Repression or Expression?

The Puzzle of Those Lotus- Eating Trippers

TT is puzzling sometimes to know exactly why persons who are perhaps quiet, generous, and even quite likeable in their habits at home should reveal such oppo site characteristics on their arrival In the Islands.

Popular literature is no doubt partly responsible for a certain class of visitor.

For years the South Seas have been pic tured as a paradise where "something for nothing” may really be obtained. One result of this has been a steady stream of small mendicant yachts whose crews ap pear to exist solely on the bunches of free bananas hung, for lack of space else where, in the rigging of their millimetre masts. For weeks and often months these peripatetic parasites moor their vessels to the wharves, only leaving when the last bunch is consumed and the source of sup ply finally exhausted.

Then, again, there are the apparently well-off, who, after letting it be known— always in the strictest confidence—that they really are "somebody,” proceed at once to disprove it by their behaviour.

Frequently they collect things, pearls, antiques, shells, or even seaweed, but whatever it is they argue fiercely over the price. Purely, of course, on principle.

Their admiration of other peoples’ nick nacks is positively magnetic. They ad mire, acquire, and retire.

For them the unconsidered trifle simply does not exist. Their scale of values is a descending one, and the article which has been obtained for nothing ranks high ly. If, by some singularly lucky "find,” they contrive to “make” a little towards the cost of their visit, then they feel they have not travelled in vain.

But perhaps even more objectionable still is the young unattached male visitor who throughout his stay appears to exist in a state of continual rut. Loosed in the playgrounds of the Pacific, he throws not merely discretion but all sense of propor tion to the trade-wind, and, metaphori cally flinging his new topee over the nearest coconut palm, bounds into a mad intemperate race with the time at his disposal.

In a similar but far less disagreeable class are the old men, the “sugar daddies," who totter a little apologetically into these verdant fields of romance. There is some thing rather pathetic in the sight of their too obvious gratitude for the transitory interest shown by some mercenary minded maiden. Their hearts burst with tender emotion, but, alas, false teeth and indigestion soon send them back whence they came, a little poorer, a little wiser, and, perhaps, a little sadder. The red, red rose which once has bloomed!

There are, of course, many pleasant visitors to leaven this unsavoury concoc tion, but their agreeable qualities only serve to emphasise the unpalatable ingre dients which compose so large a part of the whole bill of fare. —J.H.

At the annual meeting of the Thursday Island branch of the Country Women’s Association held in June, Mrs. Norman Hockings was elected President. Other office bearers are Mesdames Done, Har man, F. Hockings, and Nimmo (Vice- Presidents); Mrs. J. Broad (Secretary): and Mrs. J. Mills (Treasurer).