THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 231, 30 September 1930, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

It lias been complained that there are people -\vlio invite guests to a more or less public meal and when the meal is over use what seems an interminable evening to fire off their favourite brand of politics, to develop personal theories, and, in fact, make an oratorical chopping block of people who have never done the verbose ones a ha'p'orth of harm. The place in which a meal is served :U for practical j on* temporary home. The guests are partaking of your hospitality. There is, therefore, no reason why you should not transfer the method mentioned above to your own dining room. You could, for instance, place beside guests .places samples of the goods you sell in daily life. What could be nicer than a line of suitings? Your servants (if you have them) could distribute handbills with "Do It Now! at the top and your business address at the bottom. What's to prevent an eminent provision purveyor giving a small and early with all the eatables 011 the table priced as per catalogue, or a pharmacist handing round his favourite indigestion tablets with tlie name and the price? You might conceive a great furnisher leading his guesto among the plainly priced goods in the drawing room with the lovelv pile carpets decorated with the cash price* and the hire-purchase price as well. And can you conceive the wine merchant giving a fellow a parting spot, whispering in his ear the price per case? No, you can't!

BIZ IS BIZ !

"Phoenix" writes from Mataroa. Although not an American man, he mentions '"the rawfood guys," saying that "mugs fall for all eorts of tilings, and that he is one of the mugs": "Now I am a strong, healthy man and doing hard work on a sheep station, fencing and bursting firewood, also a "bit of light navvving. Anyhow, I read in the 'Auckland Star' about this raw tucker act, so thought I would give it a go. Well, let me tell the world it is crook for anyone who is strong and healthy. Here is how I started: For breakfast X tried a lump of law liver rolled up in a cabbage leaf, and I could hardlv get it down, but 011 the table was a tin of condensed milk. I did not know whether that stuff was cooked or not. I decided it was not, and spread some on my new kind of omelet and managed to get a little down, had three mugs of v/ater, and off to work. Work, I sav, but I could not do much. I hung out till dinner time by smoking heavily and looking forward to a" good feed. Anyhow I fired the liver out and had three chops and four eggs (cooked) and felt like a man again. Can't write any more for thinking about that rawliver."

WORKING MEAL.

'•'Taurus" whimsically deplores the solemnity of epitaphs on New Zealand tombstones, selecting a pair from an article on tombstone inscriptions from "The Cliftonian," an English public school magazine. The lady first commemorated died in 1525: / Here are the remains of Martha Gwynn, Who was so very pure within That she cracked the shell of outer sin, And hatched herself a cherubin. You Avill notice that the exigencies of postmortem poetry caused the literary artist to mis-spell the concluding word. The second young lady went west a hundred years later (1925) and is immortalised in marble which bears the gem: Here lie the bones of Emily Bright, She put out her left hand Ami turned to the right. Emily died in a motor age.

HIC JACET.

One hears now and again of British public schoolboys who come to New Zealand as farm lahmirors ill nil- +rmili] e s Ulicl ad Veil tul'eS. So t may be of interest to eatl ail extract or so from the letter of an English boy of nineteen who writes to an uncle in Auckland from Canada: "The farmer for whom I worked turned out to he a man who wanted everything for nothing. He refused to give me more wages. I was doing the» work of two men for the wages of half a man—so I left." The farmer owed hiin eight pounds and would pay —next October. Enterprising youth buys a camera for six pounds. Seller of camera agrees to receive payment from farmer. Enterprising youth goes to Calgary and gets a job at three pounds a week (selling washing machines. Later meets a shipmate. Three young men in all club and buy a motor car for twelve pounds, touring the country, sharing expenses and camping out. Tiie lads do two thousand miles in Lizzie. The correspondent says there are thousands of men in the great Dominion willing to work for their food alone, that foreign immigrants swarm and work for next to nothing. The Peace River, up North, is the only plaee worth considering, and that is snowed up seven months in the year. Pick of the land owned by the Hudson Bay Company is two 'pounds ten an acre. The young man shows that the Canadian people bank on health, youth and brute strength and advance money on it. The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts, however, and the enterprising lad who battles against adversity (ice, snow and farmers) speaks of making a success of life in the big Dominion, of going to' the United States, and perhaps chucking America generally and going to Trinidad! Wanderlust!

YCUTH AND HOPE, i

Pathetic references are frequently made to the common urban custom of borrowing a box of matches and refraining from returning the same, but matclilessness rises in importance from inconvenience to positive agony in proportion to the distance the matchless one is from civilisation. One imagines, for instance, a plethora of raw meat in the bush and no match to light a fire or stacks of tobacco and nothing to light it with. The liner Largs Bay lately passed through the Red Sea and sighted an Arab dhow flying signals of distress. The great steamer stopped, put off a boat, and went alongside. The Arabs had cigarettes in their faces, but no matches. "Andak cabreet!" they moaned. The ship gave them matches and all was well. The liner lost fifteen minutes. Another scene: The desert during the war. Sir Alex. Godley and staff in gorgeous car speeding on important duty. Small Arab mortal gesticulating, howling on roadway. Car stops with grinding of brakes. Small Arab, perfectly calm, smiles disarmingly, and, holding out small hand, says insinuatingly, "dibit cigarette, please." Phew! These two stories, of course, are true. There is a third. A gentleman whose 'personal habits have nothing to do with the story stands in the •middle of the road, a pipe in his mouth, and sways gently to the rhythm of the traffic. A bus is coming, and lie holds up a commanding hand, stopping it. As it stops he produces a match, strikes it on the bus, murmurs a polite "Thanks!" and waves the bus omVard.

LIGHTS.

WHO TOLD TOTI THAT? Passenger: "Did you find a wallet with fifty one-pound notes in it under my ©illow steward?" • 4 Steward:; "Yessir, thank you, eir!"-