THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 136, 11 June 1927, Page 8

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) A gentleman who dates hi? letter from "Jasper's Down and Out Shelter" writes: Say, M.A.T., I wish to not run down New Zealand. but to give thanks to all BOW BELLS. those kind people who have helped to make it like dear old London. Oh. the joy a Cockney experiences to come to far-off Auckland and find that the free l>eds or kips are to be had for asking, and. better still, the good old soup kit-chen. I ask you what would the Empire t>e without the soup kitchen, and. greatest of all boons, we are not asked to chop wood and listen to a lot of Bible thumping while having our soup. What with a little charitable aid. free beds, and soup. aUo cakes of soap from the railway, nice free library to lounge in. and an occasional raid on an outside jvintry. I. for one, am fully satisfied with Auckland. The only drawback to us Cockneys is that most houses are built on the ground floor, and not like London, two or three storeys; that makes it hard for us to pick out the right room to do a little light burglary. Yours. A Cockney, and very proud of it.

r.S.—The only thing wanting is the casual ward with its stone-breaking and oakum picking. I defy any Cockney who says he could always get a meal with hook and line dangled into the muddy old Thames from London Bridge to Gravesend. Here you ju-t chuck out a bent pin, and there you are.

The intensely interesting sj»eculaiion by Sir Oliver Lodge that life may yet be produced in the scientist's laboratory is a warning to all piddy young plasms OLIVER ASKS FOR to choose stea iv parents. MORE. A careless chemical creator, after a ni:iht in a ja77. cabaret, might go to hi* lal>oratory intending t<> create a supenuan. to find when it was too late that he had mixed the drugs and hatched a tadpole. Sir 01i»<-r L<*ige will admit that the common or marine animal, the jellyfish (the one with the purple eyes), which floats around our harbour i:- lite in a wonderful crude form, and that Nature with this material may in a few aeon' of years produce from a jellyfish a man: Now, if Oliver has a scheme by which he can take a jellyfish to the laboratory and by artificial attention make a new politician in twenty-four hours—let him try: When it becomes common for chemical scientists to create animal life, they will, of course, produce better specimens than Nature know® how. But suppose a sciential stumbled on the formula for making a batch of supermen—"Japhct In Search of a Father'' wouldn't be a circumstance to "Plassie in Search of His Parents."' If the creative chemist and Voronoff the gland artist get together they should be able to evolre some stunning stunts. If Oily is quite sure he can make animals in a laboratory, will he kindly post per return a pair of Indian elephants. The requisite plasm is in the tobacco tin sent herewith under separate cover.