THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 258, 31 October 1929, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

VALUE FOR ONE-AND-SIX,

From the city to Mount Albert, From M.A. back again. Thpn onward still to One Tree Hill, Through sunshine, wind and rain. Then out to Remuera And back by Eden's gaol, A meal, a smoke—then Royal Oak, Heme Bay and Avondale.

To Newton and to Freeman's Bay, And back to Central wharf, I stagger up the steps of trams And weakly totter off. And though I own that it has been A hectic day and hard, I ken I've got my money's worth On my concession card. —A.H.

Rugby fanatics in Australia and NewZealand will repel with the requisite loathing the definition of the game by W. T. Pearce, of Britain. "W.T.P." is GAME OR president of the English BUSINESS? Rugby Union and is necessarily old-fashioned. Listen. "Rugby is a game for players in their leisure time and nothing more." Perhaps the head of the egg game in England is harking back to the days when Rugby was a school game at Rugby school and half of the school played the other half and apparently everybody butted in, small boys and all, to make a Saturday holiday. There is an excellent description of Big Side football in "Tom Brown's Schooldays," the sides apparently being three hundred strong. One forgets which side won, and, indeed, it didn't matter much, seeing that the game and not the gate was the business of the hour. Quaint, however, to believe that the young initiators of Rugby football played up and played the game, with no gallery barring the schoolmasters and no reward except the reward of victory well Avon or defeat sustained with a grin. What about trying Big Side Rugby locally next Auckland season with all the barrackers playing, too?

You'd hardly believe that the United States, which deplores the ghastly illiteracy of tens of thousands of its admitted immigrants, should have a IN ARCADIA. great and totally illiterate community of one-luindred-per-cent Americans within a hundred miles of Washington. It is of immense interest to New Zealand, where so very few escape the schoolmaster, and is consequently mentioned here. President Hoover took a trip to the hills, and while speaking to the hill dw-ilers was presented with a 'possum by a small boy who spoke to him in the English of the Middle Ages and with perfect innocence used the curses of Shakespeare's day and the indelicacies of speech which were delicate enough in medieval times. Hoover decidedto introduce the snake into this Eden by planting a school in the midst of these people who had been forgotten. In this community, which numbers many thousands, there is no one who can either read or write. They have no folk lore, no traditions, no family history. Investigators point out that they are happy. Philologic investigators point out that among the archaic English they use are such words as "postes," "nestes" (for "posts" and "nests"). The use of these words would prove to any West Country Englishman that it was West Country English who colonised the tract of country where education has not entered. Now that Washington has discovered this community of course free, secular and compulsory education will be forced upon them. Possibly families which have been living in log cabins for eo long will become mortgagees of frameboard shacks and share with their compatriots all the disadvantages of civilisation. Photographs show that these forgotten people appear no more savage than many people in our own favoured land. If, for instance, one read that the photos were taken in the King Country, one would believe it. j

Mentioned in the South, where he was ; best known, that the late Hardham, V.C. (the • first New Zealander to win the fourpenn'orth i o' bronze), first went to , FOR VALOUR. South Africa in the Ninth Contingent. It has been i already pointed out Bill was with the Fourth. Hardham was a farrier sergeant and therefore ■ not necessarily a combatant if he had ; sedulously stuck to horse shoeing. Hardham, a blacksmith at Petone, joined his contingent from the Petone Navals, a volunteer corps that wore Royal Navy rig and could hardly be distinguished from Jack himself. It was quaint that Hardham, who won his supreme decoration as a mounted rifleman, should have resumed the navy uniform on his return to New Zealand. It. is remembered that he had to be commanded to wear his decorations, as personally he was the- most modest and retiring of men. Bill Avon the V.C. on January 28, 1901, for rescuing Trooper McCrae under heavy rifle fire at Nauupoort. McCrae was badly hit and Hardham rode out for. him, lifting him on a horse and quietly bringing him to safety. Hardham was a crack footballer and captain of the Petones. He served as a major with the New Zealand Forces in Egypt, Gallipoli and Palestine. In all lie had twentyone years' military service.

The average married man has probably often wondered why women fought so violently to obtain the vote seeing that they always ruled men without it. THE SOCIALIST. That valiant pictorial athlete, Douglas Fairbanks, has lately mentioned that he desired to retire, but that Mary his wife rules and he is not allowed to. Douglas' experience of home rule reminds M.A.T. of a dear and gigantic friend. His forte was to address the individual as if he were talking to five thousand folks. He was a violent Socialist. One imagined him with a bloodstained axe, his path strewn with the corpses of those unparalleled ruffians, the capitalists. He would have a new earth, a peaceful cosmos in which all would be equal, except the Socialists, who, of course, would rule. This curious contrast a man would perform innumerable kind acts without spouting about them at all. One day ho invited M.A.T. to dinner. M.A.T. went. It seems it was his millionaire day. With a bit of pork poised on the end of his fork lie bellowed for the blood of those incalculable assassinators, the American steel millionaires. He M'ilted M.A.T. with his invective. M.A.T. paled and decided never to be a millionaire. Then the host towered to his greatest height, ■ the pork still on the fork. "If I had my way," he roared, "I'd behead the brutes. I'd make this earth a sweeter place for democracy; I'd rid tho world of these human vampires; I'd, I'd ." Mrs. Socialist was six stone ten in weight and four feet ten in height. "Now, Alfie," she said, "get on with your dinner!" "Yes, my dear," said he of the bloodlust—and chatted of roses between the bites.

THOUGHTS FOR TO-DAY.

The sane arts that dirt gain A power, must it maintain. —A. Marvell. * ♦ • Sceptre and crown Must tumble down, And in the dust be equal made With the poor crooked scythe and spade. — J. Shirley. * * • Passions are liken'd best-to floods and streams: The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb; So, when affection yields discourse, it seems The bottom is but shallow whence they come. They that are rich in words, in words discover That they are poor in that which makes a lover. —Sir Walter Raleigh. * * * A woman would be in despair if Nature had formed her as fashion makes her appear. — Mdlle. de Lespinasse.