THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 233, 2 October 1928, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) GIFTS. The airmen of the Southern Cross are deluged with presents wherever they go. What will yon have, birdmen, what shall we give? Socks, ties and fountain pens, cream for your "chiv," Openwork singlets to wear in the air, Fag cases or cufflinks? Oh, do take a pair! Waistcoats of bunny fur, rich Maori mats, Bouquets from lovely girls, mascots of cats. "Smithy," replying, said: "One moment, please, Give us, oh give us, a morsel of peace I" It's all very well dear old Oliver Lodge saying war is a dirty, disgraceful business and no occupation for a gentleman. The magnificent old scientist OLIVER ASKS knows as well as you do NO MORE, that there would be no gentleman if there was no war. Everybody owes his advantage in life to war, lethal or commercial. If you can't cut your rival's throat you can cut his profits. Oliver objects to people digging in the mud in order to crawl nearer other Christians to blow them nearer to the place Christians say they are going to. He doesn't like crawling about under water in submarines to do the same thing. In fact, he's an incurable pacifist. While celebrated persons like Sir Oliver are rushing about with olive branches equally famous men are rushing around showing their coats of arms founded in good red blood drawn by their forefathers so that they themselves are now blue-blooded. If yo '. abolish war you abolish gentility. Oliver knows if it is right and proper to prevent nations cutting each other's throats, the animal world which is always at war should be prevented and the lion lie down with the lamb. If you were to trace Oliver's family tree to the first saplings you'd find some of them with rocks and sticks assuring their successors' future gentility by bashing the other fellow's head in. All those peaceable nobs at Geneva are talking doves and white flags, while the papers arc full of lovely photographs of new warships, anyone of which could lay Auckland waste in half an hour. And as this dove-and-white-flag business proceeds the armies are abolishing old-fashioned methods of death for much more highly-organised methods for wiping out humanity. Fact is, dear old Oliver is growing old. He wouldn't 1 "■ much nse in a cut-throat party gathered in the name of Liberty to make the weaker fellow smell hell.

His Excellency the Governor - General, speaking of art and the artist, mentioned the budding Rubens who, with downcast eyes, read the evening paper FAINT PRAISE, hoping against hope to find his name there and quoted "the craze for fame is in us one and all, better be damned than mentioned not at all." Poor rhyme but sound philosophy. If you damn a man with faint praise, or damn him good and hard without praise, you will probably help him. Mr. Seddon understood this very well and he got many priceless moments browsing on ephemeral literature which abused him as if he were the earth's worst pickpocket. Speaking of this to MAT. one day, the great Premier roared with laughter at an extremely bitter attack on him in a Wairarapa paper and said: "I don't give a damn what these fellows say about me as long as they say something." At that time a very nasty book was having phenomenal sales because earnest clergymen were advertising it by denouncing it from the pulpits, saying it wasn't fit to read.

Xo, human nature does not change in a hurry. News from Melbourne on October 1, 1923, mentions that strikers attacked free workers with bale hooks, YESTERDAY AND shovels and fists. The FOREVER. police charged with batons. Here a newspaper extract dated April 25, 1768: "A large body of coalheavers assembled in a riotous manner at Wapping, went on board the colliers, and obliged those men who were at work to leave off so that the business is at a stand. A fray afterwards ensued between the lumpers' servants and the coalheavers in which three men were killed and several wounded. A partv of the Guards was sent from the Tower to quell the rioters. They are most of them Irish, have formed themselves into several parties, go armed with cutlasses and pistols, and by means of catcalls can in a short time assemble a vast number together." The only things the Wapping men seemed short of were bale hooks. Originally most everything was made in pairs, and the scheme as laid down was fairlv simple and understandable, needing little or no explanation. But toPAIRS. day there are different kinds of pairs. For instance, a pair of shoes means two shoes, but two shoes do not necessarily mean a pair, they may be odd ones. On the other hand' such an error could not happen in describing a pair of trousers, because there are no such things as odd trousers. Again, on the other hand, a man may have a pair of black eves; they may even be described as a beautiful "pair of black eyes. But a man may have only one black eye and still be able to wear it with dignity and distinction without any vearnin* r to acquire another one just in order to make a pair; impossible to do with a part of a pair of trousers. Pairs of different kinds are things often used both for decorative and useful purposes, but taken generally the word "pair" conveys the idea that one of a pair is not much good without its complementary part. As pointed out, however, there are exceptions, rhe very latest kind of operative pair is that recently used for breaking up licensing bills and there is evidently a future in front of this latest development calculated to create a lot of interest.—The Odd Man.

Among all the beauteous buildings newlv leaping towards the skies in Auckland, none is black, but London, which has plenty of t>t • r*-r* smoke-black buildin £S is fSi-rv 1 anticipating smoke artisCOMELY. try by erecting a new _ one all in black material, it lias, so a London friend mentions, been put up in Oxford Circus. New York has an allblack skyscraper, too. The architectural idea is to defeat the blacks of the window spaces which m a very large pale buildin? make a too insistent pattern. The London buildinis so hijrhly polished, it reflects all the lightness, and the actual effect is said not to be black at all. CHAOTICS. An unusual but fascinating word: Ooisstbmrh Thrombosis. Candidates for honours at the next - >v : l] appreciate this one: liiaacclsfr. THOUGHTS FOR TO-DAY. * • • • Refinement creates beauty everywhere; it is the grossness of the spectator tha*t discovers nothing but grossness in the object.—Hazlitt. ,•• • • To brag little, to show well, to crow gently, if in luck; to pay up, to own up, and to shut up, if are the virtues of a sportsman.—Oliver Wendell Holmes. • • • A very few experiments will soon convince us that there are few pleasures in the world so reasonable and so cheap as the pleasure of giving pleasure.—A. C. Benson.