THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 53, 4 March 1930, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

A delegate to the Master Bakers' Conference at Christchurch mentioned that in e ruins of Pompeii IN OLD POMPEII. 'IS'. The range was found at Herculaneum, and is 2000 years old. Anybody who pokes about Pompeii, Herculaneum, or Stabia will ® sorts of things denoting that_ the ancie Romans possessed brains. P " va^ e the possessed magnificent hot watei f fuel being oil. The houses were reticulated foi water which flowed through iron pipes. Fif teen hundred years afto Engbjd « hollowed trees for water pipes. Any New Zea land house painter who could rediscover the wav of making the paint used in Pompeii would be hailed with joy by bungaiowlanders and with execration by his fellow blushes, the frescoes on the walls of P°rapeii are as fresh and lively as they were before the < erup tion. Pompeiians anticipated conci J making their chariot roads of solid stone. Shopkeepers advertised on the walls. Apr op that museum in which thehotwaterrangeis seen, there is the solidified body of a tiades man who was getting away with the cas when the earthquake came. He liad closed tightly on some gold coins. Me™ have bored into the hand to disclose the com. There's nothing new under the sun.

Dear M.A.T.—The meeting at Panama of Lord Bledisloe and Sir Charles Fergusson, our coming and parting Governors, is unique. They never are supposed to TELEPATHY, meet—at least, while one is in office. From time immemorial the departing Governor has always left before his successor put foot m the Dominion. There is always an interregnum," with the Chief Justice _ as ActingGovernor. The reason for this hiatus is that there shall be no communication between the late Governor and the new one, the fundamental idea being that no matter what the opinions of the "Ex." may be, he should not prejudice the mind of his successor, who should always approach his task with a perfectly open mind. That is the theory of the gap that always separates two Governors, but as a matter of fact the practice does not work out in quite such watertight compartments. I well remember a popular and good-looking Governor we had for a short but successful period telling me on the terrace at Government House, Auckland, that his predecessor had confided to him that, of all the places in New Zealand, Auckland was the only really comfortable place to live in. So we see that our rulers do manage to get into communication with one another in some mysterious way, but still the -good old-fashioned red tape hiatus is preserved, and I shouldn't wonder if Lord Bledisloe and Sir Charles were hauled over the coals by one of the big-pots at the Dominions Office when his eagle detects that they have been dining together at Panama. —R.H.G.

The ingenious lad found an excellent rat in the trap while he was preparing the office for his immediate chief. It occurred to the budding naturalist that THE RAT to determine how long a

rat could maintain its pristine freshness would be of interest to his chief. So he put the excellent rat in tho wastepaper basket and covered it neatly with paper. On the third day of the experiment a typist remarked to the chief that the atmosphere of the office was below par. "I thought I smelt a rat, too,' said the chief, and commanded the young naturalist to search the basket. As he had expected, the lad-found that a rat would keep some time. Feeling that it was a crying shame to waste so good a rat, the lad obtained a small packing case, and packing, wrapped up the rat, placed it in the box, nailed the case securely, and emerged into the street. Seeing a grocer's car going by, he pushed the box on to the hack and departed. The vehicle had not proceeded many yards before the case fell off. A kindly passer-by who had probably been brought up as a Boy Scout, and was doing his daily good deed, rushed to pick up the box, the lid of which was now broken, and marathoned down the street. "Here! You've dropped this!" he said to the driver. The driver looked at the strange box. "It ain't mine," he said. "It dropped off your cart," said the kindly man. The grocer man pulled the lid aside and took a sniff. There was a high rat and higher words. The office boy, where was he?

"I read the .paragraph about the young lady who went for a rest in the quietness of the country, and was kept awake by the bellowing of cows, hens, HABIT. ducks, and so forth," said he, "and I sympathise with her. It is my duty, if it is not my pleasure, to rise at 5 o'clock every morning in order to wrench from the manicured hand of the ruthless capitalist a bare subsistence. Every Saturday, as I show a leg over the side of the cot, I say, 'Ah, to-morrow will be Sunday I will lie in!" And every Sunday morning I awake at the tick of five, gaze at the ceiling, fidget a bit, and get up at 5.15. It's nothing to laugh at. I never laugh." You have often heard of golfers driving and killing birds on the wing and that sort of thing? But up to now you probably haven't heard of the bowler in a MATCHES AT local house cricket match MATCHES. who hit the box of wax matches in the pocket of a batsman. The batsman, who was slightly burnt by the ignition of the matches in his pocket, of course fielded them instantly and threw them on the ground. With the burning matches he threw his cash too. An ingenious person, for reasons unknown in cricket, kicked the burning matchbox violently, no doubt with the best intentions, booting the cash as well as the vestas. The batsman is not sure whether he lost half a crown or eighteenpence. He would like to know from buddisg Hobbees, Jessops and Graces if such an incident has happened before in their cricket experiences. Two young men burning with the lust to kill had selected the Sabbath Day on which to fill their boat with fish. Early in the week they began the collection A PERFECT DAY. of weapons of the chase, might be found testing rods lent to them by friends, fixing sinkers, adjusting reels, ripening bait, and chatting piscatorially. They bobbed at anchor in the vicinity of St. Heller's Bay. The sunburn on their manly foreheads on Monday was evidence that they fished. Asked how they had got on, the more sunburned of the twain admitted that in two and a quarter hours they caught two and a quarter ounces—one pakete. Dr. Guy Scholefield, Parliamentary Librarian, tells M.A.T. that Mr. W. B. McEwen, the Public Librarian at Dunedin, has made a remarkable collection of SOLDIERS' war time troopship papers, PAPERS, and has been assiduous in tracking them down. In some cases troopship editors produced the manuscripts, and then, for some reason or other, went no further. Some of these manuscripts have been preserved. The ollection includes magazines of the New Zealand South African contingents. The First N.Z.M.R. "Bulletin" has been published periodically for thirty years, and is still going strong. The Sixth Contingent magazine is still alive, too. "The New Zealander," edited by Dr. Scholefield in London during the war, is, of course, in the Dunedin collection. But Mr. McEwen lacks No. 3 of the historic series.