats would not have developed a poetic method akin to Hopkins' own. Finally, like Keats, Hopkins longs for a life of sensations rather than of thoughts—

"Soul, self: come, poor Jackself. I do advise

You, jaded, let be: call off thoughts awhile.''

Hopkins, however, was a Jesuit, and no Jesuit poet can escape being called a mystic. But if he is a mystic he is a "Jesuit among the Franciscans." "Dark night of the soul" there is, indeed, in plenty: as in "Carrion Comfort," ac-counted by some his greatest poem— "Cheer whom though? the hero whose

heaven-handling flung me, foolish Me ? or me that fought him ? O which me ?

is it each me? That night; that year Of now done darkness I, wretch, lay

wrestling with (my God!) my God" His preoccupation with his own inward

struggle and his constant intellectual frus-tration are apparent in much of his poetry: they help to explain his technique, his tangled syntax, his cacophony. He condemned himself as ' ' soft sift in an hour-glass," "time's eunuch," building nothing to endure.

So there is little of that serene continual communion with God which is the eventual goal of the mystic. He suffers, and almost despairs— "Not I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair,

not feast on thee, Not untwist—slack they may be—these

last strands of man In me, or, most weary, cry 'I can no

more' . . From the bitterness and self-exposure

of these lines from the "Sonnets" Hopkins can pass to the exultation of ' ' That Nature is a Hericlitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection."

He can make common things wonderful, as he does in "Pied Beauty" ("Glory be to God for dappled things " ) , which has all our modern lyric poets in one and something else besides. "De la musique avant toute chose" said Yerlaine. It might have been Hopkins' motto. But it was the music of song, not the "wailful sweetness of the violin," that he cared for. His thought, once unravelled, is simple, but his music is intentionally elaborate. Even in the "Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo," a poem of real beauty ( " I never did any-thing more musical") there is a point where the music becomes too obvious and

56

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

almost degenerates into jingle. And the fault is not confined to this poem.

But whether it be due to the urgency of the thought or to a modification of poetic principle, there is no escape by sound from the meaning of the posthumous sonnets—

" I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day. What hours, O what black hours have we

spent This night! What sights you, heart, saw:

ways you went! And more must in yet longer light's delay. With witness I speak this. But where I

say Hours I mean years, mean life."

Here, in Middleton Murry's words, "there is impression, but not beyond im-mediate comprehension: music, but a music of overtones: rhythm, but a rhythm which explicates meaning and makes it more in-tense." Hopkins' best poems, the "Son-nets" and "The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo" in particular, leave one breathless, as if the mind tumbled over itself in an effort to keep up with the mean-ing and the music simultaneously. Shel-ley's "Skylark" is perhaps the only poem which produces a similar sensation.

So with Hopkins, as with most modern poets of any value, reading and re-reading is necessary. Such study is amply justified. If he seems to distort language it is but to pack his images more densely. It would be useless here to elaborate upon his metri-cal idiosyncracies, his innovations in dic-tion, the alleged obscurity of his thought. Without needing to refer to his own re-marks on these subjects one can easily feel a conscious and continual striving for musical effects. What should not be for-gotten is his own confession regarding his more wanton rhymes—

"Some of my rhymes I regret, but they are past

Changing, grubs in amber. . . . "

In the face of this to emphasise defects would be impertinence. But it is obvious that Hopkins found it hard to check his fancy. He could not delete or prune. He

piles metaphor on metaphor, loads a single noun with half-a-dozen adjectives, twists his sentences, throws grammar to the winds, and extracts from his readers a con-centration of which few are capable. For his verbal obscurities are often the boldest expressions of thought. And his metrical devices —alliteration, repetition, interior rhyme—are more than devices. They are usually inseparable from the thought he is expressing. And sometimes lead up to a sudden shock of tremendous force—

" . . . self in self steeped And pashed—quite Disremembering, disremembering all now.''

Hopkins' experience of the Universe is expressed largely in such continual shocks of strength and beauty. But, as Charles Williams has said, very aptly, the empha-sis must be on the word "shocks." He is for ever surprising the reader of his verse, not only by its external features, but by its content. For all his technical ingenuity, he constantly stretches lines almost to bursting point in an effort to put his emo-tions in words. He is passionately alive to all forms of experience, acutely sensible of the beauty of both worlds—the inner and the outer. This consciousness of beauty is expressed nowhere more perfectly than in the lines which threaten to become a stock anthology piece—lines which even those who are ignorant of Hopkins know—

A NUN TAKES THE VEIL.

