THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 32, 8 February 1928, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

Even the most careful of us are fated to make slips at times •with our mother tongue, so that we can afford a tolerant smile for

the old lady who visited MISUSING WORDS, a local doctor and in-

formed him that she was enduring "scrutinising pains." We might be less inclined to forgive the chairman of a hospital board, who tried to impress his confreres that it was time the whole building under their charge was "renoverated." But what of tho Northland farmer's wife who determined to have her daughter's voice trained and told an afternoon tea gathering that she was sending her daughter to Auckland to study" under "Marconi"?

The genial JJ;m ■ r of our city made a discovery while scaii:ig the heights of Pukematekeo on Sunday with the scientists who were accompanying Dr. THE MAYOR A. W. Hill on a tour of AND the Waitakercs. At the THE DAISIES, public welcome to the

English botanist on Monday evening, his Worship made known his discovery. With a gesture which was warmly reminiscent of the climbing adventure, he said that whenever the climbing became unusually stiff one of the botanists would drop on his knees with exclamations of special interest for a blade of grass or a daisy or something of the kind. The others would rally "round and discuss the exhibit. At first he admired their enthusiasm for scientific research, but by the evidence of recurring events his innocent eyes were eventually opened. However, it was quite a good way to preserve one's wind, and he might on occasion use the method himself. So when you see our herculean Mayor on some rural hillside gazing at the face of a dandelion or inhaling the perfume of a bunch of penny royal you will know the reason for it. MA.T. is not one of the kind whose life has been of the hcctic order. There is a reason, of course, because nobody could produce even the semblance of an arguYOUR SHOT. ment to show that the life of a hermit is .5 per cent as enjoyable as that led by the young bloods of to-day. M.A.T. was married .young and quickly settled down, like the fizz of a Seidlitz drink, and life has been rather fiat ever since. However, one of the little ; pleasures the writer enjoys is a game of billiards. He is no George Gray, Tom Reece, Walter Lindrum, but on a good table will occasionally, with the balls running kindly and sticking as close together as lovers, knock up a ten break. Dropping into a certain saloon in the city recently, M.A.T. was an interested spectator of a match of fifty-up between two young fellows who raced neck and neck (with acknowledgments to the racing reporters) from the break-up. In-offs resulted in cannons, cannons in losing hazards, miscues or one or other of the numerous flukes which are such an annoyance to the player who does not get them. Well, the young men plugged along, and at every fluke scathing remarks were passed by the non-striker. Each had ample opportunities to say the most unkind things, such as, "If you fell in the harbour you would come up with a ten-pound schnapper in each pocket." lln a thrilling finish the game was won by a bare two points. M.A.T. turned to a gentleman sitting alongside and remarked, "Great game that." "Er—yes. Do you know, I have watched billiards played in nearly every country in the world. I have seen Inman, Gray, Reece, Smith, the whole of them play, but, believe me, that game was the greatest game of billiards I have ever listened to!"

\Ye live in an age of enlightenment and magic, and the result is a mixture of insouciancc and superstition to make the pods . . . chortle in chorus. Most THE EVIL EYE. everything seems to have

its lucky side or its unlucky day, and the motorist who dispatches an incautious pedestrian to the higher levels out of his turn gloomily curses the ill-luck which made him forget the little mascot that morning. Charms and amulets are more numerous to-day than when ladies gave their knights guerdons for safe passage to and from the holy grail. People love as much as ever shudder joyfully over the sinister associations of some treasure possessed by another. Consider the rich mine of inspiration lor gruesome tales the famous (or notorious) Hope diamond has proved. If the inventor of the Hope diamond legend had copyrighted his story what a beautiful sackful of royalties he might have reaped. And now the horrorrevelling public is being regaled with the glugsoine adventures of the limousine in which the ill-starred Archduke Ferdinand of Austria and his wife were murdered at Serajevo on the fateful day of June, 1914. Like the mischiefworking corpse of a mummied Pharaoh it pursues its successive owners with an evil eye in the guise of a humble taxi cab, trailing murder and naughty mystery through the streets and boulevards of gayParee. And no one apparently has yet thought of terminating its gory career by putting a match to the benzine tank. Such a sordid suggestion is worthy only of a soulless materialist. The oue sinister possession, by that same token, which nobody minds carrying around is cold cash. Wealth is boiling over with ill-luck and disaster, yet no one cares a hoot about its evil associations, provided it arrives in bi" enough lumps. °

It doesn't often fall to the lot of the writer to "do" a cricket match—invariablv during the summer months I am engaged at tlio more expensive pasIS time of following the CRICKET SLOW? horses—but it so happened I was '"down" for the Ponsonby-Grafton game at Eden Park on Saturday. Without wishing to net into a half-Nelson with those who claim that cricket is about as thrilling as watching a game of draughts in the Public Library, I must admit I Mas disappointed at the meagre support accorded cricket by the public. At a touch guess there would be perhaps 150 present at the park, that is, counting spectators, players, tea room attendants and a couple of gate'men, but honestly the plav warranted as mauv hundreds. Three senior games, in which certain batsmen were knocking boundary hits galore, and now and then addiug a little seasoning to the score by getting a "sixer," other less important matches where the wickets were disappearing like the rabbits at a side show at the winter exhibition, and the Mount Albert Fire Brigade turning out on "wild goose chases" five times in two hours surely provided variety worthy of the Ziegtield Follies. In one match Horspool, Sloman° and Pope treated the handful of spectators to cricket of the dashing order; in another match the batsmen were kept busy putting on and taking olf pads. Eden Park on 'Saturday provided every brand of cricket—good, ball j and indifferent —and the only way to account for the poor public patronage is by concluding that Aucklanders do not like cricket. Then there are the critics on the hill—"lke" Mills "Bourkie," and others, who almost live in the' shade of a hoarding. They are there summer or winter. Just now it is cricket, in a few months it will be football, and the year round they are the life and soul of the partv as they hand out advice from their apparentlv unlimited stock. The pity of it is there are not a few hundreds more of them—they are the real sports, the kind who are an asset to any gaiue. A THOUGHT FOR TO-DAY. I love Truth. I think that humanity has need of it.—Anatole France.