1937-07-16 — Page 22

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THE HONGKONG

TELEGRAPH.

FRIDAY, JULY

16.

1937.

Rain, Rain,

GO AWAY!

St. Swithin's day,

QUNSETTLED

If ye do ratu,

For forty days it

will remaist;

St. Swithin's day.

an te be fair, For

mair,

forty doys

rain пас

RAVELLERS are fond of explaining to us how im- portant a part Rumour plays in the national life

of China, Rumour which is sud- denly and unexpectedly present in its ancient walled cttles.

Except for odd examples of this phenomenon, such as the the persistent hearsay, at beginning of the Great War, of Russian soldiery passing through England, our daily papers prevent us from too easy an acceptance of unconfirmed reports.

Towards our own traditional superstitions we remain, how- ever, still remarkably credulous, We nil, for instance, continue to observe the weather conditions on St. Swithin's Day with a lively attention.

Was

THE HUMAN RACE I!kes nothing better than to connect the wayward movements of the natural world with experiences of its own inti- mate life, and some such move undoubtedly at work in its identification of the central day of the month of July-for long assumed to be meteorologi- cally prophetic-with the moving of the bones of the famous Win- chester bishop to their ceremonial shrine.

This event took placa on July 15. A.D. 971, exactly one hundred and eight years after St. Swithin had been buried at his own uncon- ventional request on the north side of the church "under the caves- droppings."

8 Bwithin appears to have been a practical-minded but un- usually rilous Eaxon prelate with little love of personal display.

HE LEFT ALL military and foreign-

affairs to Bishop Aletan, whose episcopal stool

was at Sherborne, St. Swithin himself serving King Ethelwulf in quieter ways, by accompanying the litils Alfred,

SPANKING IS NECESSARY

By A FATHER

A recent article on the punishment

Llewelyn

POWYS

"England's darling," to Rome; by building a bridge of stone

tlic

alasi Itchen; and,

over

that any such notion should ever have entered his hend, by invent- Ing the tithe system, a polite de-

which vice by

n professional priesthood, without embarrass- ment to itself and sitting fat by the Are. could dip and dip again into the pockets of the sweating lalty,

It chances often enough that the date of the old prelato's translation does in actual fact Inaugurate a rainy spell.

I used to observe this even in the days of my childhood, for the birthday of my companion- brother was on St. Swithin's Day. and twenty to one if his hayfield plenic did not herald the first bad thunderstorm of the summer with the breaking up of the weather through the Dog-days and the August holidays.

The Fifteenth of July is a bod time for a wet spell, because in England a great deal of hay is likely to be lying out during that week, and wlid weather means for the farmer the hasty tossing and turning of swathes in the day and at night the tossing and turning from anxiety of his own row bones,

mar-

SOME RASCALLY toss-pots of antiquity, wishing to use

the good bishop as a stalking horse for shameless boozing, must needs raise the cry that St. Swithin was a drunken blahop.

It is true enough that in the old days in Somerset when the sun was pricking hot the men in the felds could whiff up a drop or two of their famous cider during Bwithin's week.

They used to keep

great called earthenware jars of it, "owls," under tall hedgerow elms, where all was cool as in a cellar.

Indeed, if you pass through any Somerset village during these July

"Here Comes the Sun!"

days you will find the air between the roofs of thatch heady with the fermented Juice of the apple! Beer and cidert simple drinks for an honest folk.

Let the gin drinkers bide in towns. "Drunk for a penny and dead drunk for twopence," as the

tavern

signs of Wapping-old- Stairs used to brag in the Eight- eenth Century)

Why, even the Blahops down in Somerset compose poetry in cele- bration of alo. Take, for example, this verse written by John Stil, who was Bishop of - Bath and Wells during Queen

Elizabeth's reign.

"And Tib, my wife, that as her life Loveth well good ale to seck, Fult oft drinks the till we moy ste The tears run down her check: Then doth she trout to me the botol, Even as a matt-worm should, And saith, Sweet heart, I took my

part

Of this jolly good ale and old,

"Back and side go bare, do bare: Both foot and hand go cold; But belly, God send thee good ala

enough,

Whether it be new or old."