I have desired to go Where springs not fail; To fields where flies no sharp and sided

hail, And a few lilies blow.

And I have asked to be Where no storms come, Where the green swell is in the havens

dumb, And out of the swing of the sea.

— J . BENNETT.

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13

J

because Because I lay upon the grass at noon And felt the sun beat down and let time

pass. Or, ivhen the shadows closed in all too

soon Because I simply stood beneath the stars And watched and longed and waited for

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13

Home Thoughts from Abroad Life at Cambridge

A lec McDonald, who was Chairman of -**»the House Committee for 1929-30, and who is now studying with a Post-Graduate Scholarship at Clare College, has written a few notes on life in England.

He writes from Strathpeffer, in Scot-land, where he spent a portion of the summer vacation:—

" I am having the time of my life on a little farm here. There is any number of pigeons to be shot and thousands of rab-bits. In other respects it is like New Zea-land, the scenery being the same as in North Auckland, hill and valley and stream. I've been living in shorts, which is a very pleasant change, I tell you. There are trout in the burns, too, 'guid fushing mon.' I'm here till 2nd August, when I go to Florence to have a look at some manuscripts of Livy for Prof. Conway.

"As regards the University, I've had a great year, very jolly, and fairly success-ful. I've been made secretary of tennis in Clare, which automatically means the captaincy if I can get a third year. Offices go on playing ability, and the secretary becomes captain in his turn. The standard is not high at Clare, and I was made first string straight away—judge from that.

" In the work I've enjoyed myself, as the lectures here are on the whole very good, and there are some really great men. I've managed to get a £40 Exhibition at Clare, which was lucky, as they only gave me three weeks' notice and made me sit three of the Part II. Tripos papers—the exam I sit properly next year. In three weeks I had to read all Lucretius, Hesiod and Vergil's Georgics and get up all Greek and Roman literature and history.

"As to the life, we soon got into the round—a big breakfast on getting up, off to lectures in the morning, a light lunch (unless you have a visitor), sport in the afternoon and tea at 4.30, when all the entertaining is done. It is seldom you have tea alone. You invite chaps round or are invited out yourself. This is when all the yarning is done and you get to know other fellows really well. They talk

on everything under the sun and above it, from sport to sex and religion. Interest-ing and broadening, not to say amusing sometimes. Dinner comes at 7.30, in the College as a rule, where you meet every-one and afterwards take coffee with a friend or two, or invite them to coffee. This is more or less the run of things, and you can see that it is hard to fit the work in. It means late nights.

"We have all made any number of friends. The English boys are very friendly when you get to know them, and pretty inter-ested in things generally. At least those we have met have been. It is a jolly life. You are within five minutes' bike run of any of your friends and you can wander in and out of digs as you like.

"The football is very sporting and, as a rule, not rough, though in the K.O. Com-petitions feeling does run high. Jesus are a hard mob, not rough, but tackle hard and make no bones about anything. As most of the matches are friendly no one gives a hoot (or toot) about the result and there is no need to get 'hot' about los-ing. One result of this, however, is that they don't know much about tactics, or at least don't show it. A beaten team will carry on with the open game even though outplayed in the backs..

"This lack of adaptability was shown in the 'Varsity match at Twickenham, when Oxford, who had inferior backs, played them close up (and tackled hard and obstructed a little). The Cambridge backs didn't know how to meet this—no thought of short punting—and got a bit rattled. Do you remember the first Gram-mar-King's game last year? It was like that—a second game might have been for Cambridge what the second one was for Grammar.

"The tennis at Cambridge is extraordin-arily good—in the first six. They easily defeated Oxford, as was only natural see-ing they had two Indian Davis Cup play-ers, Malfoy, Gandar Denver, Nuthall and Tuckey—the strongest team for years and years. It should be strong for the next

13

HOME THOUGHTS FROM ABROAD

few years, too, as Madar Mohan and Nut-hall and Tuckey are freshers.

