THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 83, 8 April 1930, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) The universal feminine habit of subediting the complexion in public has extended to, secondary schoolgirls. Behold, therefore, a group of charming little DAUGHTERS laeses (who may be the OF EVE. fashionables of to-mor-row) sitting on a harbour boat making themselves beautiful for school. It seems that they use a communal face pad of the universal pink kind. This particular group of young ladies passed the face pad and the tiny mirror from hand to hand and carefully dabbed their little noses and rubbed their fair cheeks. Then up spoke the eldest of the group. "I hardly ever put colour on my face going to school, but of course when I go out at night I do." The wisdom of thirteen years! These are the days of larger human kindnesses. Kindness is inherent, but it.is better organised than ever. You expect the mates of a smashed bushman to A NEW EARTH, carry him over unthinkable tracks to the best medical aid available-. The ill and poor may avail themselves of the best scientific ekill. Eminent people will work their fingers off to save an apparently worthless life. "Save humanity!" is the cry. "Save the babies!" is a splendid slogan. "Save the mothers!" is magnificent. Money is epent like water to fight sickness and poverty, and hope springs eternal in the human breast that the brotherhood of man and all that will come to earth. And as one reads about all the means kind and gentle humanity is taking to help towards a nice, kind world beautifully spokeshaved and sandpapered, one also reads of the wonderful exploits of manless bombing 'planes which sail up into the blue controlled by wireless and which will be capable of raining death on saved babies, saved mothers, saved T.B.'s, cancer funds, dole departments, and all the intensely human arrangements for a new heaven on earth. Do the shopping habits of the people really change ? A gentleman, himself for many years in business, mentions that when he was an apprentice boy and slept FORWARD, under an Auckland counPLEASE! ter he was dispatched a little after nine o'clock one night to deliver a penny reel of cotton two miles away over tea-tree gullies. On a recent evening the suburban grocer's shop was nicely filled with customers, all anxious to be served by a staff not excessive. A lady, pushing her bulk to the front, demanded a tin of pepper. The obliging counter hand produced the article. "I don't like Bith's pepper!" she snorted. The assistant dug into his treasures and brought up some more pepper. "Pscha!" said the lady. "Bobinson's pepper!" and dabbed the offending tin down with a crash. The harried but perfectly polite man showed her cayenne pepper, white pepper, black pepper, and every brand he had. An infuriated crowd of housewives surged round for many minutes waiting for the lady to make up her mind. At last she decided. With her sixpennyworth grasped tightly in her hand she scornfully pushed through the crowd and disappeared. The patient assistant, without the slightest appearance of heat, turned with a winning smile to the next lady. "What can Ido for you?" he said. Mention of gold inspires quaint thoughts. It is shown that the one hundred pounds' worth of Waihi gold (the prize in an art union) will not fetch more GOLD. than seventy pounds. One speculates whether one hundred pounds' worth of gold boiled down into sovereigns will sweat thirty pounds. One is generally given to understand that gold is indestructible. Frantic persons the world over since the beginning of time have sought gold and found it. Every crime known to senior sergeants has occurred through gold. There's never too much gold. Never enough. What becomes of it? In any year the output may exceed the last output by tens of millions of pounds. Who gets it? No one ever uses sovereigns now except photographers and jewellers. There must be immense deposits ol spendable coin somewhere. The slight hint that gold is buried somewhere causes man to go to the ends of the earth or ,the bottom of the sea for it. Ardent scientist*!, hearing that the galleys of Caligula were embossed with gold, dug them up. They were embossed with lead. The late Mr. Kilmansegg, having a daughter with a single leg and computing worldly wealth in terms of gold, purchased for her a golden leg. Even the slimmest golden leg would weigh about three hundredweight. Miss Kilmansegg was well handicapped. Where is that leg now ? Thousands of romances have been written about gold. Pirates are pictured gaily prancing over the hills and far away with huge sacks of pieces of eight, doubloons, moidoires, Louis and other gold coins— a ton a man. Even Conan Doyle pictures frail humans pushing boxes of gold about as if they were feather bolsters. One example of the power of gold recurs. The secretary of a touring sporting organisation sat at his table in older days and received from each player forty pounds in sovereigns. As he received each recurring forty pounds he slipped them into his back pocket. He tried frantically to rise. At last he rose. His pocket carried away, strewing the earth with sovereigns. Where are those sovereigns now? Oh, for a few! An imminent by-election in which several eager gentlemen will compete for the favours of the electors revives the old question, "What for?" A man addicted to THE LURE. public life says that the common belief that our Mayors, Parliamentarians and other leaders lay up treasure upon earth will not bear investigation. Comparatively buckshee intensive work for the people leaves the public worker poorer in pocket if richer in spirit. It is a bit of overtime which is only payable in wages of personal satisfaction. The misguided elector who sees a free railway pass jingling at the end of a Parliamentarian's watch chain infers prosperity, opulence, influence in the wearer, and raises his hat to the bauble. It is, according to the public man, the comparative worship of the public man that repays him for sitting till one in the morning discussing drains, or attending two hundred meetings a year when he could be toasting his slippers at home. "Public life is Dead Sea apples/' he wailed. "Why we do it I uon't know!" "When your term is over," asked M.A.T., "will you stand again?" "I hope so!" said the habitual public man. Nobody seems to have mentioned that General Sir Henry Chauvel, who is retiring from the job of Chief of Staff of the Australian Army, is the Hon. DASHING HARRY. Colonel of the North Auckland Mounted Rifles. Rather famous is "Harry." It was this bright cavalryman, brought up on his father's sheep station, who succeeded Sir Philip Chetwode in command of the Desert Column. In 1917 he reorganised this column into the Desert Mounted Corps, which comprised British, Australian, New Zealand, Indian and French cavalry, which took so historic a part in the conquest of Syria and Palestine. The finest tribute to the general is the admiration of the men he commanded. He is smothered with decorations, British and foreign. He eeems, during the war, to have been mentioned in dispatches every, time the Hate were writing Home. By the way, the composite corps he commanded in Palestine was the largest assembly of the mounted arm known in history.