THE CHINA MAIL, MARCH 27, 1937.
One Thing And A MAN
Another
England lies defenceless against the attack of foreign invaders. She is weak. She is unprepared. The proud possessions that she had won in the past may soon be wrested from her by the mighty arms of the men from abroad.
The Navy, the Army, the Air Force, are powerless against their
On the fair green lawns
You can't kill
TELLS
HIS
STORY
England the-battle will be fought, CATS have ning on me. Twelves
NATS have nine lives. But they was blinded by a flash of flame.
and we shall be humbled in the dust.
frozen with cold and fright, a Six horses, maddened with fear, way to New York. But I had times I should have been dead. Yet set off on a nightmare gallop. The tricked death again. here I am to tell the tale.
driver jagged and tore at the reins.
Death has stalked me since I was Editor: What's all this stuff about? This is supposed to be the six Now I'm fifty-two, and I'm
still laughing in Death's face. funny page.
Doctors say I might die any min-
But I can't believe it. ute.
In the last seventeen years I have been given "a few weeks to live" on four occasions. But the sentence of doom has never been carried out.
Perhaps I am immortal.
Me: Don't be alarmed. I'm just trying to break the news gently that Oxford has won the Boat Race.
*
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IVE ORDERED ONE
"Then there is a tiny feather dus ter for brushing powder off the face."-Fashion note.
Just too too TOO UTTERLY divine, don't you think?
WHAT OF IT?
"If the growth of insanity tinnes at its present rate man, woman, and child will pro bably be mad by the year 2039, prophesies, an Australian doctor.
**-
I clung to the blazing timber. The following year, back in Eng Just as we came to a standstill land, I went down with meningitis, other shells began to go off.
and, goodness knows why, In every shell there were .360 covered. bullets. And not one hit me.
It was a miracle.
I
When the Great War broke yout went to join up.
The medical officer rejected me
In 1927 I developed a grave ternal trouble.
It meant an operation, in six weeks.
They brought my wife to the hos-
and, in doing so, pointed out that I pital to say "Good-bye” was tubercular and could not hope But in ten days I was
to live for more than a few weeks. feet.
Ty
I took a cottage in the country Then I had to have a second opera- The first time: I tricked Death and slept every night, rain or hail, tion. For the second time I said followed a childish chase over a fen with the windows wide open. I "Good-bye" to my wife. And this in Poland.
drank pints of milk and ate as much time I secretly suspected WES É I tripped. And a ditch of deep fatty food as I could.
"gonner." mud swallowed me in one gulp.
At the end of twelve months the But even under an anesthetic
cured myself apparently could not take the thing
seriously.
Only my baby arms waved fran- doctor said I had tically above the surface of that completely.
fifthy morass.
My fingers struck an overhang- ing branch, my hands gripped. So
The doctor told me that I said
After the war I went to America to the nurse: "Give me a kiss and I heaved myself back into the to try my luck. And I became down lend me a shilling.” the breathing world
*
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and out
Naturally, I came There were about fifty hoboes in always do. the same open-sided truck as L Driving rain almost drowned us.
We couldn't take it. We decided
Ssix months afterwards I watch- ed fishermen hauling a catch to walk along the tops of the trucks They through a hole in the ice on a lake until we could find one offering bet-
near Leipzig. I was too keen.
There is one consolation. Every- one will be even-tempered. will be mad all the time.
#
TILL DEATH DO US PART
The fishermen pulled me out. The next day I watched the fisher- men again. Once more I was pulled out..
Less than a week afterwards
Believed to have been killed in was still yielding to the temptations road accident, a man has had to of ice. It cracked under me. go to Court to prove that alive.
he is
I seized a bunch of rushes when I came up.
My father gave me a thundering I know many married men who good hiding. Some years later we would be only too glad to go to set up in the boot business in Lon-
Court and swear they are dead.
young surgeon received a tele phone call from a colleague, who invited him to make a fourth bridge.
at
don.
When I was thirteen I left school to assist my father.
One day I was delivering "boots to a store when I walked under a railway dray.
It was 6.30 in the evening, I remember the time because when two wheels had passed over my
"Going out dear? asked his chest I lay staring up at a big clock.
wife, sympathetically.
"I'm afraid so,” was
ready."
grave
s a very important case. re three
there al-
It seems I was only bruised.
When I was seventeen I joined the Army.
I was grooming my horse at Kirkee, in India. when an eighte pounder in the ammunition dump went off and sent a den wall whistling over my ear.
The quartermaster's store caught fire. Then another eighteen-pounder
He was run down by a motor car, and was lond in his denunciation of the motoring world. Then his suit for damages against the driver of the car that knocked him down exploded. came before the court. He was awarded 2500^
What do you intend doing wit
oney?" asked a friend.
“Why, I'm going to buy a motor-
," was the gleeful reply.
addy was sorti
It was like dodging “Jack-Jum
on Bonfire Night Only ese "Jack Jumpers" killed two and missed me for no reason
for a year ode-on seny-
imber on
ed another chance to ""get
Theil on
wheel hor
ter shelter.
They ran along the snaking coa- ches like monkeys.
through. I
Now, they say, my heart is very tired. It might give in any time, anywhere.
I have to carry little pi with me, and
going to die take
The doctors
live two more years the trouble.
I dropped down between two be cured: coaches and just saved myself I shall do it all right from going under the wheels by grabbing a buffer.
I was frozen to that buffer,
Because I believe that a man can live as along as he wa
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