But in wet weather or in fine weather, what supreme weeks are those that stand on each sido of St. Swithin's Day-the kernel of

STORIES ABOUT LOVERS

THE

common expression, "falling who said of his wife that the peace suggests something of God came into his life when he love," accidental or unexpected, and this married her, and of Willem Ewart element provides much of the Gladstone, whose love for Catherine which is associated with Glynne, and hers for him retained its brightness through long years to the end.

romance

the subject.

When Lord Salisbury, the famous Victorian statesman, was having a struggle for a living as a second son,

of children was of much interest to me as a parent,

One has to develop a chilid's "bet- ter nature" by pointing out good from evil. At

an early age one has opt simple methods of imparting it small country church. He

Information methods which charmed by the organ music, and

to adopt

this

But there is another side, it should

he one day sauntered aimlessly into be remembered.

Was

will impress the young. unformed waited to express his thanks to the

mind. The methods which I favour do not differ much from those em- ployed by the average dog-owner in training his pet.

A puppy learns to behave itself by being made to realise that mla- behaviour has painful consequences, A strop used at the right time, and in not too forcible a manner, is the best schoolmaster for the little animal. And I have yet to meet the dog which, after having grown into maturity, cherishes an a decorous

will at ila master for chastising its early Indiscretions.

The Enfant Terrible

•

musician,

Iris wife.

and that was how he got

their

Not n few go out to seek fate, looking for a lover. Coventry Patmore, in his "Angel of the House,” makes one any.

"Though matches are all made in

heaven, they say,

Yet Hymen, who mischief oft

hatches, Sometimes deals with the house

L'other side of the way,

Lucifer And then they are

matches." One man made a remark which suggested that he did not give heaven the credit in his case. His friends knew him as a great lover of cham- years after he had pagne. Some I never went to ball or fete Or show, but in pursult express astonished his chums by entering Into marriage, a friend was with him Of my predestined mate." There have been some great loves at dinner, and observed and lovers. We think of Tennyson, passed the champagne,

"I confess

that he

After the ladies had left the "diningroom, he ventured to ask the reason for this abstinence, "Oh!" was the reply, "never again! It was after a bottle of champagne that I proposed."

The

must congregation

have smiled when, on the first Sunday after his marriage Andrew Bonar announced these lines of the 18th Psalm to be sung:

In many respects, children can

non existent-or rather ened to puppies. They derive an apparently Atholy delight from doing the wrong undeveloped better nature and re- king. They are naturally untidy, sorted to the old-fashioned method dare naturally strong-willed, of applying a strap to the appro- ley do not respect private property, priate part of his anatomy.

My points against sparing the rod last week my little son threw guest's gloves into the fire, and might be summed up as follows:

a sense of One gurglingly announced his crime to

cannot instil

into children the shocked household. He will not social responsibility commit this indiscretion again-my with mere platitudes. They must be atrap has seen to thatł

Armly handled.

When words are not backed up with physical punishment, children begin to disregard such pleas, re- Children delight in making people cognising the truth of the old Scot- awkward with their disconcerting tish saying, that "Sticks and stones utterances. Some parents merely will break my bancs, but words they smile when their little son and heir canne hurt me."

An infant mind is not sufficient- aittiounces that the vialtor has

developed buck teeth." They forget that, al- niceties of a situation. Actions speak

not allo-

alto- louder than words, so far as children though the description gether lacking sincerity, the per- are concerned, and that is why I am

bellover in gentle doses of that old son who happens to possess physical features does not always fashioned corrective, the strap.

4. One must let a child realise relish the light of publicity which a child's tongue can turn upon him. who really is master in the house. My boy was accustomed to making Otherwise, children are opt to deve many rude observations of this type lop egotistical impressions of their I see it, please?" until I stopped appealing to his own Importance.

these

got a

"Unto me happily the lines In pleasant places fell; Yea the Inheritance I got In beauty doth excell One day a man of the slow type was seized with a coughing fit, and excused himself by saying that he had got a bit of grit in his throat. Her answer was meant to be stimu- jour you ghould swallow it, for

need it in your system.” One young man had nerve enough in all conscience, for when he her father about courting his daugh ter, the father sald, "Yes, sir, the man who marries my daughter will get a prize, I can tell you." To which the youth made answer, "May

F.-J. 8,

you

saw

the nut, the core of the apple, the heart of the year!

