THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 198, 23 August 1928, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) Quaint lesson for the temperate (and others) in the vodka situation of Russia. When Bolshevism became the vogue the Soviets, finding that Russians insisted HERE'S LUCK SKI! on drinking, tried to stop the manufacture of this stuff with a kick like an army mule and an aftermath of knouts, machine pistols and assassination. People still made this harsh, strong, fiery "brandy" distilled from rye; or oats, barley and rye mixed. The revenue fell so terribly that the sainted Soviets wished vodka back, and, indeed, brought it back with a rush and made a State monopoly of it. No doubt there were rich pickings in this for Government agents. Russians evidently welcomed this nasty stuff back again with such enthusiasm that the Governments of the vast republic will again restrict its sale. It is usually thought that Russians drink this worst possible liquor just because they are sorry for being Russians. What a shame it is that the police send innocent-looking constables to entrap the fortune teller, for it has always been the great gull public that has inCROSS YOUR sisted on fortune tellers. PALM. A palmist has been fined in Christchurch quite recently. On the dictum of an American wiseacre there is "a sucker born every minute," and if fortune tellers do not reach for his five shillings somebody else will have him for seven-and-sixpence. Once upon a time there was a campaign to root out fortune tellers of the type to whom people despairing of their health went, after doctors had considered their cases hopeless. The Press made copy out of it, and very good copy it was. One man had an old friend who was dying of a mortal disease and who did die. The health fortune teller to whom the man went asked him if he had anything personal to the invalid and the investigator produced a lock of hair. The fortune teller laid the lock on his own forehead and relapsed into a "trance." Reviving, he gave minute instructions as to treatment, one treatment being to draw a towel backwards and forwards across the patient's neck. The lock of hair, through the medium of which the fortune teller had "seen" the patient and prescribed treatment was cut from an old skin hearth rug. "Blesbok": Noted that a Chinese in Wellington, having some especially fat pillows, was stuck up by the Customs, who found he was smuggling silk. 1.D.8. It reminded me of my native town Kimberley, where smuggling of diamonds is a fine art. The country is thick with 1.D.8. people. It isn't the fat and opulent white man who does the smuggling, but the large and innocent black boy of the mines. It was my painful duty for some years to examine mine boys when they came off shift, and, meticulous as the process was, they enriched many a gentleman who is now living in luxury in London. It was necessary sometimes to induce sneezing, for the boy might have a priceless pebble in his nostril. One boy had an upper denture made specially so that he could conceal a small stone or so between it and the roof of his mouth. It was rather crude to put them in the ear, or in the false bottom of a "crib can, or to cut a slit under the armpit and stow tho sparklers (which don't sparkle when they are won), or to stick them with glue or mud in their hair wool, or to swallow them. The most successful thieves appeared to be those who embedded stones in a lump of clay, pressed the lump on a stick, and in the old boyish way threw the clay outside the compound, where a friend waited for the windfall. Beauty, judged on American film standards, is not skin, but flesh deep. Following tnc operation on Jack Dempsey's battered but precious nose, which has THE CU(L)TS been rebuilt along the OF BEAUTY, noblest of Grecian lines,

the spirit of the savage has invaded fantastic fashions in Uncle Sam's land. You can have your frontispiece sliced, chiselled or reconstructed on artistic design to enable you to make a finer impression on the world at large. It seems, however, that Nature is no willing slave to this voluntary torture, and the promise of beauty is not always fulfilled. Sometimes the knife slips or the patient moves unexpectedly and the handiwork of fashion is damaged. Alarmed at a succession of claims by men and women who allege that they have been cut, infected and marred by imperfect face liftings and beautilyng operations, the plastic surgeons of Hollywood have organised "to safeguard a reputablo profession from objectionable exploitations. It is indeed a sad reflection on vaunted progress that there should be patients so ungrateful for the blessings of knowledge and skill developed to lift the ugly to the plane of beauty. Oh, Vanity, here is thy sting! J

Not long since infuriated marine suburbanites demanded that all dogs should either be killed or led because they used the sea to swim in and the beach to BOW-WOW. play on. Others have now cropped up demanding the spiflication of Alsatian dogs, the animals who look so much like superior wolves and undoubtedly seem kin to the Australian dingo, the cunningest canine devil who ever killed sheep and refrained from barking. Doggy men may know that domestic dogs run wild and living with dingoes lose their desire to bark and assume that dreary howl that makes a backblocks man feel that taniwhas, ghumis and other horrors were tramping on his grave. Of course Alsatians would never kill sheep. No, 110! But his brother the dingo, together with many brethren, will muster a whole paddock, and while the scouts hold the mob the killers' will rush in and kill as many as a hundred a night. These charming animals open the sheep and merely eat the kidneys and kidney fat, and Australian farmers vehemently hunt the dogs and pay much wealth for scalps. One of the things the dingo usually despises is a dog trap, but young and innocent dingoes sometimes get caught and have been known to gnaw a leg off to get free. A common practice in Austrilian dingo country is to muster a paddock (maybe twenty-five miles long) of sheep, then afterwards drive the paddock for dingoes, the whole of the men in the neighbourhood moving in a line on horseback and driving the dogs to the shooters. This acrimony against the Alsatian began in a London park, where a lady's pet pulled down a c'..ild. There are other dogs with such a hobby. For instance, a giant boarhound in a New Zealand town quietly stole up behind a lady whom he had never previously seen, and, springing 011 her shoulders, injured her severely by biting her neck. CHAOTICS. Solution to the verbal cat's cradle set for students last night: Bainifitcoup Purification. And an old friend who has appeared before in this literary section says Staralian. liy solution 'win take you exactly five seconds.