OLD MAN'S HUMOUR

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Volume 59, Issue 244, 17 November 1930, Page 8

OLD MAN'S HUMOUR

UNCERTA1N OF HIS AGE. HAD A K1XK IN HIS LEG. Although his leg had been broken and he was unfit to work again, a little old man, the plaintiff in a claim for clamages in the Supreme Court at Wellington this week, showed by his answers to questions by Mr W. E. Leicester, appearing for the Crown, that he still preserved a very good sense of humour. His answers to the questions several times caused much amusemeiit, and were enjoyed as much by Mr Justice Reed as by anyone. The old man, who hobbled into the witness-box with the aid of a heavy walking-stick, was not sure abont his age. He thought he was horn about 1851, hut Mr Leicester pointed out that some of his papers showed the year of his birth as 1858. "If you were horn in 1851 why : have you said that you were 72 years of age?" asked Mr Leicester. "Well, it was this way. To get to sea I had to say I was younger than I was.'' (Laughter.) A question was asked whether he used a. stick prior to the accident in which the leg was broken. "Oh, yes," he replied. "I used to cari-y a stick when I went out for a walk." Mr Justice Reed, laughing: "It would be a kind of swagger cane, I suppose?" (Laughter.) The old niau was asked whether he told Dr. Gillies that he had always had a kinlc in his leg. "I told him tliat," said the plaintiff, "because he wanted to hreak it again. When I told liim that he didn't do it." (Laughter.) The old man said he had never had anything wrong with, "Thank the Lord." "Why, I went througli the Boer

vvar, lie added, "and 1 had to come to Bunny street to get torpedoed." (Laughter.) Mr Leicester asked him whether he expected a post in the Government service. "I don't suppose they would have nie," tlie old man answered. Mr Leicester: "No, I don't suppose so. There are too many there of your age now." When Dr. Gillies was giving evidence, he said that he realised that as the plaintiff, at the age of about 80, had been able to get and do hard work he was not an ordinary man. The doctor referred to the doings of the aged Turk. "If anyone had toki me that the Turk at tlie ago of 100 would he able to do shadow-sparing, I would have heen disinclined to believe it," said Dr. Gillies, "and yet I have seen a picture slmwing the Turk at the age of 150 doing it."