Now is the time to enjoy a gar- den, to sit with your love under the shade of a mulberry tree on some fair lawn down by the silver-flow- ing Thames. All is silence and sunshine, and shadows behind old red walls where idle peacock butterflies settle upon arms whiter than the necks of swans.

OF THE ENGLISH poets, Andrew Marvel understood best the appropriate mood for these halcyon weeks, weeks when, as the old Greek farmer, Heslod, wrote: "Gonts arc fattest, wine fa best, women most wanton,

and men wenkest." Andrew Marvel sings na one inebriate with the happl- ness of being alive at such season:

"Stumbling on melons, as i pass Ennored with flowers, I fall on

grass,

Meanwhile the mind from pleasure

less

Withdraws tuto iis happiness; 'Annihilating all that's made

To a green thought in { green

shade."

ง

And how eloquently he pleads with his coy mistress!.

"But at my back I always ficar Tluies winged chariot hurrying wear? And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity.

Thy beauty shall no more be found Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound My echoing song: then worms shall

try

That long preserved virginity,

And your quaint honour turn to

dust.

And into ashes all my lust;

The grave's a fine and private place, But none,

I think, do there em- brace,"

Yet even for those dispossessed ones who never have known what it is to be happy in such green gardens of pleasure, there is no Lovers who cause for despair.

have the wit to leave the main roads and turn aside into by-path meadows will find that wild wood paradises are during these fav- oured weeks common in foxglove woods, in dog-rose lanes, and be- tween the acres of the ryc.

IT IS IN troth reviving to remem- ber that the greatest gifts of life are not to be bought or sold, and have little to do with the gratifica- tion of the acquisitive impulse, or with conspicuous waste, or with worldly vanities. A young poeti- cal clerk, insulted and exploited from Monday morning to Saturday noon, may very well experience more happiness in the spending of a few summer hours than ever comes the way of the pampered clubmen of Plecadilly.

"Whenas the rye reach to the chin, And chopcherry, chopcherry ripe

within,

Strawberries swimming in the creain, And schoolboys playing in the

stream; Then O, then O, then Q, my true

love said,

Till that time come again, She could not live a maid."

-To-day's Thought-

IT takes a great deal of cleva- tion of thought to produce a very little elevation of life.

-EMERSON.

ROUND

PRESIDENT LINER

ABOUT by TRAVEL SERVICE

The Showman

WOMAN who is "karassed "

A has been baring her soul

in a sympathetic news- paper. The only way she keeps Ranc, it seems, is to go away for the week-end and "alt in the garden watching the dowers and birds."

Her mind will be "full of pleasant thoughts, dreams and aspiratións.”

And the newspaper publishes a photograph of the house where she goes a simple little cot, it looks, with no air-conditioning at all and, no second footman.

I think I know. All she says, plus the rurat beauty of a heavy lunch followed by a round of golf that is quaintly coloured by the arpirations of General Sir Archibald Pottering-Doddie. The ecstasy of cocktail time under the old apple-tree, with Lady Angela Publicity wcaring her new Cossack cocktail trousers. The rural perfection of after- dinner bridge with dil the birds calling. And then back, refreshed and ES down, to the hubbub,

Mr. Rabbity's Whistle

THE Bearded Woman of Wopps-on- the-Wold reports a very quiet time" bar the fuss about old Mr. Rabbity's tin whistle.

He had his grandson down to stay and the young monkey plugged up hla granddad's tin whistle with a cork. Every day for years Mr. Rab- bity has been playing Llly of Laguna on that whistle.

"Well, it was a proper shock like for him to blow and nothing to happen, a sort of backfire, you might say. Well, he caught the young sprig and began to baste kim, and he yowled to rights.

"After the basting Mr. Rabbity said, Wille, 1 freely forgive you. You latt high note in your yowling that I've been trying for, but never could Ret on account of that dratted Now whistle having but six holes.

I play The Lily again, and you yow! when I wink.

It was a champion duet. So out of

evil comes good."

"Did I Tell You How..?"

"THE secretary stated that

the

trophy would be for the Indies' championship at the Small Bore Meet- ings at Bisley in future."

The Great Bore Meetings, of course, are restricted to men, and take place after the shoaling is over.

1937-07-16 — Page 22

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