THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 140, 16 June 1930, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

i A Putaruruvian hastens to add a little to what already has been written about the citizen who threatened not to build the Arapuni dam unless the local THE REWARD, licensed victualler served him. with a pint of beer. The correspondent mentions that this gentleman, after the refusal, disappeared utterly and his place-knew him no more for many moons. When /the great work was concluded he again turned up dressed in the newest of tailored clothes, Metson hat, fifty-shilling shoes, silk socks and other regalia. He advanced to the bar counter, put down a pound note and said: "I've finished the dam; gimme a pint of beer!" The amateur engineer, like his brother the amateur statesman, is one of the most pleasing features of exciting times. The problem of - India, for instance, is but THE TURBINE, first standard stuff to the suburban grocer, who would likewise sweep away with a wave of the hand the problems that have faced China since the Great Wall was built. .Talking about walls, there is at Arapuni a vibrating turbine, part of which weighs eighty tons, and which is deeply embedded in concrete. Some amateur experts were lately discussing the measures each would take to ascertain what is wrong with this gigantic turbine. A dairy farmer listened to the animated discussion and said: "I had a milking machine that went crook. What did I do ? I jacked her up and had a look at her. She's goin' as sweet as a nut now. Why don't them engineers jack that there whatsisname up?"

An eminent cow controller sends the following schoolboy essay, said to be genuine, reprinted from an English newspaper: "The

cow is a mamal and is * MILK-OH ! tame. It has six sides,

! right left fore back upper and below. At the back it has a tail on which is hanging a brush. With this it sends the flies away so they do not fall into the milk. The head is for the purpose of growing the horns and so that the mouth can be somewhere. The horns are to but with, the mouth to mo'e with. Under the cow hangs the milk, it is arranged for milking. When people milk the milk comes and there is never any end on the supply. How the cow does it I have not yet learned, but it makes more and more. The cow has a fine sense of smell, one can smell it far away. That is the reason for the fresh air in the country. The niancow is called an ox ... it is not a mamal. The cow does not eat much, but what it eats it eats twice, so it always gets enough. Whom it is hungry it mo'es, and when it doesn't say anything it is because the stomach is full of food."

From time to time modern educationists and others (including parents, bachelors, spinsters, the general public, eugenists, etc.) argue

newspaperly as to the COMMON ASSAULT, rights and wrongs of

caning for school children. Many old-fashioned folks' infer that they owe their present intellectual eminence, their morality, their perfect manners and their ability sto discuss intricate subjects to having been well ancl soundly thrashed at home and at school. As a matter of fact, the occasional teacher almost invariably tans the boy because he (the teacher) is temporarily afflicted with nerves. And' there is another small matter. The teacher has no more moral, legal or physical right to assault a minor than he has to assault a major. Last year the Lord Chief Justice said: "In my judgment, the grounds for the rule were that a master has no authority to cane a boy." It would be useful for some of the remaining protagonists of thrashing in New Zealand to quote the legal authority which gives one man the right to tan another man's child. But the dear old tag about sparing the rod and spoiling the child is often quoted by persons who have no children of their own. I

Traiii excursionists who went to Arapuni on Sunday were extremely disappointed. There were no explosions, landslides, floods, accidents

or "anything of an excitARTIFICIAL LEG. ing nature except the

stories that were told in the carriages. A railway official, talking of trains, told interested listeners that once on a time New Zealand hotels kept their doors open till eleven o'clock at night (slight cheers). Port Chalmers, he continued, was dry. Dunedin (he averred) was wet.. At week-ends comparatively large numbers of Port Chalmers' unreclaimed went to Dunedin and there availed themselves of the legal position, returning by a late train from Dunedin to Port Chalmers, singing gaily and occasionally playing the bagpipes. On an occasion an unsteady citizen fell off the train. The passengers were no longer hilarious. They were horrified. The train was.pulled up in the shortest possible distance. The trainmen hastened towards the victim. The wheels had passed over his right leg! He was sitting up laughing uproariously! "It's a. bally good job," said he, "that* it wasn't my other leg."

There is scarcely any reason why the Maoris in the vicinity of Arapuni and Horahora should not set up a profitable side line

in prophecy now the goMORE TANIWHA. ing is good. Any Maori

will tell you what sort of weather it is going to be by looking at the flax flower. He'll glance at the pukekos and predict a bad harvest, or look at the bank of a creek and let you know the prospects for the eeling season. The tohungas or their successors have already attributed the mishap at Arapuni to an unappeased taniwha. Horahora Maoris have, it is said, noticed a slight erosion in their vicinity and seem to be rather proud of it. In shallow water there has appeared a little fissure. The passing of the water over this slight fissure has given it a distinctly wavy line, a mysterious coruscation that would have been dear to any old-time medicine man. It is (according to the dusky local prophets) the taniwha wriggling his way towards the Horahora works!

M.A.T. receives many letters that make him blush. Current blush-promoters, for which the writer thanks the senders, giving himself

thi-ee hearty cheers and ONE AND a tiger, include one con- . INDIVISIBLE, gratulating M.A.T. and

adding, "But I'm sure you are not one person but many." It is very kind of "E.E.8." to multiply a scribbler, who, although married, is distinctly singular, an unaccompanied unit, one and indivisible, never moving in battalions, platoons or even sections, shaving but one face every .morning, singing solos and not duos in his bath, paying but one entrance fee to football matches, occupying one,seat at the movies, leading no double life, being no combination of Jekyll and Hyde. The quaint suggestion of "R.E.8." instantly recalls the one-man' band of one's youth in which the performer agitated ten instruments, and terrified people into cash contributions; or the schoolboy who tied three pens together to write his impot. lines. No! no! dear sir, I am but me, thank you very much. So glad! "HALVES, PARTNER!" Dear M.A.T., —I noticed your paragraph regarding the C.T.'s ."old clothes drive" and pointed it out to mother. Of course, we all think it a splendid scheme and will do our best to assist, but, as mother says, we have plenty of old clothes but they are what we are wearing. So what are we to do about it 2—E.TJ.