THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 262, 5 November 1928, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

THE SOAP BOX.

Any Parliamentary candidate or other emancipator, using a packing case as a rostrum, is invariably said to be a soap-box orator. I do not like the phrase at all. All speeches are not froth and lather. Some use a butter case, and then The speech is greasy—rather ! I've known them use a candle box. And, waxing hot, will throw out Some guttering sentiments that seem The aftermath of blow out.

"Uncle and I," said Bill, "sat in front of the kitchen stove—an old-fashioned stove with the tin spout running through the ceiling; sort of thing that has cooked A BIT OF FISH, millions of colonial meals. 'That's a rum-looking cat, Uncle,' said I; 'sort of a rusty tortoiseshell, isn't it?' 'He wasn't always a tortoiseshell,' said Uncle darkly, and told the story. 'That cat in his young days would pinch anything. Nice bit of flslx for my lunch on the sideboard. The missus had the lire going good-oh. Plates in the oven, and all that. Went out into the scullery to wash my hands. Came bacfer. No fish. "Where's that cat, Mothtfr?" 1 screamed. "Been and pinched my fish! If I could find the blighter I'd screw his neck!" Searched the place inside and out. No cat. Gave it up. The wife opened the door of that oven to take the hot plates out. Out jumped a brown streak, flashed up the kitchen, out of the door and over the hills and far away. That's the same cat. Been tortoiseshell ever since. Does he still iike fish? You try him!" 1 The floods in the Manawatu district are nothing like they used to be when Adam was a boy, or before. Much of the country thereaway appears to have WANTED, been overrun with vast AN ARK. rivers in the old, old days, for pebbly paddocks ara a common feature of that terrain. Every Manawatu settler knows that he may gather ton after ton of river boulders from his fields this year only to find a perfectly fresh lot the year after; they keep rising to the with remarkable persistency. In modern years floods have isolated little towns, and present writer has been piloted over the tops of wire fences in boats to catch the available wheeled transport on the distant mud. It was not uncommon during watery spells to find whitebait far, far out of their beat swimming in places which in dry weather was sacred to grass. Or to be taking a morning row through the paddocks to find the favourite Jersey roosting in the branches of a willow tree. Incidentally, of course, in many parts of the country the floods come down in a perfectly Noah way, because our immediate forefathers had such a set on trees, eliminating any vegetable by axe and fire with an utter disregard for us and our grandchildren. When a flood from the denuded hills finds itself on those ancient pebbly bottoms it is lubricated and it does just naturally love to swirl. Very likely the eminent and respectable descendants of Guy Fawkes are proud of him. A rebel is very often a hero in disguise, and a rascal in one age beGUIDO. comes the saint of another. The people who ought to praise Guy from whom all fireworks flow are those who make them. Guy intended to blow Parliament up with old-fashioned gunpowder, tar and firesticks, the modern method of blowing up Parliaments being set forth in black and white every day in the papers. Guy was captured in the cellar of Parliament House on November 4, 1605. The late Mr. Catesbv was the prime mover and Guy was to be the trigger finger, but the local constabulary was too strong for him. Fawkes, who had been a tremendous soldier in the Netherlands, got his revolutionary notions there, and a stubborn devil he was; for he refused to implicate his mates until the State fitted him with the Scavenger's Daughter and gave him several turns of the wrack. They hanged him. Guv Fawkes Day is celebrated in New Zealand several weeks before due date by dismal little boys with smudged faces and tins with holes in. One often wonders if the parents of these unhappy urchins couldn't find a better way of begging. To-night the whole available police and fire-fighting services will stand by to prevent people who still love to kill Fawkes from burning the district. Noted that the New Plymouth bank authorities are to burn several tons of old ledgers, thus incinerating the cash records of . a hygone generation cf SCRAPS 0 PAPER, customers who used to ~ , believe five shillings would buy a crown s worth and a sovereign was worth nineteen and twelvepence. The farming public, reading that this destruction is to take place at a fertiliser manufacturing plant, is reassured that the ashes of the ledgers are not to be sold as super-bonedust or desiccated blood, but will be consumed by fire in the furnaces. It is the custom in some New Zealand cities to incinerate accounts no longer current in the local destructor. M.A.T. has unhappy memories of reams of blackened bills settling down on the surrounding gardens. The Wellington destructor in earlier days strewed the earth for miles round with commercial papers and deposited on one occasion a bill for £1000 18/4 alongside the milk billy on the doorstep. Housewives, seeing the wind bringing this holocaust of commercial memoranda towards their dwellings, used to dash out and rescue the family washing from the blizzard of smuts. New Zealand axemen will be glad to read that their fellow bushmap, William Hohenzollern of Doom, often puts in a gruelling day ROYAL BUSHMAN, the Noted in the cabled assertion that the ex-Emperor dresses for the part in top boots, riding trousers and a reefer jacket, probably to distinguish him from the bloko jn dungarees and blucher boots who massacres trees for a living. No celebrity ever peels off and does a labourer's iob as if he U - Here's a precious old picture of William Ewart Gladstone murdering a tref at Ha warden. The G.O.M, is fully clothed, includinf a * r « c k coat > a silk hat and with the celebrated collar. A friend has a lovelv photo frame made from a "chip" chopped from an elm by the G.O.M. It is twelve by eight inches —some chip Here is a magazine article showmg i Ber " ar < l Shaw imitating William and Wilhelm. He is in full golfing outfit and has the axe poised as if he wa s {roin<r roxlnf i ... three The interesting ,„ rt is that Bernard is supposed to be chopping but that every bit of the wood has been carefully sawn, presumably by G.B.S.'s tame bushman. Dear M.A.T., What is a person to do* Going into town a while back with a newlycashed cheque I had a collection box shaken I act? vftTO face and was iijI ASK YOU? formed that the Mayor ~ , . OF some other worthy of our city was havmg a street collection fSr unemployed or something. J ust afterward! someone else had a similar collection another cause, and then they a li came—Saha tion Army, St. John AmbulLce, gM^hl eteß " and so on. I began to breathe freely as I thought every institution in town and m.t have benefited by this time_b"tl w,f doomed to despair, for on boldlv entering th« city the other night still enethe ' be" 8 thrust at me, this time bv a i a ? face-blackened urchin-Vennv Hnd .mkteri" MA.X, I abk