THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 256, 29 October 1929, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

His Excellency the Governor-General smiled

knowingly the other day when old South African soldiers of Taranaki handed him relics of four years' war in the IKONA ! shape of some army biscuits and a tin of "bully beef. The sacredness of these relics can only bo appreciated by old swads who thirty years ago broke inadequate teeth on the most sustaining biscuits a man could assimilate. The greatest biscuit lover one remembers was a man who was toothless. He passed the doctors with the aid of an excellent false denture, which ho discarded (by pure accident) overboard on a troopship. He was faced with the terrifying problem of biting biscuits of an adamant texture, but he got so expert at sucking that he often got away with one while a man with real teeth was merely scouting round the square edge. It was this' man who

invented biscuit porridge. He, indeed, it was who could fry a biscuit in a canteen and mutton fat that would please the veriest epicure. He has one of these biscuits framed. It is hanging in his Auckland suburban home. He possesses yet, and it may be seen on his sideboard, a pound tin of Chicago bully issued to him 011 the march to the relief of Kiinberley. He values it all the more because 011 the way he broke out of the column to gallop after a veldt hare. He took a pot shot from the saddle at the hare (with the beef) and slew

him. Tie has not kept the hare. It is a pity tho Taranaki Ikonas did not present the Governor-General with an emergency ration— meat extract one end and chocolate'the other, to be eaten only in the last resort and to sus-

tain life for twenty-four hours. M.A.T. once ate six one after the other, and even then life didn't seem worth sustaining. The fellows who left the emergency rations didn't care. They had no lives to sustain.

'"Staff-Sergeant": Re the mild controversy about sentries in your column. The challenge

made by a sentry to anyone approaching, as taught to a volunteer of WANDERING over a decade's service RASHERS, fifty years ago, was as follows: "Halt, who goes there? Halt, who goes there? Halt, who goes there?" If the answer is "Friend!" the sentry commands him to advance and give the password and countersign. If there be no response the sentry orders the guard to turn out. The following incident happened at the bloodless raid on Parihaka. A member of the Thames Navals who suffered with an impediment in his speech was doing sentry duty in the early morning, about the hour the Maoris usually made their attack, and but a few hours before the expiry of the ultimatum for the surrender of the prophet Te Whiti and others. The sentry heard some rustling and apparent murmuring in an unknown tongue amongst the scrub and stunted trees. It evidently put the wind up him, for, instead of challenging the imaginative enemy in true military fashion, he called out, "Who goes there? Three times! Guard turn out!" The cause of alarm proved to be native pigs rooting about for their breakfast. .

Facetious strangers, viewing the snail pace at which Auckland folks embark or disembark from ferries and other public vehicles, have

often whistled "The EMERGENCY Flowers of the Forest," DOORS, or the Dead March from

"Saul." The speed of a mass is determined by the speed of its slowest unit, as any student of Napoleon will admit. Thus in a common bus the passengers cannot be freed from the vehicle if large persons block the way. A fifteen-stone lady with two portmanteaux and a large bunch of flowers has been known to prevent her fellow sufferers from catching a boat or train. Lately at Devonport (according to a reliable deponent) a passenger, fOaring he might lose the boat, discovered that the emergency door of a bus was for use and not ornament. With superb aplomb, while the lady, the portmanteaux and the bunch of. flowers were slowly moving towards the legal exit, he threw open the emer- | gency door, and leapt lightly to the ground, the passengers following him gladly. They all caught the boat. Up to this remarkable exhibition of lightning thought emergency doors have merely been provided for probable benzine explosions. Many have been in the rear, a passenger or so sitting with their backs against them. They have been known on suitable occasions to open automatically, depositing the nearest passengers on the road. Now that someone has discovered that they may become a means of exit to jammed passengers, they have justified their existence.

Iconoclasts, according to cablegrams, are crying out for the abolition of the conventional, historical and traditional costume of the Eton boy, the little shell jacket THE BRAND. exposing an excellent rear

view of the little lad, and the silk bell-topper. For generations the lads of the great school have paraded thus like little men. For some centuries the boys of Christ Hospital (the Bluecoat School) have worn blue gowns, yellow stockings, no hats, parsonical white ties and what not. Personally M.A.T. doesn't care a bit, but if nasty people are going to attack tradition, will they please get on with the abolition of scarfs, pinafores, surplices, wigs, gowns, chains, cocked hats, messlines and. spurs for men generally? Why attack the traditional costume of Eton and become the High Cockalorum of the Ancient Order of Archers wearing collars, tracecliains and medals? Why, if you object to the Bluecoat Boy wearing yellow stockings, should you become Speaker in a Labour Parliament wearing a gown and a terrific wig in the hottest weather? Why, in fact, not abolish every kind of sartorial distinction? We might begin, if we are iconoclasts, with the local '"ringworms," the Grammar School lads who wear badged caps with rings round them. In furtherance of this levelling project, may M.A.T. beseech, their Honors of the Supreme Court Bench to doff wig and robe so that they shall be indistinguishable from their lesser brothers, the J.P.'s? While casting democratic scorn at ageold convention and Old World scholastic garments, attack also the gorgeous robes of a colonial Mayor, his cardinal-like regalia, his splendid chain and his golden furbishings. Eton lads will go on wearing their silk hats and their shell jackets very likely for another century or two, and Adorable Brother Hodge, Past-Grand Bow Window of the Ancient and Honourable Chapter of Dormers, will, one hopes, also insist that his collar is of the most superb pattern and- ornamented with bullion braid. Everybody loves to dress up. Even a Laborr Minister insists oil a badge — the red tie of an emancipated democracy.

Dear M.A.T., —My little boy and his pal. aged seven, were talking the other day, and this was overheard: Said Spencer to Tim, "You ought to be a iockev THE CHILD MIND, when you grow up." Tim, '"It's too risky, Spencer, I might get killed. What are you sfoing to be when you grow up?" Spencer said, "I'm going to be a soldier in the next war." "You might get shot." ''Well," retorted Spencer, might just as well »et shot as get married." — D.M. " THOUGHTS FOR TO-DAY. I. he fact that a cricket chirps bv rubbing his knees together does not interest me. I want to know why he chirps.—A. A. Milne.

V irtue treads paths that end not in the grave.—J. R. Lowell.