The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 12, Issue 1 (April 1, 1937)

A Barber Cue

A Barber Cue.

We know of a man who revels in having his hair cut. The barber's fibbling fingers bring benediction to his brain. The sibilant scissors lull his bean to beautitude. While the lambent lock falls fluttering to the floor heart and head grow lighter. The ecclesiastic eloquence of his tonsorial nibs, whispering the inspired low-down on the fifth race, is muted music to his ear. His soul is somnolently sublimated and he realises that he would be a better man if his hair grew quicker.

On the other head we know of a man who shuns the shears as sedulously as Samson should have done. The barber's titillate touch is like beetles on his bean. His cranium crawls, his scalp creeps up and down the back of his neck, and the voice of the barber is like an east wind moaning round a morgue. To him, barbery is barbarous. And yet, no doubt, he gets a morbid kick out of imagining that the barber might make a clean sweep of his hair with a single stroke round about the collar stud. The imagined menace in the barber's eye as he fondles the forelock probably gives a spice to life that many men with less imagination have travelled thousands of leagues to find, The man is fortunate who can extract from the innocent ecstacies of a barber a thrill that lesser men must seek among the head-hunting Knoblifters of Darkest Delusia.