THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 124, 28 May 1928, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

A fatherly Railway Department proposes to hire summer dustcoats to train passengers at a reasonable fee. It is a step in the Ion"-. uphill climb to perfectioli MR. of travelling. American COATES' COATS, railroad companies spray oil ou their permanent ways to keep the dust down, but Xew Zealand goes one better by keeping the dust up as a business proposition, the gritty passenger rushing to the stationmaster to save his twelve-guinea suit from destruction. Mac mentions that under the new dispensation every pah will have its pa (or even ma) attired in a Government dustcoat, believing it is included in the fare from Wainuiorewi to Paekoreakiwi, and wishes to know whether the new dustcoats will be branded with the broad arrow to distinguish them from privatelv-owned ulsters of like pattern. Xot long since the authorities asked, "What's wrong with the railwaysand made everything right by supplying free paper bags to protect the hats of ladies. Has the Government noticed the absence of State corkscrews on all its lines, and might one suggest that they be stapled per bullock chain to ironwork? You may hire a pillow, but where are the dry socks and carpet slippers? The new system will necessitate depots at railway stations resembling second-hand clothing stores. You will never know who wore your ration dustcoat before you. You might be a bishop and have issued to you a coat in which an Afro-American prize lighter has slept. Who will dust the dustcoats? We shall need a corps of valets; men who ran break ten seconds over a measured one hundred yards. But will the. authorities search portmanteaus for broadarrow dustcoats?

Dear M.A.T.. —To-day will Tie yesterday to-morrow, but to-morrow will not abolish the thoughts of to-day. I wrote you a week or

so ago about the motor A PLAIN GROWL, trip I had home in a bus

that set out for Richmond terminus one night a little over a week ago, and now I have to complain again. This morning I arrived as usual at Peel .Street about two minutes to the quarter to eight to catch the 7.45 bus to town, and it was as bare as a billiard table as far as City Council buses were concerned. There were just twenty other people there, too, and we all got to work late— there was no quarter to eight bus—we got the live to eight. Pretty rough, what do you say? J a V.

Lovers of flowers, tending the verdant promise of an early spring, delicious with the gifts of flora, have no selfish thoughts, for

the maker of a garden DREAMING makes it for the eyes of OF FLORA, all and not for self alone.

Thus, attired in sou'wester, mackintosh and gumboots, the amateur waylays the caterpillar, salts the slug and gives a fatal stab to the myriad insect enemies that make gardening a gamble. A lady writes to show how her arduous attempt to grow prize carnations helped others to appreciate the beauties of this choice flower. She had been most successful and her blooms were royal in their odorous splendour. And the evening before the show she had taken a last lingering look at the splendid blooms by the aid of an electric torch. She felt perfectly certain that there were many potential prize winners. As a matter of fact, there were. They were benched the next day in all their glory, but the gentleman who gathered them in the dead of night, while the grower was wrapped in dreams of tloral victorv, got the prizes. The lady mentions that she* feels glad to have stirred in the heart of someone a love fur flowers, lnit owns to a feeling of depression when she entered her garden in which there were many footprints but no carnations. Dear M.A. T..—l always welcome the evening "Star's ' Saturday Supplement. a> it gives me great pleasure to read Neville Folder's reminiscences of AuckIN 1865. land, particularly the western portion. I have been eagerly looking for any mention by him of Ine eighteen to twenty young lads who ill the year 186.3 dug up the stunted tea-tree and laid down a cricket pitch. The writer was employed in Hay and Honeyman's soft goods store. Tha firm presented the lads with two six-foot lengths of coconut matting for the ends of the pitch. This was the nucleus of what was afterwards the Ponsonbv and West End Cricket Clubs. Then, again, I "would very much like to hear his account of the beautiful Cremorne gardens and particularly at the time when the"Duke of Edinburgh with his friends invaded the dance rotunda and took charge of the musical instrument and played the dance music till davlight dawned.— Mazurka. Lord Eustace Percy, president of the British Board of Education, agrees that the text books used in British schools are often ____ out of date and inaccurate WHERE IS regarding the Dominions. NEW ZEALAND? There is some excuse for old text books being sold, but one wonders if there is any excuse for ignorance of the locality of a Dominion. Will Lord Eustace Percy kindly pop round in the Strand (No. :>4t>) and tell the editor of the .Moi ning Post'that an island is a piece of land entirely surrounded by water, and that New Zealand is an island? The famous blue-blooded paper, which is delightfully courteous about Xew Zealand's credit (which is the highest of the Dominions), ends up an appreciative bit about New Zealand maturities with this: "New Zealand is among the more popular of Australian borrowers." Doesn't it make a hundred-per-cent Maorilander gnash his porcelain'.' I Once there was a poet cliap who. lacking the necessary quantity of shut-eye. called upon some person or persons to "measure him out from the fathomless deep SLEEP. twenty gallons of sleep."' He didn't say in the last verse whether the purveyor of sleep tilled the order. Wonder who the fellow was who ordered sleepless humanity to count imaginarv sheep through an imaginary gap and to fail asleep during the tally. As a matter of fact, trying to go to sleep is the finest way of keeping awake, and trying to keep awake is the best method of achieving slumber. The editor of the "Science of Thought Review" said he gave up the idea of sleeping and went into an open-air shelter just to "lie awake drinking iu the beauty of the night. "Well," said the sufferer from insomnia, "night came, and we lay down to" enjoy the beauties of Nature the stars, the trees, flowers, night biids, etc. But within live minutes we were fast asleep, and we knew nothing until the 1 morning, when we awoke after a long spell of refreshing slumber. The secret is to make up one's mir.d to remain awake and to enjoy it in a restful manner.' Aucklaiulers who select the open-air method of wooing slumber need not necessarily choose a night like Sundav tor the experiment. Chaotic* are eating their insidious wav into the minds of the people. Some write mentioning that almost any word is capable rw °f infinite complications CHAOTICS. and that a simple word . contains so many others that the task is titanic. The one idea is to make a real word from the false word given, and to use all the available letters. " The answer to Saturday's Chaotic is: Cenipotli Phonetic Here is a Chaotic that sounds like a lullaby: P tva-Urtibl from.