THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 33, 8 February 1930, Page 8

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) L ■ Still pursuing tlie fruitful subject of likenesses, there is the case of M.A.T.'s old and. 1 esteemed friend, James Edmond, one-time i editor of the "Bulletin.;' THE EDITOR. Once when visiting New ). Zealand he gave present inkblot a tinkle on tlie 'phone. M.A.T. had 1 never then seen the famous little person and ■ hastened gladly to the hotel. In the foyer there was no one but a man servant and a man , ju unremarkable clothes, a beard and spectacles. "Is Mr. Edmond in?" asked M.A.T. "I think ' that's liim," eaicl the porter. "Oh, no!" replied M.A.T. '"Mr. Edmond is not a clergyman." The celebrated James, overhearing, cackled delightedly, and told M.A.T. a yarn. "Last year," he saidj "I took my holiday up country in New South "Wales. For two or three, days I stayed at a bush pub. I breasted the bar one evening trying to avoid a rather wild gentleman who seemed to be hardly sober. He lurched over to me. 'Shout a beer for little Jim!' he wailed. 'You've had enough,' said I. 'You'd shout fer me if you on'y knoo who I am.' said the derelict. 'Who are you ?' asked I. 'I'm the editor of the "Bulletin"!.' he proudly proclaimed, slapping his incredibly dirty shirt. The recruiting of police to guard & bit of warm mandated territory will remind many men that there are few of us who haven't been policemen of one sort or POLICE ! another. It is a highly romantic life. For in--1 stance, a " pampered Etonian, thirsting ■ for adventure, will rush to Canada and sit in the snow at an outpost for a year or two; a romantic business which causes authors to write marvellous stories of the red-eoated "Mounties." . Think of the stirring lives of the Cape Mounted Police. Many of these men have unaccompanied ridden as many as twenty miles to deliver a hut tax summons to a Kaffir, braving the danger of meer cat holes and the onslaught of roller beetles. A young New Zealander, thirsting for blood, returned after some years in the Queensland Mounted Police! He sat in his riding pants and spurs in an office typing documents all the time. Mick, of this town, lav in' the Rile Oirish Consthabulary because the death rate was negligible, joined an Australian mounted force. During his dangerous service of five years he arrested a seventy-year-old man. for inebriety. It shattered his nerves. He has long since led the adventurous * life of a barman. During the South African War (some years after Waterloo) the authorities ached for New Zealand soldiers to join the police. ' Many did. There was a bit of a row about it. A New Zealand corporal found himself a full superintendent (commissioned) in a single night. Another corporal who drove a dray in New Zealand became an inspector by the simple change of uniform, and so forth. A. Queensland bushman was immediately engaged as the chief of the Criminal Investigation Department in Pretoria. The casual way in which death-defying motorists lean over their cars, with a cigarette in their lips and feed the machine with benzine recalls the equally casual THE LEAK. manner in which gas fitters have on occasions located a gas leak with lighted candle. Recently in London imprisoned gas made it necessary to guard the street and for the police to suppress persons who would gladly locate the leak with matches, cigarettes, cigars and pipes. Reading the thrilling story, it took M.A.T 1 . back to the home of his childhood and the family's favourite gas plumber. The odour was in an upper room. Obviously gas was imprisoned between the floor of the room and the ceiling beneath. The tradesman arrived, and the infantile M.A.T. viewed him as he prised up floor boards. He lit a match. Instantly thereafter he was bowled out of the 1 room by way of the door, bowling the coming r scribbler with him. The windows were blown , out, the room disrupted. The absolutely unhurt , tradesman, picking up an equally unhurt but dreadfully-scared lad,, turned to an adult who had hastily .arrived, and said, "I thought the * leak was there, sir!" knuckling his idiot forehead in asinine salute. • . ' v.l; Communicated per telephone in a pleasant voice during the absence at the receiver of ' M.A.T. and relayed to him by the recipient. A 1 lady passenger, evidently NEW STREET, a stranger to our transport system, paid her twdi pence to the tram conductor and to I be put off at Elephant Street. , The conductor ■ said he did not know the street, but if she rode ! to the end of the section she might inquire I there. When she had dismounted the conductor 1 chuckled through the car and said, "She wanted 1 Elephant Street! Ha, ha!" "Well, what about 1 it?" said a passenger. "There isn't any Ele- ■ phant Street, is there?" asked the conductor. 1 "Of course there is!" retorted the other. "It's on the Main Trunk line!" ; It is disconcerting, as has been herein written, to be constantly mistaken for some- ' one else v The true case' of the Maori and ' M.A.T. has .been instantly : COUNTERFEIT, followed by the true case of M.A.T. and the short I gentleman in the jazz cardigan, the Captain Kettle beard, the horn-rimmed, spectacles and [ the bicycle trousers clips. The 6cribe sat on [ a boat gazing towards Auckland's destroyed [ foreshore and missing bluffs. The gentleman, j clashing his pants clips, stole back and'forth and stopped. Said he, "I've seen your face , before!" M.A.T. complimented him on his luck. "Did you ever work at the Meat Works ?" ' he asked, waving a clip towards the chimney ' belching out smoke. "Never!" said M.A.T., | wistfully jmagining himself carrying quarters , of beef up flights of stairs and throwing them i lightly on hooks; "I know I've seen your face , before!" the gentleman said uneasily. "How long have you lived here?" pointing to the ! Smoke. "About three years," replied the Man , Who Resembles Everybody. "I've never seen . you in my life before till now," .ventured M.A.T. "You can't be the one," replied Captain [ Kettle, walking, over to his. bicycle.. "No!" , said the' Person of a Thousand Dials. And he | said to Captain Kettle, "And what, may I inquire, do you do for a crust?" "Nothing!" he proudly replied. "Constant job, keeps you busy, what?" The gentleman, still suspecting that M.A.T. spent his days carrying sacks of sug —no, bodies of beef —about a factory, put his clips on with two clicks, seized his bike, and pushed it savagely up the hill. As M.A.T. watched him out of the bus window he gnashed : his whiskers. c I Are death-defying feats upon modern speedways on modern bikes as dare-devil as thd old-fashioned stunts? Time was when * intrepid persons on the ' ATJLD LANG SYNE, old penny-ha'penny bikes rode across aerial wires ' over water, a man (or -a woman) swinging » underneath. - Those were the days when bold ballOOnists bobbed about in the skies and '. created sensations by jumping out with a \ parachute from one hundred yards up! The ! days when a beauteous belle with splendid ' teeth ascended to an aerial wire, gripped.the | leather thong of a bit,of running gear witli : the teeth, and slid with dizzy speed a hundred * yards down the slanting wire. Ah, those were j the days when the milkman with the fourteen--1 year-old racer was warned to "Walk Round 1 Corners"!"' I THOUGHTS FOR TO-DAY. It is better to fight for the good than tc 1 rail at the ill.—Anon. T * * * ♦ I Choose well; your choice is brief, and yei 3 endless.-Mjoethe. s*■ * * • r Character is simply habit long continued.— " Plutarch. «