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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 3, Issue 10 (May 1, 1929.)

Sight-seeing and Seat-sighing

page 15

Sight-seeing and Seat-sighing.

The sightseer is a person with a curiosity complex and a sufficient cash reflex. The seat-sigher is plus the curiosity but minus the cash. He sits and sights while the sightseer sees the sights.

The chronic sightseer is known unscientifically as a homoglobin or globe-trotting homo. He is readily recognised by certain physical peculiarities. His eyes are often globular and are filled with wonder, like a pair of motor lamps. His neck is frequently like that of a swan who is wearing his face back to front. In extreme cases his nose points in an opposite direction to his toes, as if he is reluctant to leave the sights he has paid for, but is anxious to get on to fresh fields of exploration.

The sightseer is readily recognised by certain physical peculiarities.

The sightseer is readily recognised by certain physical peculiarities.

The sightseeing bus is the sightseer's natural habitat. Here he is in his native element. His eyes goggle glassily, he twists his neck this way and that with invertebrate dexterity. With ease he looks under his arm, through the hole in the roof, and recklessly winds himself round the back of his seat in his anxiety not to miss what he has paid good money to see. The bus halts, and the driver indicates an indistinct something which might be a church or a discarded cheese. “This,” he announces, “Is the house that Jack built.” A murmur runs down the line, and there is a grinding of vertebrae as the sightseers twist their necks round the compass. The nearest sightseer says, “Oh, yes—the house that Jack built.” His neighbour tosses the information back until everyone is sighing, “Oh, yes—That'S the house that Jack built”—all except an old gentleman on the back seat who places his hand to his ear and pipes, “Yes, and a very nice mountain it is, too.” He is promptly tossed out, and the bus moves on to the next exclamation mark.

The Tea Jugglers.

The Tea Jugglers.

Ah me, travel is a great thing, as Scotty remarked as he boarded the car for Oriental Bay. The sights one sees! Why, it is worth a train fare to see the tea-jugglers at the railway refreshment rooms doing their celebrated catch-and-carry act with a dexterity that is uncanny.