THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 277, 23 November 1927, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

The fair maid sat with her handsome lad watching the' lissome limbs of the young swimmers at the carnival yesterday. In the fifty yards handicap the

A MEAN ACT.

times for the first three

heats were thirty or thirty-one seconds. But the announcement came for the fourth, "Twenty-nine and fourfifths seconds." The fair girl turned to her handsome boy and murmured, "How mean! They might have made it thirty!"

Dear ALA.T., —May I ask a few questions? Why does New Zealand, which is a meat exporting country, sell frozen meat to New Zealanders at the price of QUESTIONNAIRE, fresh prime meat? Much of the meat at the higher price seems to have had long voyages and to be without taste and food value. Why, in a butter producing country, is it a gamble whether the local butter eater obtains good, wholesome, fresh butter—or stock apparently retrieved after long residence in the cooler and unsaleable at Home? This butter is always sold at the same price as good, best fresh. Why does not New Zealand export bacon? Ts it because New Zealand hasn't learned to make bacon yet? Pig to-day, rasher to-morrow!— T.W.B.

A correspondent who is a little too overwrought with a recent motor fatality to be inoffensive in print yet has a point to make.

He agrees jthat sheep BEAST stealing ia a crime that AND HUMAN, if persisted in certainly merits imprisonment, lie wonders, however, if the judicial mind has adjusted itself regarding the relative values of beast and human life, mentioning that for sheep stealing a man was lately sent to gaol for three years, while for causing the death of a human being a fine was all the State demanded from another. He says many other things, which, however, might merely $tir the animosities that already exist as to the disparities of our modern code.

The late Mr. Justice AJpers used to tell the story of the young barrister whose first appearance in a criminal trial it was. He had the job of defending A BUDDING a hopeless misdemeanant BARRISTER, who had undoubtedly been

guilty of an unprovoked assault. Ho gave a very moving address, inferring that for spotlessness the gentleman in the dock was as white as the untrodden snow lying across the trackless summit of Egmont. He raked the jury's feelings with impassioned oratory, pictured" a desolate world deprived for the time being of his stainless client, and, pouring his soul into a declamatory peroration, made his conge, feeling that he had indeed in fifty minutes of matchless appeal set his foot upon the ladder of success. The jndge smiled blandly at him, and even thanked him. "Your speech recalls the indictment by Burke, Fox, Sheridan, Windham and Grey of Warren Hastings. His trial, if you remember, lasted seven years."

Muley Mohammed, the fourteen-year-old Sultan of Morocco, has inaugurated his succession to the throne by sweeping his father's harem away.

THE Three hundred widows, WHOLESALER, etc, mourn their imperial husband's loss.

Would I bad been Morocco bound When Pa was on the throne. To see the lovellght in his ere When he exclaimed, "Sty own. My blackest pearl, my dearest girl, My tender little witch! " Three hundred sombre ladies cry, "Oh, darling papa—which?"

I would not be a Sultan. No! I would not like hia job, Say. thirty dozea silken hose. Per pair, say, thirty bob? I'd fear to hear the breakfast bell, Oh, how my heart would thrill When Buley Hu, the Ethiope, Brought in the grocer's bill!

I love sweet, little children. Say, Six, seven, eight, nine or ten; A modest family for a man. But when, yM when, oh when 1 bought nine hundred birthday gifts I'd cease polygamy. And very likely then exclaim, "One wife's enough for me! **

Too tardily the voices of some Aucklanders rise in a limited anthem, "Save the pohutukawas!" Alleged that the firewood fiend

pushes the nose of his KNEES boat into the entrancing AND TREES, bays where blooms at

Yuletide the most beautiful tree we have and .chops other people's timber to sell at prices that seem to say- that firewood is priceless. But there is another type of pohutukawa destroyer who should be spoken to in the gruff voice of officialdom. He is the fellow who believes the Creator spent five hundred years in order to grow a "knee" for his boat. The value of the pohutukawas adorning our headlands is incalculable, but there are hundreds of insensate citizens who will destroy one to save three-and-sixpence. On Auckland beaches not so many years ago there were pohutukawas of great magnificence. It is inexplicable to the sane that people who bought the sections (the most valuable part of which were the said trees, and which, by the way, protected their holdings) cut them down. Nature grinned in several instances, and, finding hideous concrete walls where once had been lovely trees, sent gales along and long waves and swept the concrete away like grains of 6and. It seems nobody's business to say nay. Perhaps our new town planner, when he has moistened his hands, may be given power to take the hundreds of despoilers to the place they belong.

The punitive expedition to the Solomon Islands is a reminder to a fellow scribe of bully beef. He says, in effect, that an islander will leave his father, BULLY. mother, wife or children , to cling to a tin of beef, and recalls the investment of Samoa by NewZealand volunteer troops. Some Fernleaves were found sitting round an enormous tub ™ jniit salad, dipping it up with canteens and other soldierly utensils. Interested fellow soldiers naturally asked whence this shower of blessing had fallen, and it was explained that one pound tin of bully was current coin for one tub of fruit salad. There is another point about bully. Thousands of tons of it were eaten by the troops in the South African War, and thousands of otherwise unblooded bayonets became" tin-openers. Every meat canning country contributed — Australia, America (Chicago) and New Zealand. Troops, heard of the fame of New Zealand bully, and Home troops especially invaded New Zealand lines when there was a Uaoriland issue and exchanged priceless comestibles (especiallv sugar, the most prized of all) for it. It easilv beat all other brands as food. Recalled, too, that somo wooden-headed Brass Hat of the Army Service Corps caused six-pound tins to be issued to the cavalry which relieved Kimberley, making it necessary for one man to carry the meat ration for four men, an absurd aijangement that handicapped one man ln ev ® ry on a terrible march over burning country The fact that most of those tin! were thrown away unopened because of the necessity of moving quickly was joy unspeakable to the legions of the black who followed 2? l Co, " mns -. i J f were lucky enough to T- a Stack of six-pound bully beef tins you would have seen them swellm wisibly."