THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 114, 17 May 1927, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) While we, filled with a commendable civic spirit, have been limiting competition between bus and tram, our misguided relatives in Great Britain seem to THE CONQUERING think that buses may beat OMNIBUS. all other forms of surface transport in the long run. This paragraph is about the long run from Glasgow to Liverpool, a distance of two hundred and fifty miles. The fare is twentytwo shillings, which a mathematician tells »s works out at about a penny a mile. On the Glasgow-Liverpool bus ride smoking is not permitted. But stops of five minutes are made, when passengers may descend and incinerate tobacco—that is, the Scottish passengers may get off and borrow a wee fill. "Tea Tea" writes: Permit me on behalf of a large number of persons to protest against tho habit of honey eating in New Zealand. Apiarists are aware that ANOTHER hideous orgies andshameHENACE. less debauches take place in every hive. Here is a friend's accusation: How doth this little idle bee Abuse each shining boar. And all day long most wickedly Lie tippling in a flower. . Sir. G. Bulman, a bee expert, in "The Bee World," says that the worker bee wilfully intoxicates himself on the flower, and that his amazing zeal for work is really drunkenness. Bees in the hive, when given a few whiffs of smoke, can be handled without fear of stinging. The smoke only alarms the bees, and their first instinct on being alarmed is to rush off and gorge themselves with honey. This has the cffect of making them so "amiable" that they will not sting. And one recalls that there is an "amiable" stage in human intoxication. We protest that it is impossible for sober and righteous persons, after seeing bees staggering home to their wives in an intoxicated condition, having anything to do with a common comestible that has so deleterious an effect. We hope to add honey to the Alliance's list of those awful compounds which we are forbidden to touch, taste or handle. ~ Up to the moment there have been no Hiberno-Scottish fights in Auckland subsequent to the churching of the Mayor and the lesser suburban chief citizens. CHURCHING THE The whole of the council MAYORS. and other eminents surrounding Mr. Bail don were apparently Presbyterians, at least the Mayor, the Deputy-Mayor, and the chairman of every single committee of the City Council were, and the dignified ceremonials were conducted in Presbyterian churches. Even the Mayor of Devonport was blessed in a Presbyterian church. It gives rise to a gentle hope in the Scottish breast that the Hibernian characteristics hitherto noted in our fair city are becoming diluted with the Scottish spirit. The pardoninsistence of the Scotch is seen in their ability to capture those who do not conform to Presbyterianism and in erecting on suitable ground statues of our religious leader, Robert Burns. Is there, one may ask, a statue of St. Patrick in Auckland? It goes without saying that there is no statue of St. George, although a misguided person once evinced a desire to erect one. A League for the Prevention of Further Statues is sadly needed in order to preserve the inalienable rights of my fellow countrymen to give oor dear Rabbie his just due. . Towns grow round cattle tracks and trails where our grandads carried the family tucker "pikau." We moderns are no more "modern" than the ancient Greeks, GREEK who had townplanners ARCHITECTS, of equal genius to ourselves, but the Greeks who made gorgeous buildings by the exercise of magnificent handwork would have been startled to see us making them of sand porridge poured in with an oil-driven spoon. In New Zealand's "olden days" the settlers dabbed their tents or their raupo whares on bits of high ground near the creeks for the convenience of carrying water, and the tracks the feet of themselves and their horses made are in effect the highways of to-day. A really ardent townplanner of to-day would like "to start de novo and raze the history of a growing town to the ground. How often does one read that Mr. So-and-so was born in a whare on the ground where now stands the ten-storeyed building of the Mortgage and Interest Investment Association, or the Loans Corporation, or the Society for the Propagation of Borrowing. Moans are daily arising from a thousand throats that biz isn't too good, but from a thousand trowels there comes the tap on bricks and the concrete spoons drip mountains of buildings in a ceaseless stream. Auckland is being replanned while the townplanners are evolving schemes. From the waterfront the long rows of great concrete barns rise in imitation of a minor American seaside city. There seem to be a few Greek architects "about, and as for Roman dittoes, where are they? Someone told M.A.T. that concrete was susceptible of beauty in form, that there were aesthetic concrete architects on the earth. Yes, yes! the Dilworth Building is worthy; but those straight, square, concrete boxes that look out to sea, do these represent the City Beautiful that we hear so much about? It"is a futilitarian age. A Gisborne paper revives the story of the Maori revolt in Poverty Bay and the fact that Sergeant Byrne, of the Fifty-seventh Regiment, challenged an interWHO lopcr and then shot him. GOES THERE? The horse he shot raised no protest wha tev er. People who have never themselves been shot at often wonder why a soldier on service cannot distinguish between a man and a horse 011 a dark night in thick scrub, and lau«h heartily. There is a man in New Zealaud who retains an affectionate celebrity for his action in the South African War. "Mr. Johu Cook, who nowadays is a Government lecturer on sheep and wool, was a trooper in the First N.Z.M.R. in Africa. One gloomy night when black people wre invisible (unless they grinned and showed their teeth) Jack was on horse lines armed with his trusty carbine. Orders were that interlopers were to be challenged as usual three times and then shot. By the way, one has never seen anybody who deliberately advanced after the first challenge. The interloper's moving form was seen against tho darkling sky. Jack challenged. Jack challenged. Jack challenged. Bang! The shots roused the army. Saddles and bivvies were deserted, and John with his carbine led the way to the scene of death. A wagon mule lay there, his troubles over, his vicious kicks stilled, his need for feeds of mealies gone. Hundreds of sleepy soldiers guffawed loudly. Such a thing might have occurred ten thousand times in any campaign, and anyhow, every mule thoroughly deserved to be shot. But to this day this respectable, middle-aged Government servant, who looks more like an archbishop than a slayer of mules, is known to his intimates as "The Man Who' Shot the Mule."