THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 257, 30 October 1929, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) THE GIFT. The Eeverentl Father Jellicoe, an English priest, and cousin of Earl Jellicoe, is to manage a public house. He declares that beer, like food, is a gift.—Cablegram. Dear padre, here's my best respects, I quite agree with you, That beer can be benevolent If it's the proper brew. you promise, reverend sir, to give The working man a lift; Please send a list of hostelries Where beer is free —a gift!

"Bud" Bourke, the young New Zealand champion horseman killed while breaking a colt at Scone, N.S.W., had hopes during Cochran's Wembley rodeo that SCONE. he might go to London and put New Zealand on the roughrider map. He asked M.A.T. how it might be done, and M.A.T. didn't know. M.A.T., however, remembers Scone, the little town where Bud was killed, because he happened to be there oil a nasty occasion. A young man with religious mania, in love with a perfectly nice girl, used to alternate between wild bouts of street preaching and jealousy. Pie killed the young lady on the steps of her house in Scone and rode away. Police troopers followed him to a bush camp, where the young man killed himself as the police rode up. They brought his body back to Scone. Scone has wider fame even than this. It is the town which has the unpleasant distinction of being the home of the late unlamented Martha Needle. Martha showed immense resource in ridding herself of successive husbands. When Martha had poisoned a husband she burst into tears and poetry. The local paper on such occasions always contained a soulful verse inferring that the latest dear departed would not lie parted from Martha very long, mentioning the longing that Martha felt for the happy land where Herbert was. Martha expiated her hobby in the only legal way consonant with her deplorable specialty.

Paris, so 'tis said, is celebrating the 179 th anniversary of the birth of the umbrella. A Parisian newspaper declares that .Jaifles Hana- \ way, an Englishman, THE UMBRELLA, startled the good Parisians by appearing in the streets with the first "parapluie." What's wrong with the late lamented Jim Brolly, hitherto understood to have paralysed Leeds in 174(5 by keeping the rain off himself in a way that has become a universal habit? The first umbrella pioneers were braver than lions. Nations that had dripped uncovered through thousands of years of rain hailed the umbrella with anathema, brickbats and assault. The universal crime of borrowing an umbrella began. The authorities regarded the innovation of umbrellas with epithets and restrained them by law on the ground that they dripped down the necks of the King's unumbrellaed lieges, and that these umbrageous brollies interrupted the traffic, frightened the horses and led to crime. The earlier umbrellas were not the slim, genteel affairs we know, but unwieldy engines hard to open and harder still to close. These corpulent rain shelters persisted far into Queen Victoria's reign, and it was, indeed, Her Majesty who first held one of the elegant parasols that revolutionised the race of umbrellas. You remember Mrs. Gamp's umbrella? She could "never go to a lying in or a laying out" without it. She has given her illustrious name to the common article. It is only fair to say that the umbrella is not an English invention. When our ancestors in suits of blue paint were dodging among the rocks to keep out of the rain the Chinese went abroad perfectly protected by rainproof paper umbrellas.

News from the great world mentions that up-to-date architects are devising the round houses tentatively suggested by M.A.T. in this column. M.A.T. claims no MOVING HOUSE, royalties. In the modern house you will some day simply touch a button and the dear old homo will whirl round until you get the room you are in opposite to the sun or to the shade, according to requirements. The designers of the new houses have refrained from pointing out the real advantage of the whirling house. The inhabitant, for instance, observes the dreaded hawker approaching up the garden path. He gives the house a whirl and the hawker finds himself knocking at the solid wall. By the time he walks round to the new position the householder gives the home another whirl. After a fruitless walk of many miles the hawker moves on to a fixed house. In New Plymouth once there was a man who built a two-storev hexagonal house. At the time M.A.T. saw it, it had been empty for a long time. The original builder perhaps got tired of bumping into corners and tried to let it. Apparently the whole world shied at a dwelling so unconventional. But the whirling house is another story —perhaps two storeys.

One of the charming social fixtures of Auckland is supplied by the junior element. Small male children, grotesquely attired, usually in cast-off female BUDDING garments, discarded bits MERCHANTS, of tablecloths, black masks, burnt cork, quaint smudges of paint and collection boxes, anticipate Gunpowder Plot Day by a fortnight. ■ The suggestion of these bizarre exhibitions is that these juvenile performers are collecting money to purchase fireworks to be detonated in derision of the life and death work of Guy Fawkes on November 5. Presumably large-hearted citizens agree that the death of Fawkes should be pyroteclinically celebrated and give pence to the disguised infants. But if one cares to follow the evolutions of these prophetic children he will find that some retire to some less public spot than Queen Street and there play the noble game of two-up. There is a moral in this. From a civic and philanthropic point of view a fortnight's collection by these little lads should give each of them enough fireworks to cause widely-spread danger and detonation. Whereas, under the system devised which ends in two-up, the fortnight's takings may go into the hands of but one or two of the budding merchants.

Students of missionary literature may have noted how frequently gastronomy has gone hand in hand with civilisation in the uplift of the heathen. In THE CHIEF'S the "Church Overseas" CONVERSION. Robert Liberia, tells of missionary endeavour in Liberia, an African country about the size of Xew Zealand. It is shown that a handicap to Christianity among the dark inhabitants is polygamy and witchcraft. The rank of a man in Liberia is determined by the number of wives he can afford to buy. A monogamist is regarded with relative contempt. A Liberian chief went to the prevailing Christian missionary to be baptised. The missionary asked him how many wives he had. The chief said he had twelve. "You can't be baptised if you have twelve wives," said the missionary. "Get rid of them until there is only one left." The chief left the good man and went to see about it. He returned a month later fat and flourishing. He wanted to be baptised. "How many wives have you?" asked the missionary. "Only one, boss," said the chief. "Where are the other eleven?" asked the missionary. "I eat um!" explained the inquiring Christian. THOUGHTS FOR TO-DAY. Remember 011 your knees the men who guard .your slumbers. —Helen Eden. » * * I An obstinate man does not hold opinions, [but they hold him. —Samuel Butler.