" I see a good deal of other Aucklanders. Ernie Thompson has been working very steadily in the Biological Lab. He is on very good terms with the professors there and will, with luck, make a name for him-self. He was down at the Marine Biologi-cal Station at Plymouth and had a great time and did some good work. Jim Wil-liams is doing research on the Statute of Fraud, and seems satisfied with the way it is going. He should get his Ph.D. next year. At present he is touring on the Continent.

"Norman Alexander is in the Cavendish Lab., photographing the tracks of X-rays, 1 think. He has a most ingenious bit of apparatus. Everyone in the Cavendish is

on radio-activity work under Rutherford. "Malfroy (ex V.U.C.) has been elected

captain of tennis at Cambridge. He has been playing well in patches.

"Bob Briggs fell into the Cam when he was punting fair damsels. His pole broke, he subsided backwards, sat 011 the edge of his craft with his legs slowly rising, and then in he went. Jack Watt is the master punter of Oxford, and was over at Cambridge and proved himself equally good at our style.

"Percy Minns and Ron. Sinclair play bowls 011 the green at Balliol, Oxford, and to see them at it is a scream. Perhaps they feel the weight of years. Anyhow, they are not bad at it and are well provided for in their old age."

N E W Z E A L A N D D R Y C L E A N I N G C O . L T D

HEAD OFFICE and W O R K S :

5 Howe Street, Aiacklaed Phone 47-005 (4 Trunk Lines)

Vans Collect and Deliver, City and Suburbs twice daily

Country Orders returned within 48 Hours

Futile Nights HThe rain strummed eternally on the win-

dow, and fighting eats howled deso-lately somewhere out in the night; John loathed the blatant vulgarity of suburbia —its noises and fearful obviousness splin-tered the exquisite calm so essential to his sensitive soul.

He swore efficiently and fell asleep—to find himself on an upland space drugged with flower-scents and splendid with morn-ing; a dew-pond gleamed and gloomed in a hollow and a girl stooped down to fling silver showers of drops to him. She was naked and like a white flower; her head was a shining flame and she made John think of hawthorn blossoms with the sun on them.

Then he discovered he was wandering down a stream bed, and the banks were shimmering blue-green and gold; he thought it was mosaic till he saw that the walls were alive with butterflies, thousands upon closer packed thousands of them fluttering softly till the whole world seemed astir with dreamy wings. Sud-denly there in front of him was the girl stooping down to the water; she let a fish slip through her fingers—a fish of emerald with amber fire waxing and waning across its transparent body and long delicate fins like trailing lace.

The vivid fragrance of romance still lingered in the room when John awoke; his heart was beating heavily and he had that unbearable sense of something going to happen, but the rain still trotted on the pane and the cats cursed on, itons of obscenity in their crazed voices. He felt

that very soon he would meet her, he thought he was another Brushwood Boy, dreams meant something; life for him was centred in blossom-pale girl with red hair shining like flame.

In sickening suspense he waited for the day, thinking vague heroic thoughts of white chargers and gloomy forests, of shadowy monsters breathing fire—of young splendour rescuing royal beauty—of misty castle walls. When day came it found him asleep with his mouth open and a smear af cigarette-ash across his cheek.

John was whispering passionate insin-cerities to a petite brunette over afternoon tea, when a sudden provocative gleam of red hair under a black hat sent his dreams surging back on a flood of memory. Breathless and speechless he watched till she turned, and he saw a crooked mouth and bad complexion; then he went on whispering to the black-headed beauty, who blew smoke-rings and pretended to believe.

That night the cabaret was rather bril-liant and the irresistible feeling of adven-ture swept over John; the air was dim with smoke and broken with laughter; the rosy paper lanterns were drowsy with mystery and the blurred shadows were magically blue. The inexplicable sadness and terrible sweetness of youth stirred him to incoherency as he drifted through a haze of music with sea-foam in his arms. Dreams were nothing; this was the poig-nant reality, the meaning and end of life —this honey-blonde girl with the long, grey eyes. D.F.D.

Madness The sun shone in a clcar sky;

And a thousand furies shrieking high Came rushing down oil a threatening

wind. With fire and thunder, through murky

cloud Around me hurtled the hideous crowd, And my soul was held in the grip of

fear

Of unseen horror lurking near. "Peace!" was the cry of a soundless

sob "From this gibbering, capering,

mouthing mob." And the sun shone in a clear sky A lark sang overhead. —J.D.

13

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