THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 237, 7 October 1930, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) INDELIBLE Lives o£ master crooks remind us We may do a bit of time, And. departing, loave behind us Thumb-prints hi the charts of crime. — L'SUcyro. New Zealand seems to rather like Sir Otto Xiemcyer, the financial diplomat. He has told us that we are not in such a financial mess as Australia, and we CHEERO T are glad. He hasn't talked gait Hasn't, in short, waved his clenched list and shouted, "I ihave no hesitation in saying." Financial commentators describe him as "a new and rather fearsome type of diplomat," who, although not a linguist, has a great influence in Europe in floating reconstruction loans. He attains his ends "by a ruthless insistence on realities and a rugged determination." We have had a specimen of this in his refusal to make any remarks on the "silly nonsense" wild Australians have heaved at him. Like Mr. Baldwin, the financier is a ceaseless pipe smoker. It is understood the- recent rise in the price- of tobacco has not affected his consumption. Dear M.A.T., —The trite but true eaying " 'Tis better to be born lucky than rich" was a"-ain exemplified on Saturday 'at Ellerslie. c My wife, a lady of a-boun-ODD NUMBERS, cling , prescience, handed me the wherewithal to purchase a ticket on Lovely Boy in_ the Steeples, No. S. My own fancy being 2No. 1, I approached the ticket window, and, having secured my scrap o' paper, bethought me of the other commission. Having in mind No. 9 —a great dividend payer at Avondale—l inadvertently asked for one on that number. Later, realising my error, I returned and purchased my wife's correct ticket, thereby having Nos. 1 and 9 running on my behalf. The result found me with first and second horsee, the former providing the sensation of the day — over a third of a century. "There's luck in odd numbers," says Rory O'Moore— Foxhound. A lady stood outside a very nice flower and plant shop and looked wistfully at a charming little specimen in. bloom in a pot. The price was not marked. RARE FLOWER. A dyed-in-the-wool New Zealander was close by, and to him the lady said, "Isn't it pretty! _ I wonder if it is very dear? I would like it. Do you know what they call it?" The man smiled. "Tea-tree," he said. It was the first time he had, ever seen growing tea-tree for •sale in a shop, and it occurred to him that maybe some day people will regard it as the lady who tripped in and bought a pot. Florists and others buying flowers from growers always add: "And mind you bring in plenty of teatree," so that suburban conveyances coming to town are radiant with the plant that is the bush nursery. Some day, of course, people will sell it by the small bunch or grow it where it did not grow before, for it i.3 an easy subject. It makes a splendid hedge, fragrant, beautiful, protective. Average idiots, buying small suburban sections for homes, generally begin by razing the only beauty it has (the tea-tree") from it and starting out with a clear patch of clay. In a shop the tea-tree one buys is lovely. On a hillside tea-tree —is teatree.

Excellent news has been heard from Pitcairn Island. What is apparently the first piano to go ashore lias been heard there, and has 'been heard there ever THE PIANO. eince night and day. In these times of alleged depression the introduction of a piano to Pitcairn suggests possibilities, but mostly the instant departure of agents with pianos for the island, especially, the seventeen pianos in our street. One imagines the agents swarming ashore with hire-purchase ibooks in their hands and "Sign on the dotted line!" on their lips. There could be a Marathon race of agents up the wharf and the beach, the first round the palm tree to shout "No deposit!" to win the first order and the coconut. Mention of first pianos 'brings hack happy memories. The happiest is of a new piano on a hard dirt floor in a pit-sawn family drawing room about eighteen by twenty. Father, mother, eight of a gigantic grown-up family, visitors. M.A.T. and a (big log fire. Old people talking at the top of their voices. Bill, the eldest boy, playing hymns with one finger on new piano, nielodeon in the hands of Charlie. Everybody else singing, "Hold the Fort" (number one in the book) and going through Sankey hymn by hymn. Glorious! Another new piano at a bush dance in an Australian road accommodation house. Unexpected genius in a dirty wayfarer. Played really well. Splendid evening. Mistress of the place in raptures. Looked at the dirty genius, full of unlicensed refreshment, and said: "'Tis. aisy enough phwin yez git a run o' the notes!" "Eri": A very little 'boy had been well drilled in his Sunday school text before leaving home, and he said it over and over again: "The Bread of THE CHILD MINDJife, the 'Bread of life." Then some mates joined him., and his thoughts scattered. Asked in class to repeat his text, he arose importantly and eaid: "A loaf of bread." Men addicted for a long series of years to mental or physical work" suddenly 'faced with idleness, iind it hard work. A* quaint announcement is containCUSHY JOB. cd in an English paper by one of the unemployed, a full-blown British general of distinction, who wants a job. Sir Edward Bethunc (formerly Director-General of the Territorial Force) is seventy-live years of age and has had bronchitis badly. He is not able to get about" much, but he advertises for a job. '"You have already decided there is a catch in it somewhere. The old ger-cral wants a job, but no pay! Willing to employ whatever mental energy he possesses for 'nothing a, day and iind himself. "Doin' a nonest 'ard-workin' cove out of a job!" so to speak. Mentioned to-day that New Zealand officers -who won't be able to get into the Indian Army will get •'the axe." Hardly a consolation to them to mention that they might apply for the same kind of job General Bcthuue i≤ seeking. Personally the average citizen doesn't care whether he is "lumbered" by a constable ill a sh'ako or a helmet, but at the moment * the high authorities are MY OLD SHAKO, in secret conclave as to the abolition of the Peninsula War shako, reintroduced by a former Commissioner. Prior to the rebirth of the shako the constabulary appeared in the type of helmet endeared to us by generations of gentlemen of the "What's All This?" brigade. I The necessity for specially marking the°conetable is greater than ever, for very few people are allowed to go without a uniform of some kind nowadays. One finds oneself not only obeying the orders of traffic directors and police, but of hotel porters, movie and talkie commissionaires, and others in official arrav but none of them topped with the- orthodox police helmet, which is to come back again, bringing joy to us so long deprived of them The early Hops, Peelers, or Bobbies, established by Sir Robert Peel in. 1829, burst upon an astonished London attired in glazed bclltoppcra and belted frock coats. The glazed hate gradually gave place to the helmet we adore, since which few police in the Empirehave worn any other kind.