THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 185, 8 August 1927, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) "Hone Pirini the Pakeha" says: "Shellback" is incorrect regarding the straigbtstemmed schooner bearing that name becoming the Ysabel, as that " SHELLBACK " vessel was converted ON into a training school SOUTHERN CROSSES, for erratic youths under Captain Breton, and was anchored off Kohimarama in that capacity for soiue time. The vessel of that name built in 1574 for the Bishop of Melanesia when superseded by the present steamer was shortly afterwards turned over to commercial pursuits and rc-named Ysabel. THE MISSING WORDS. Mr. replied in a few veil-chosen words.—Any paper any day. What ore the words he chose? Why are they never printed? Why don't we wallow in Words that are merely hinted? "I rise ah-huin-uin-lia. This great and growing nation I huni-ah-er-ah-huni. I have no hesitation." He fiddles with a wine glass. Or juggles with the cheese. Or stabs the table with a fork (For ho is ill at ease). "I thank you for the patient way You've listened"—then a pause. Oh. isn't he an orator! Hip-ray : (Long, loud applause.) Thames people with much experience of ".salted" mines, "duffers" scripping and kindred aids to eminence are glad that the Minister of Mines agrees to put WILD CATS. his foot down on "wild cats." During the Ohinemuri boom of thirty years ago the wild cat mewed over tens of thousands of acres. People rushed about marking out special claims and shooting samples of gold into barren hillsides with a gun, hoping to sell a hundred and fifty acres of clay as a new El Dorado to simple overseas speculators. At Thames there was Scrip Corner, where hard-faced gentlemen who didn't know gold from clay scripped their wav to affluence without ever having seen a pick in the ground. The passion for pegging out claims led to curiosities. One old fellow got up early in the morning at Paeroa and marked the land containing a hotel out! Hβ was found camped in the yard boiling his billy. He said he had found distinct traces o*f the precious mineral under a stack of empty bottles. The local police proved that he was mistaken. A tremendous lot of gold was found in the district by chevaliers of industry, but it all had milled edges. Weren't thev naughty? No prospector in these days would think of deceiving his fellow man. No! Is it fair -that a New Zealand analyst should throw mud at our mud just as countesses are beautifying their countenances with it? Why derogate WHY THROW our mud! If people at MUD? Home care to bring back the rosebud of youth to the faded cheek with Ngougotaha mud why should any loyal New Zealander try to cruel what may be a profitable business for Maoris and perhaps gardeners. A Parliamentary excursion to the mudnelds is now necessary in order to show that our thermal mud will put a new complexion on the most hardened countenance. It is obvious to the least intelligent that the Maoris who bathed in mud in pre-pakeha days had the finest complexions then in New Zealand. If New Zealand mud becomes popular as a face wash it naturally follows that imitation New Zealand mud will soon flood the market. Who is to tell whether the face balm, for society leaders comes from Whakarewarewa or Kent? History has a story of a man who put a depilatory on the market which absolutely failed. But when he sold the same thing as a hairgrower, he couldn't label the old bottles fast enough and made a fortune. People with an overpulue of bathbrick and sandsoap if they get in on the ground floor while the mud craze is on may lay up for themselves treasures upon earth.

William Hohenzollern, junior, late of the Deaths Head Hussars, who used to gallop around crying, "Oh, for The Day!" is moving f»si<tTT%r« to Pot sdaw because the a wt7 /?«»«»«„ peo P le of Sile s«a object to Aα u IHKOWES. his overbearing manners. ~ _ It is a curious element in tno German character that although the Germans don't want their princes back they »? Ve x t^ eated them witl » great consideration. Most of the ex-Royalties are living the lives of country gentlemen on their own estates. , °* her country after a revolution has been so kind to ex-princes. Incidentally, when things are only middling for European ex-Royalties or Kings whose crowns have fallen, they generally settle down in England or go there to avoid assassination. The poor little Czar, who looked so amazingly like our ovru King, used to say that he would give all he possessed to be "a simple English country gentleman. And it really is a nice profession. Heine, if you remember, said that when the Prussian revolution broke out the Kin« would be conducted to the place of execution, not in a tumbril attended by mobs singing the Carmagnole," but in a State coach draped with black, and that, amid the tears of the crowd, he would be "untertanigst guillotiniert." That pregnant word cannot be translated save by some such periphrasis as "with all the deference due from subjects to their sovereign "

Did you ever notice that the people who deprecate the drift of country people to the towns are cither people who have themselves

drifted or who are dyed J? in the Wo °l townsmen? GO TO TOWN. Mr. Wright (Minister of Education) i 9 among the latest depreeators. He himself drifted earlier in the piece from Hokitika to Wellington. Instead of being a printer, he might easily nave become a farmer and thus showed the rising generation a point. It would surprise you if you went down Queen Street sticking up your fellow men to find how many of our most illustrious citizens drifted from the land to the pavement. Even the Government itself is not blameless in this matter. It has been the habit in the past to assess the value of land on the highest price the biggest " eap " has paid for the adjacent land. It has been the custom to permit people to occupy land the only access to which is by mud. Mr. John Government might easily start a drift from the town to the country if it insisted that the graces and decencies of civilisation got to a proposed settlement before the settlers. WTiat the drift to town really means is that there are fewer folk on the primal dirt to grow stuff to keep the many eaters in the towns. A reversion will take place when there is less to eat because there is less grown in the country Some day, too, when the State by its servants gets a rush of intellect to the cerebellum it will reason that land is of no value if it doesn't produce something, and that it is better to give it away V, an to let Mother Nature grow weeds on it. But in any case it will always be the man who is snugly ensconced next to a concrete road, a good pavement and a movie show who wants to know whatever is coming over New Zealanders who hanker after some of the dear delights that we city highbrows enjoy. New Zealand is bo small that anv powerful intellect (such as is owned bv any Minister) will make a plan for taking fun and comfort into every backblocks communitv. One season of jacking a milk cart out of the mud every morning would rure the deprecafors of the national habit of drifting to the sidewalk, ~ " "