THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 44, 22 February 1927, Page 8

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) Maori oratory translated into the best available EnglUh has an emotional appeal. Its declamatory method is especially suited to the t-poken word, and ADVICE it doesn't look bad in TO print either. A writer CLERGYMEN. in the London "Chronicle" asks English preachers to study the oration of tho chief. Mita Taupopoki. delivered l«y him with preat impresMvoness at the burial of Sir .lames Carroll: "(Jo. go to the (Jreat Divide. <•<: to where your clcicr* have pour before you. their forefathers and their friend*. <io and carry to them what has been done behind. Go. «/o and join your old comrade. Richard Seddon. and greet al«i your late oollcajrue. the Prime Minister, William Ma«*»y. Go. and leave Uβ behind. We arc unworthy for departure yet. We know not now to whom lo turn for guidance. Our jrricf is for your widow, who is left lonely and in sadness.' Farewell, farewell, a last farewell:" THE CONTENTED MIND. There are several tn illionaires on hoard the Kranconia. I envy not their vasty wealth. My wants are few—if aiiv All I desire are modest means. And not another penny: Ten thousand acres, say, of farm (A larger one's a trouble), And say ten thousand pound* a year, Xo, no, I don't want double: Why travel far afield, say I. It sccnis a waste of money; Tins constant itch for seeing things lu my opinion's funny! I'd be content to sec Japan And Java (oh, yes, China!) A trip through India would be fine Southern Carolina. I wouldn't bother going far, Except iu U.S.A., A year or two in Canada, And one in Paraguay. I'd go by car through England, too, And Scotland, Ireland, Wales, But as for going very far, The trouble it entails! I covet not their vasty wealth, My wants are few—4f any, Ten thousand pounds a year will do, And not another penny! Protests from touring motorists, and companies interested in motoring, against the spoiling of the scenery by advertisements are justified, and many a BALM motorist who objects to FOR a literary plaster on a BUNIONS. roadside tree informing him that " Bosker's Balm For Bunions Is Best" will laugh in his sleeve. In every country where the motorist motes, the destructive capacity of the man in the car is the subject of protest. A motor camping party as a general thing will destroy a hundred years of scenery in two days, leaving behind a track of desolation comparable to the Sahara. An Auckland man recently returned from a tour himself describes one beauty spot he used to know. Now that motorists have made a habit of camping there every vestige of the bit of bush that used to be there has gone—burnt for firewood. The place has been trampled grassless by campers and rolled flat with motor cars. Dozens of rusty benzine tins take the place of the scenery, and hundreds of tins that once contained food arc what the journalists on the Renown would call "a colourful note." Bits of rotting tucker lie about. Driving into this desert ono scares armies of rats, which glean the rotting tucker. There are even discarded garments there, and an acre of torn newspapers. Xo! I don't think these beauty spots should be defaced by advertisements. Endeavours In Great Britain to define drunkenness will be of interest to Xew Zealand motorists who are concerned with the comparatively few drivers JUMPING who become intoxicated, POWDER, thus casting a slur on that large body of people who look not on the wine when it is red and regard the pedestrian as a person with a right to inhabit the earth. Discussing this subject with a man who has driven a car since there have been cars to drive, he said he knew a motor car owner who never dared to drive a car at all unless he was " half potty." In such a case he would tackle Quccu Street without a tremor. It was suggested to the habitual motorist (who is himself a total abstainer) that some day the driver who primes his courage with alcohol mav fail suddenly, with inquests to follow, and the habitual motorist murmured, "Yes." The discussion reminded one of the Irish hurdle race pictured in "Punch." The jockeys are at the starting place, and Mike calls to the man with the Hag, "For the love of Hivin, Pat, dhrop the flag before the whisky dies in us!" And apropos of alcohol, one remembers seeing in a certain country a man stagger, reel against tho wall, reel out and fall. A large policeman immediately |»ounccd on him and carried him to the watchhousc, where he collapsed. Tho powerful police staff tried to make him stand, and he was duly searched and put to rc*t in a cell. He was \o very drunk that the police doctor was called. The doctor ascertained that the man who had been bumped up and down and shaken like a Jwttle of medicine was a lifclonq teetotaller who was merely being struck by paralysis. Hi s Mibscqucut death was of little interest to the ofhcial who saw him stagger and " lumbered " him. French executioners have a "rievance. Apparently people refuse to commit murder, and so it happens that two executioners have had to sit with folded MADAME hands while the third GUILLOTINE. guillotined the only available victim. Presumably the three executioners desire cither the crop of malefactors to be increased, or that thev l>e paid whether heads fall or not. the executions being "taken as read/' Memories of hangmen are very precious to manv people There was the Xcw Zealand executioner a man, by the way, without facial beauty and without sobriety. When an execution was inevitable the police used to capture the offici-1 and lock him up, so that on the appointed day he might be quite efficient. A former official English executioner waa a man of extremely sensitive feeling. At his retirepent he had hanged twentv-five peopkincluding several women. HU hobby was' fowl farming and his sensitive feelings would not permit him to kill one for the table his wife, who had never hanged anvbody ia her ife performing the operation, "it is curious that when this hangman committed suicide he did not hang himself, but took poison. Dickens has an extraordinarily fine' hangman ?n •Barnaby Rudge." Denis, as you remember loved Ins job. He went around adrnirS throats and making light of death. When he is condemned for murders during the Gordon riots he becomes a screaming suppliant for mercy He cannot understand why a man like himself, who has killed for the State m Ion? •hall be killed by Uμ State. y — Loa *