THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 101, 1 May 1930, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) TIMES ARE—GLAD. Oh. have you noticcd when you're glad To be upon the good, gi'een earth How often some lugubrious laU Butts in to mitigate your nnrtli. I've listened oft to dismal tales Of many failures (very aaa). From age to age the phrase prevails. "My word, old man, the times are bad ! Money is tight, trade morals loose; The crops are thin, or billets rare, The country's going to the deuce And life is sad and full o' care. Men ain't so good as once they were, Crook spins are commoner, bedad ! They'd beat you for your socks, so there, My word, old man, the times are bad! I often wonder when they grouse And sing their general hymn of hate If pessimists do really rouse, If growlers always pull their weight. Or have they corns upon their hands, Do they dtyip sweat, each grizzling lad, Or do tliey roam in gloomy bands Making a moan that times are bad ?. Have they got girthgalls earned by work, Sore shoulders where the collar fit§, Or do you think they sometimes shirk And shy at all the boggy bits? God knows some founder by the way— Help 'em to miss the potholes bad. While to lugubrious ones please say, The Times are yours—so make 'em glad! The city is cluttered up with citizens who were going to back Grand Tea. Grand Tea is part of the New Zealand religion who romped home, paying over three score, enabling lucky worshippers to put forty pounds or so down for a new Chuff-Chuff sixcylinder car and to pay thirty shillings off the grocery bill. The air is thick with the exclamations of sportsmen who dreamed that Grand Tea was a cert, only business engagements prevented the dreamers from backing it. Aunts, uncles and cousins at breakfast told nephews, nieces and fathers to back Grand Tea, but the intervention at the psychological moment of disturbing factors prevented the unfortunate ones from getting their livers on. One man told M.A.T. that a clergyman who has never backed a horse in his life mentioned that if lie were a better he would back Grand Tea, the thought having been suggested to him by a recent meal. The man thought that a clergyman couldn't possibly know anything about sinful horses, so he didn't back it. There is the, case of A., who gave B. a tenner (or it may have been a pony or bis shirt) to put on Grand Tea. The agent, knowing better, backed Pea Soup (we will say) and Pea Soup led the race until he was almost breathing on the. judge, and tlien Grand Tea came with a rush and beat him by a nose or two. Three score or over. Too bad! Tuesday's electrical disturbance, which included a magnificent clap of thunder, stated to have made citizens think of their sins and jump like springboks, also included a specially lovely rainbow, indicating the cessation of the storm and the eternal promise. Viewed from the harbour, the ends of the brilliant bow appeared to rest on the Ponsonby shore and the head at Xortlicote. Imaginative citizens, noting the phenomenon, exclaimed with one accord, "The Bridge!" It was an ompn. Mention was made herein of the London inn where Peter the Great of Russia used to go to drink endless cups of sack. Thousands of people have praised inns, and not always because inns sell "wine that maketh glad." "Convive" recalls the fact that Shenstone, who scratched his. famous quatrain on a pane at the White Swan Inn at Henley Arden, was himself a total abstainer, and not at all a cheery bird: Whoe'er has travelled, life's dull round, Where'er his stages may have been, May sigh to think how oft he found The warmest welcome—at an inn.

THE WIN.

THE OMEN.

THE INN.

Dear M.A.T., —Be your par in yesterday's "Star" entitled "The Phrase." I would like to point out that the phrase "terminological inexactitude" so often ascribed to Winston Churchill was never originated by him at all. That phrase is over thirty odd years old. If you look up the libretto of Gilbert and Sullivan's opera "The Mikado" you will find it there. At the time the opera was produced Mr. Churchill was not in the limelight and was rather "youngish," consequently he could not have invented it. If I remember aright, "Pooh Bah" used that phrase in the opera.—Savoy Theatre. A lightsome line or two herein from a correspondent about a piebald pony induces "Wall Eye" to ask M.A.T. why he headed them "The Pinto Pony." At the risk of being stuffy, M.A.T. points out that South American people call piebald or skewbald ponies "pintos," because they appear to be painted (Latin "pingo"). It might also [ be reiterated in a superior manner that the Picts (of whom you may have heard in connection with the Scots),were so called by the Romans because they painted themselves. They also painted Britain slightly red. Jim (eleven) and Maurice (nine) were playing draughts in bed last light. It was a windy night and two doors and a window were open. Jim woke up with a bad cold this morning. Hearing him cougliiii"-, Reg (seven) rushes into the parents' room exclaiming: "They were playing draughts last night and it must have been the draughts that gave Jimmic a cold." Asked if this was intended for a "pun," the younker replied, "No fear, I made a joke." Dear M.A.T.,—A deplorable state of affairs is revealed by a, report from Te Arolia to-day regarding the duck shooting prospects. It ends 011 a very sad note in the following way: "An unusually large number of farmers are refusing to allow shooting on their properties this year owing, they say, to the 'indiscriminate shooting of slieep and cattle by irresponsible people.'" Throughout the civilised world, and in parts of Remuera, thinking people will be alarmed at the fact that in such a great pastoral country as ours even folk described as "irresponsible" arc unable to separate the sheep from the goats when the barrage commences on Mav Dav Danny Boy.

MANY THANKS!

PAINTED PRAD.

THE CHILD MIND.

OUR SNIPERS.

ihe little group of citizens, many of whom have been great travellers, having been to Ellerslie, Heme Bay and further, were setting the world right. International affairs were being adjusted when one gentleman said, "For instance, international finance is mostly bluff; Old Montague often puts it over the nations." "Old Montague; what Montague?" asked the confinned Ponsonbvite. "Why, Montague Norman, the Governor of the Bank of England." "Oh, I thought you meant the- Mr. Montague we hear on the air so often."

INTERNATIONAL FINANCE.