Aesthetics and Athletics.

Dear Reader, brains are handy for calculating the penumbra of a cucumber, acerbating the alcoholic aspirations of an isozzlese triuncle, deciphering the symbolic subtleties of the ancient gum-chewers, and propounding the theory of assassinated aspirates. Brain is a useful adjunct to academical ascertainment and is effective in combating the inroads of ignorance; but preponderating platitudinously and with regard to the impotence of adequacy and the unification of the unicorn, over development of the “overhead” at the expense of the undercut, means biological bankruptcy. Likewise, a preponderancy of bovinity with a paucity of perceptivity is equivalent to deductive decapitation, or a state of arrested animation north of the squeakator.

It is notorious that Samson, while excelling at such muscular attainments as pulling the pillars, was incapable of propounding a fallacy or other achievements in the realm of academic gymnastics. Goliath, too, although a man of solid girth, was practically unconscious north of the main trunk. On the other hand, some of the ancient intelli-gents were so bereft of biceps and immune from flesh spots that they eventually fell prey to the athletic jocundities of the musclebound.

Nature teaches that aesthetics and athletics must be embraced bigamously to achieve that perfect balance and joie de glee enjoyed by, say, a pugilistic philosopher, better known perhaps as a pugsloshopher or a mashamatician.

Purse-o-nality.

Personality or purse-o-nality is rather physical than metaphysical. Life's prizes are consistently arrested and put into gold storage by the human bean with the brain power to recognise opportunity in the raw, and the horse-power to shape it to his own spends and push it home in his own barrow.

It is possible, of course, to maintain life without brains, but only because it requires presence of mind to recognise the absence of it, and without it the body having no means of recognising the fact that it is practically defunct, goes on growing regardless.

All of which brings us to the subject of Health and Happiness. Happiness is Health's sparking partner, and wealth is incidental or accidental. If you are fourteen stone in your socks, consume fried liver for breakfast, and greet the morn with the joyousness of a Manchew-rian tiger who has dropped on a member of the Gastronomical Society, then you are Nature's answer to the maiden's prayer, the man they couldn't wang, the elephant's page 14

“Nature's answer to the Maiden's Prayer.”

elbow, and love's young dream come true.

Health is regained not by railing but by rail.

When life is sort of gluey
And the corpuscles are pale,
One can build his failing tissues
By a journey on the rail,
Which provides such prospects pleasing
And such inspiration fresh,
That the mind is separated
From the evils of the flesh.

The pursuit of health is the passion of the plutocrat, and is remindful of that old song “Bring Back My Body to Me.” Too late the merchant quince who has neglected liver for lucre, realises that the boyish figure is no girlish dream, but is something to “have and to hold.” Consequently he spends large figures on his large figure, mindful of those wistful words, “Too late, too late, you cannot canter now.”

If an imperfect stranger were to smack him on the back in a spirit of give and skate, or even wang him abaft the fountain pen, he would probably claim damages for contempt of courtesy or false pretensions; yet he divorces himself from his currency to induce unknown man-handlers to knead him with their bare hands, manipulate his skin like chewing gum, and run over his personal defects with rolling pins. He submits to the indignity of belabour and uncomplainingly figures his cheque to check his figure. Before he fell for the machinations of Mammon, health was his inheritance; but he disinherited health after inheriting wealth. Not that every plutocrat is a suit o’ fat; on the contrary, poorliness is as common as portliness, and just as uncomely. In fact absence of avoirdupois is more mortifying than presence of rhind. The weighty personality is not necessarily a banned rotunder, but often the undermanned is undermined by the consciousness that, on account of his superfluity of flats and sharps, he is more amusical than musical.

Moans and Bones.

A doctor often retains some glimmering of respect for the weight-for-age entry, but the Napoleon of finance too prolific of bony parts is nought but a case of false pretences. The human frame-up, when divested of its sartorial hypocrisy, is at best at its worst, whichever way you look at it. It is either an unqualified apology or a bare-faced lie.

When the patient has unearthed the skeleton in his wardrobe the doctor focusses his stethoscopic sights and gets the range. Having got a bead on the quarry, his whole being seems to protest and cry out: “It can't be true; it is a hospital illusion, a shirtless chimera, a broken malady in A minus.” He touches it to see if it is real; it reels before the breath of suspicion. The doctor hides his head in a poultice and great sobs shake his confidence. Doctors are only flesh

“The boyish figure is no girlish dream.”

page 15 and bone-setters after all. Who can blame them if they stand aghast at the awfulness of Nature.

“What do you suggest?” whimpers Napoleon.

“You are beyond the power of suggestion or digestion,” says the doctor. “You are a human frailty, and should travel in an egg crate, packed in sawdust. You are really only a passing thought or a minus quantity; plus-fours might pull you together, otherwise I would suggest putting you in splints until you set. What you require is a complete change of body—mind the grating as you go out.”

The human hiatus reassembles himself and rattles off among the maddening throng like a second-hand body without tyres, length without breadth, geometry without symmetry, or a thin excuse simply because he neglected to practice the precept, “take heed of the sorrow.”

Sport is an essential credential to bounding health. It is not necessary to be a bounder before you can bound, any more than a flounder should flounder or a limpet limp, but constant impact with Mother Earth either fore or aft is conducive to long levity and muscu-hilarity.

Let us ferment:

The worm I fear is not a sport,
Such things as games it spurns,
It spends its days in chewing mud,
And turns.
The worm although a useful thing,
Or so the text-books say,
Is quite content to fill itself
With clay.
It never takes its family out
To see a football match,
Its life is boring and, methinks
No catch.
It simply worms its weary way
With neither hope nor thought,
And never turns its energies
To sport.
The worm spends all its time in toil
Beneath the soil it hides,
And no one knows just what it does
Besides.
And thus it goes from bad to worse,
From day to day interred,
And if it leaves its home it gets
The bird.

a big band on the railway

Overseas Tribute to Magazine

We are indebted to Mr. S. Fahey (Railways, Featherston) for the following appreciative letter recently received by him from Mr. O. Taussig, Vienna, Austria:—

I am very much obliged to you for sending me your very interesting New Zealand Railways Magazine.

May I express how much it gives to the European reader, and how much it informs him about your beautiful country, and makes rise the desire to see New Zealand. The Magazine gives new and surprising ideas about the successful development of your railway system.