Norfolk Island’s Kicking-strap!

Letter to the Editor.

YOUR truly British love of fair-play is delightfully exhibited in your “Mac- Arthur Onslow Again” article —where you quote the opinions of the Norfolk Island Association, which are so diametrically opposed to your own clear statement of facts made in the previous issue.

I cannot but recall what a certain famous man, once resident in that “Island of the Blessed and Cursed,” told me. He

pointed out that life was so unutterably dull and uneventful in N.I. that any dis turbance was received as a blessing; and one understood, after a few months, what the Irishman meant when he spoke regret fully of the good old days of fighting, and Fenianism.

I remember, when my, grandfather was teaching me the rudiments of horseman ship, that he initiated me into the secret of distracting the attention of a difficult or kicking horse with an arrangement called the kicking-strap, by which the fore-lock is attached, unnaturally, to the horse’s ear, and causes the irritable animal to forget about the tyrant in the trap be hind. Balzac, I think, tells of the grand mother who, after a busy housewife’s career, had to have fights with her really beloved son-and-wife, until they supplied her with a slovenly, and stupid hand-maid, whom she could scold with impunity, and relief of mind.

May the beautiful, but deadly dull island have many “Onslow incidents” for its health’s sake is my sincere prayer!

I am, etc.,

Arthur J. Vogan.

Sydney. 10./11/34.