THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 20, 24 January 1929, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

We can't have any of this back-to-Nature stuff. Man and woman are indecent and woven wool and cotton the only real morality. On a recent hot day at THE ALTOGETHER. Sumner, Christchurch, a man was seen "mid noddings on" on one side of the Cave Rock, and a lady also in a state of Nature was observed during the day. Apparently the only person who didn't complain of people being just people was Nature herself, who is so remarkably careless in not clothing new infants in knee-to-neck "Canadians." A certain pride in having observed Nature thus seems to have guided the moralists in complaining to the Mayor of Sumner about this humanity, and he said: "It's a darn shame; there are dressing sheds," etc., etc. Very likely some day humanity will agree that it is the fuss and not the human being that is indecent —and such a lot of people use binoculars.

From what slight clues do hangings spring. And even in small misdemeanours the astute detective by common observation may solve a problem that might other - THE TELL-TALE wise be relegated to the HEART. long, long list of New Zealand's unsolved mysteries. The southern detective called at the citizen*'s house. The housewife (who may have seen his approach) hesitated to admit the officer, who. however, gained entrance and found the citizen in bed. He later explained to the Bench he was sure the man was not ill, but was malingering. Why? Well, his boots were under the bed, and they were warm. Then there was the case of the mere constable. A murderous assault was made in the Domain, Sydney, the perpetrator dashing among the trees with a constable in pursuit. The constable saw the usual Domain sight—many men lying on the grass asleep. But the sleuth quickly listened to every prone person until he came to a "sleeper" whose heart was thumping hard and whose breath was coming fast. In short, the man had been running, and was run in.

This little story has been carefully preserved for years until circumstances make it no longer likely to hurt anyone in the telling. Four patients in a mental FOUR CORPSES, hospital died. Two of these had relatives and two had none. It was decided, therefore, to dispatch the two without relatives to Dunedin for dissection and the other two to the relatives for interment. What is certain is that a frantic wire was later dispatched from a station in the south intimating that the two corpses en route to Dunedin and dissection were those that should have been handed over to relatives and the corpses which were possibly being handed over to relatives further north were in fact the friendless ones. It is nice, however, to be able to say that the change was made and that the medical students of Dunedin were not really robbed of their lesson in dissection.

A reliable observer, accompanied by a no less dependable deponent, mentions that he passed a series of small shops in Mount Eden on the way to work. They A PATHETIC were astounded to observe NOTE, that in one of these shops the lady shopkeeper was on her knees before a customer. They debated thus: Is it possible that the number of small shops has grown so great and competition so keen that it is necessary to beg customers for their trade? They visualised the heartbreak in that humble little house behind the shoo. The man perhaps out of work, the children without necessary garments and short of food. As they looked in the window, their hearts breaking for the woman on her knees, the taller of the two felt in his pocket, and the shorter wiped some slight moisture from his glasses. Then the woman on her knees dived | Iter hand in the bucket, produced a hard brush, and to the joyous strains of "Horsey, Keep Your Tail Up" from the family phonograph in the back room she continued her scrubbing, and the customer, with a cheerful "Well, so long," departed. MARY'S LITTLE LAMB. The problem has intrigued present writer since infancy, but there was no solution until the photograph of the Zoo tiger cub being fed per feeding bottle was published. In the infant classic "Mary Had a Little Lamb"' the following occurs: With one knee on the grAss Did the little maiden kneel. While to that, mountain lamb She gave its evening meal. No other sheep was there, etc. Habituated for many years to the company of slicep, M.A.T. had often pondered on the absence of the ewe. The mere fact that the lamb "was tethered to a stone" might have suggested to an alert mind the orphanhood of tho lamb. Did Mary hover over the lamb with handfuls of grass, bran mash or Scotch thistles? All these possibilities were debated for years and years until the tiger cub came. It is all cleared up. Mary fed that immortal lamb with a feeding bottle. .- i ; ,i.J ; So the Olivebank (of which you may have heard) is to dump her bit of New Zealand earth at Port Lincoln, South Australia, probably in the harbour, FUNERAL PICNIC, where, as there is a great deal of Pacific thereabouts, it will hardly make a ripple. Generally understood that if Sydney, or Auckland, or Rio were draped round that harbour it would be the finest in the world. This is not a geographic par, however, but the story of the only cheerful funeral. It was less than a thousand years ago, and the rugged owner of about a hundred square miles of country had been "Killed in the llamin' mallee yardin' a red scrub steer." Funerals were few and far between and picnics infrequent. The countryside for untold leagues washed its shirt, put on its red silk hanky, scoured its white moleskins, manicured its horse and followed the sulky with the settler s corpse aboard. For miles tlio procession wound along the roads, everybody smoking and talking cheerfully about grass and the dear departed, who "wasn't a bad sort of cove." Everybody's lunch was strapped to everybody's saddle,'and the occasional buggies lilled with cheerful women showed that this was one of those rare daysout which back block people do so thoroughly enjoy. Main- of the mourners burst into son*" on the way, and it was here that M.A.T. heard for the first time that lovely lilt about Ben Hall, who was "no good at all." The booted and spurred parson (jolly good buckjump rider he Avas, too), having cheerfully disposed of the dear departed, and everv fence post around the cemetery having two hitched horses, the whole of the mourners, including the relatives, had a really nice picnic and boiled the billy under the slieaoaks. \ slight concert ensued; even a keg of somethin" appeared from the hostelry, and, after a per" feet day, the whole cavalcade got mounted and faded in sections over the "skyline, the \ast solitude echoing to the hoarse music of the mourners: "Of Ben Hall I'll sing no more, sing no more; of Ben Hall I'll sing no more." THOUGHTS FOR TO-DAY. He who ceases to be better ceases to be good.—Crom well. • • • Blindness of the intellect is as much to be pitied as blindness of the eye*.—Dean Inge. • • . ' When one is in a po#l of trouble it is no good splashing other people.—Huxley