THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 246, 18 October 1927, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

A message from Perth says that two tribes of blackfellowa aquabbled about a lubra and had a war. Nothing much in this, except that it is hard to underTHE LUBRA. stand even blackfellowß fighting about a lubra. A blackfellow fight is highly interesting, the preliminary skirmish taking place from behind trees in the most approved " take cover " style of the white man. If one excited Binjie breaks cover, the whole of them take courage, emerge into the open, and the spears fly fast and thick. At close quarters the men with the pipe stem legs use waddies and prefer the blow to the point. The ladies take an immense interest in the war and female faces like black cracks of doom peer from behind the bushes and jabber in a kind of simian chant. As a gin lives a ghastly life with Binjie, his sudden demise with a barbed spear through him is frequently cause for congratulation.

Our crude and callous ancestors, when convinced that a lady was excessively talkative, condemned her to a period in the " scold's bridle," a piece of iron-GOLD-MOTJNTED mongery with straps, BRIDLE. compelling silence. There are several in the Tower of London, and sometimes parties of M.P.'s crowd to see them, exclaiming, "Shame!" Except in Puritan times, the bridle has not been used in America either for women or men, and our cousins have tried many means without success to keep Americans from talking. A method has at last been discovered. Miss Ruth Elder and her flying mate, Captain George Haldermann, were forced down and rescued in an Atlantic flight, and undoubtedly countless American papers had Ruth's story ready to give to the world. Very naturally, Miss Elder would have been quite ready to say a few modest words, but the financiers who were "back" of Miss Elder have applied the gag. They forbid her to talk until they have sold her story for £30,000. On the whole, this gag seems as efficient a handicap to the' free flow of chit-chat as the scold's bridles of our ancestors.

If a fellow could find the scrap heap where the New Zealand Government dumps its discarded typewriters he would obviously

have enough machines to THE STATE give every man, woman SCRAP HEAP, and child some, and then

send the worst to the Samoans to write their grievances with. Cabled that because the King demanded to know why British Government offices used foreign typewriters, those offices now buy British machines. New Zealand is to follow suit, and the astounding information is conveyed that the yearly contract from this Government will be worth £54,000. Roughly speaking, this means that Mr. Coates' employees use up two thousand typewriting machines every year. Where this vast mine of typewriters goes to, goodness only knows. The inference is that the average Civil servant works at such a hectic rate that he or she wears out several machines every year. Casually observing these abnormal workers, one has never seen one of their machines burst into flames yet. Here, for instance, is a machine scrapped by the Government twenty odd years ago. The user has punched out countless millions of words on it. It, has never had a doctor, and the only medicine it has taken is thin oil. It is fit to punch out more millions of words. Perhaps in its benevolence the Government awards deserving civilians a typewriter for good conduct and safe voting. Despite this plethora of Government typewriters, one often receives laconic keep-it-steadily-in-view epistles from Departments which looked like Jacob's ladders, inferring that the machines have lost alignment through years of strenuous work. Where does this vast reef of typewriters go to?

Doctor Dorothy Logan is the woman who did not swim the English Channel. While the public was reading its paper and applaud-

ing the brave girl, she DOINGS was wrapped cosily up in OF DOROTHY, blankets on a smack-

and one wouldn't have done her any harm. Dorothy, from the cabled data, claims to be a kind of moral sporting regenerator and somehow reminds one of a class of official moralists who imbibe copious draughts of illegal intoxicants in order to get the seller in gaol. Dorothy's swim in blankets, however, may suggest that the popular pastime of swimming the Channel can be just as easily done with a fountain pen as making oneself so unpleasantly wet in twenty-one miles of damp sea. Formerly, powerful persons like Captain Webb and his successors attempted the swim as a supreme feat, but it is now a school girl; stunt, or a pleasant recreation after a heavy London season. If the Channel can be swum in blankets on a boat, the heights of the Himalayas ought to be available in a good hotel with waiters marking the various stages with champagne. These Atlantic nights and that kind of thing! Why fly when the journey can be accomplished in an armchair with a pipe? The doings of Dorothy remind one of Mark Twain, who in " Innocents Abroad " tells us how he accomplished gigantic feats of climbing in the Alps by remaining on the hotel verandah smoking two cigars at once, while his agent did the real business with the alpenstock. Terhaps the quaintest point about Dorothy is that she accepted the price of her splendid swim in blankets and afterwards, like the little lady she is, gave it back. Wonder how many Channel swimmers owe their financial agents a few thousands?

Few normal New Zcalanders who have lived in this favoured country all their lives know what thirst really is. In fact, hardly

any of us, after paddling LEAKY TAPS. out of our subacquatic suburban section for four months on end, or noting that the tap runs whenever it is turned, give a thought to the many to whom water is dearer than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. A story from Australia tells of the adventures of two women who drove fifty miles to cart fresh water "as the water on the farm was brackish." The story said that the brackish water was good for stock, but not for people. Yet isolated folks, deprived of every kind of green food in the backblocks, do subsist for periods on brackish water.' Ghastly wraiths of men they often are, scurvyridden and mentally a little abnormal. Their only salvation is good vegetable food, and people who arrive in hospital looking like ghosts, unless they are too far gone, flourish like green bay trees after a week or so of normal eating. The Australian traveller, because of the climate, achieves a thirst in much shorter time than a New Zealand traveller, and all his distances are measured by the waterholes or other possible (and impossible) supplies. A man who knows many waterholes and who has dipped his dry face in smellful dams containing drowned "cattle, sheep and rabbits says that on the whole he'd rather exist in Edendale than live on the Great Australian Desert. He keeps a dilapidated canvas waterbag hung alongside his Eembrandts in the drawing room to remind him not to let the house taps leak.