Jun

Once upon a time there was a little boy who was so young when he was born that he was called junior which is not a really or truly name like plain Bill or just Joe and mightnt be a name at all but just a birthday honours like O.B.E. or L.S.D. only these are first-class honours called titles and Junior is not a title but all the same it is stuck on at the end like a puppydogs tail and sometimes a puppy-dogs tail gets cut off for purposes of evolution which is what professors call their religion. Now Junior was very religious so he had his name pruned and ever afterwards he was called Jun which rhymes with stun or spoon and when Juns friends said oh you poor boy having to go about with a name thats been cut more than ten per cent Jun just smiled with Christian resignation and said my dear brethren I pray you do not lament at the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune for the fragment is not lost but only gone before and has now become a fact of history which I aspire to be myself in the fulness of time wherefore I shall study history and make of it a thing of beauty and a joy for ever and ever yea even a mountain of joy Amen. Jun could talk for hours and hours like this making lovely gestures with his eyebrows which he had been told by his Professor of Elocution was a good exercise for the face and wouldn't hurt that air of spirituality one bit which the girls thought perfectly divine and said he looked like an early Christian who ought to be thrown to the lions. Jun liked talking very much but was always modest about it casting his eyes clown shyly at proper intervals and smiling in a sad sort of way just as he had been taught to do for you mustnt burst out laughing at the crowd youre addressing its bad elocution but its quite all right to feel a bit sorry for them theyre such boneheads and can only think up idiotic things called interjections because you cant call them anything else without somebody from the Haeremai Club shouting out the partys getting rough. Jun didnt worry much about these retardates but kept casting pearls before them like Daniel in the Lions Den which is what is called a high conception of duty for Jun was a very earnest little boy and liked things high I dont mean high like poultry when its hung thats only the Haeremai Clubs idea of things and its really very low perhaps the Haeremai Club ought to be hanged but what I mean by high is having your head in the clouds. So Jun always had his head in the clouds and youd be surprised to see how tall it made him grow just like a lily or the Tower of Babel and when people who were not devout elocutionists said to him why the altitude Jun he looked sweetly pensive and said I have hitched my wagon to a star and they said give it the gas Jun and he said nacherally. By and by he got to thinking gas was the most important thing in the universe and he forgot all about the star until one day he got a bright idea and said why shouldnt I be a star myself not a star to guide the footprints of men but something to tickle them to death like Douglas Pickford or Buster Keaton or Norman Aitken so he went on the stage if you can call the contraption they have in the Town Hall a stage and soon he got a real star part nothing less than Satan who was once a star himself but lost his job and became a teacher and very successful he was too. But when Satan heard that Jun was playing the devil he said this is no good to me it looks too much like competition I'll have to show this young Icarus where he gets off so he got to work and melted the spirit gum on Juns upper lip and made his moustachios fall off in Act Two which worried Jun very much for he couldn't talk like you know where and hold his moustachios on at one and the same time it cramped his style but you should have heard the things he thought about the people who didnt hurry up and bring more spirit gum and it frightened Satan so much that he ran all the way back to Victoria College whimpering like Barneys dog and hid himself in the Executive room where the Profs couldnt find him and they felt lost without him so one Prof went all the way to America to see if he was there which is ridiculous for every knows that the devil winters in Wellington and wouldn't for the world miss anything that goes on in Victoria College and the Molesworth Street Parliament. But I am forgetting all about our Hero who had become a devil of a fellow which is only to be expected if you go and study black arts such as elocution and the result was that one of the College girls had to take Jun in hand to reform him which made the Haeremai Club say another good man gone wrong and the Women's Common Room crossed Juns name off their list of Eligible Possibles including Marcus Riske who is a positive thrill. It was all very sad especially the photo in the "Dominion" and Mr. Cochrane who had just been captured sighed and said ah me it's the Way of All Flesh kindly make a note of that quotation from Samuel Butler or maybe it is Prof Mac I forgot for the moment which but it comes in very handy in examinations also the lot of humanity is on us all just look at poor Crow. And theres got to be a moral to this story so the moral is if you hitch your wagon to a star make sure of your star and step on the gas but dont be a bowser and grow your own moustachios like Hannah although he must find them an awful nuisance in kissing parts but there is two sides to every question thats why women students take part in debates and theres nothing more to be told so goodnight everybody goo-ood naight.

—Wog

Heard At Rehearsal of "Dark Angel"

Winnie: Don't come grabbing me. I've got my new frock on, and organdie musses terribly easily.

Tom (Winnie's sweetheart, an ex-pugilist, taken by Mr. F. Cormack, appropriating Winnie's lines): I love organdie. I wish I could wear it always.

Visions of Our Full-back in a dainty gown of green organdie, complete with yellow satin under-slip, as he tackles a fifteen stone forward.?

"Rope"—produced by Mr. D. G. Edwards.