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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 15, Issue 3 (June 1, 1940)

[section]

We know what makes the world go round, but what makes it go flat? Why does man continually slip on the orange peel of ambition and break his record? Why does he prefer multiplication to simplification? What is the reason, in general, for the martyrdom of man? Essaying an answer to these riddles, philosophers have applied a solution of philosophate of opprobrium without success. Sociologists have pondered the paralytic pranks of the human will and won't, without profit. Psycho-analysts have performed postmortems on living brains to discover what makes them move in the opposite direction, without result.

But we, in our wisdom, know that these things are the result of sheer exasperation with the tiddley-tootling trials of our daily persistence.

Take the tyranny of top-dressing, the comedy of clothes! In this, strangely enough, it is the male of the human “speechies” who is the special victim of the cover design. The male has to worry because he has too much to wear; the female kicks because she never has a thing to wear; but she gets her kick out of her kick. Of course a man couldn't reasonably expect to moult off his winter suit and moult on his summer suit like many of the other animals to whom he is sometimes likened; but it is a pity—chiefly because the more fortunate fauna have no buttons to complicate the art of dressing.