THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 109, 10 May 1928, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) I Dear M.A.T., —About a . week ago you gave ua a bus joke, so this one may interest you as an example of one of the few occasions on which the defiler of FIRE! public notices achieves something humorous. In I the buses which belong to a fleet running to a well-known southern suburb there is a prominent notice displayed in accordance with the bus regulations: "Emergency Exit. To open door at rear (1) remove centre cushion; (2) lift catch; (3) push door outwards." The wag has come along and added: "(4) Jump out; (5) run like L."—Yours, etc., K. Many of us affect indignation at the action of authorities in forbidding the playing of games in public parks by children on the Sabbath. And others are DAY OF REST, angry that scallawags sometimes escape and relatively innocent people who sell lollies on the Sabbath do not. There's quite a controversy going on in the Old Country about the same thing, and many indignant letters appear. But you can't get over the fact that the Lord's Day Observance Act of Charles 11. is still law and both work and play wider it were penal offences. While the Act was in full flower it was against the law even to walk on Sunday unless it was to church. Only a month or two ago Welsh pietists mobbed Sabbath golf players. It apparently isn't a sin to fight on Sunday. Dozens of cases against people who have traded on Sunday have lately been heard, and the case of a notable rebel is quoted. This was Jacob Popp, who appeared three hundred and forty times before the beak for refreshing folks on Sunday. In Scotland the dour Sabbath is still the custom and a bridge in that country was recently closed on a Sunday to prevent golfers playing. Wales, where feeling is hot and strong, is even worse. Manchester is the most densely-populated place in the Empire, but the parks for Sunday games are absolutely barred in this, the hardest-headed city on earth. In New England, U.SA., the Sabbath laws have never been repealed, and in Sweden it is even illegal for a man to dig his garden on the Sabbath, so we seem to have as much freedom as most. Thus lie spoke: "You know what 'cheese bandage' is, don't you?" "Search me, Steve,*' said M.A.T. "It's the cotton thing that goes round the good old cheese HARDLY that goes to the good Old THE CHEESE. Country for our good old relatives, and we use several million yards per annum." "Go on!" said M.A.T. "Yes," said he, "Manchester makes this bandage. Manchester is in England. Mancastrians and other British folk eat our cheese. Americans make cheese bandage. They I are our friends, but they don't eat our cheese, or even our butter. Our Customs regulations say that there is a fifteen-per-cent preference to our relatives on cheese bandage. Get me? But there is a naughty little clause which makes this and other things of the sort free of duty if it is used on any article we export. Therefore it appears to you that a few million yards of cheese bandage from America, which has the cotton on the spot, can get into New Zealand, making the efforts of the Mancastrian cotton fellows practically useless." "I wonder," continued he, "if the cheese growers who send all their produce to Britain ever think of a little thing like this and why New Zealand cheese reaches the Manchester man's table swathed in American manufactured cotton. Makes my heart bleed. How's yours?"

There has been occasion lately to mention the groat working city of Manchester herein, and it recurs, as one regards a huge pile of New Zealand documents MANNERS (intended to secure repayFOR MEN. ment of about fifty pounds), that a "Manchester Man's Agreement" consists in having a soop o' ale, shaking hands, saying "thot's aw reet!" and going about one's business without a scrape of pen, the half-million consideration being "safe as t' bank." Manchester has special ways of its own, as a friend points out. The juxtaposition of two public notices in that city seems to him • curious. As the city is inordinately crowded, the Health Committee is extremely active, and there appears alongside a ship canal advertisement one of the Health Committee's slogans: DON'T SPIT ON THE CARS. USE THE MANCHESTER SHIP CANAL. It was considered impolite in the Victorian Age to use the explanatory and excellent word "spit," and one remembers a black notice on a white board: BE A GENTLEMAN. DO NOT EXPECTORATE. YOU CANNOT EXPECT TO RATE AS A GENTLEMAN IF YOU DO. The last line, it is unnecessary to state, was unofficial. j Believing in the slogan, ''Buy New Zealandmade Goods," the Federated Ironmasters' Association and the Federation of Amalgamated Engineering Unions YES ! recently circul arise d about one hundred local bodies, various boards and institutions, requesting them, when purchasing machinery or iron or steel, to remember to buy Dominion-made goods. If you want a brace of blankets or a double-furrow plough, A broom to sweep the dust away or grass seed that will grow, A sturdy wire-wove mattress and a rimu bedstead, too. The best of daily papers, let us send a Star to you ! Remember that New Zealand goods are not at all the worst. You could buy from older countries, but please try New Zealand first! We have lots and lots of products that we all describe as "raw." We have lots and lots of fingers at the end of every paw, We've as fine a little workshop as the world has ' ever seen. With lots of sites for benches dotted in among the green. We can make the things we're wanting from the stuff thut we possess, Shall we buy within our borders? Now, altogether ~Ycs ! It is remarkable how' much general sympathy tho misfortune of Sir Charles Skerrett, tho Chief Justice, has occasioned, and nice to find that he THE OTHER has so many personal FELLOW'S VIEW, friends among various classes of people. Tragic, too, that a man who has been so physically as well as mentally active should lose a leg. Anyone who remembers his great nimblencss as a polo player and his keen interest in every kind of field sport will all the more regret the misfortune. Stimulating, too, to remember that tho appointment of Sir Charles, the most brilliant lawyer in the country, spurred no ill-feelings in any class and that it was free from any influence. A friend, being informed of Sir Charles' misfortune, was visibly moved and turned pale. Quite simply he said, "Poor «u • ie* fl-nd added he had the pleasure of being much with him in London. The two cronies were of one mind as to sights to see and together they went to curious and historic places quite out of the track of the globe trotter. And this friend of Sir Charles, who has travelled very widely, speaking of the Chief Justice's extreme interest in all kinds ol people from the mere human and not the lawyers point of view, says that anv man is J safe even in Chicago if he sees the other fellow s point of view. To see the oth-r fellow s point of view is the strongest attribute ot Sir Charles' character.