THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, 2 January 1931, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) NEW YEAR. Time turns another leaf to-day With contemplative thumb. What will he write,'what, will he say: Upon the leaves to come? Who fashioned mathematic years? The man who made the calendars. The sun, the moon, the stars, the grass, As usual carry on, A million other years may pass, And man may tarry on, Expanding still the ancient view, . That anything on earth is new. Ah! many thousand yearsago Men turned the page anew. Determined new resolves to sow, How very much like you! Changeless, unalterable man, Turn some new pages if you can I Grass does not grow roots up. At least, The sun docs hot go down A silver globule in the. east, Xor does fair Luna frown Up from the ground and paint the sky With crimson as she races by. No! apples do not grow with shells, Xor cherries grow on gorse. The onion has no violet smell's, No cloven hoof the horse; By which, of course, I mean to say, You're just t he same as yesterday. Prithee don't boast because you're strong. And blame, me being weak; A man can't help the chap he is, Nature looks after Nature's biz, And bowls unmoved along; She mixes good and bad in you. Same in old years, a~d same in New. So you and me and them and us, Bach one and every other, Will carry on with lack of fuss, Each to the other—brother. Let's lift the load our fellows bear, Making for all a Glad New Year! The exhilarating cacophony, apparently insparable from the passing of the Old Year, merely emphasises the addiction of Christians to noise. Locally one 5000 B.C. missed the-sound of several well-known hooters at midnight on the 31st, possibly because commercial eminents are,saving steam these hard times. But what one is going to say is that midnight noise on the last day of the yeav is by no means Christian. It was invented by those dreadful people the Chinese, who are not Christians, and who several thousand years ago hadn't got any hooters, but put,up with bells, which they invented. M.A.T. had the privilege of being deafened at a Chinese New Year celebration in a N.S.TV.,town which shalf be nameies.3, but isn't. It was probably in our February, but anyhow it wasn't in our December. Grave, yellow old charcoal burners, ecru vegetable sellers and disseminators of opium gave themselves up to. kite-flying, the explosion of crackers, the worshipping of josses, and . screamed and howled to show they were glad the old year had died". The outstanding memory M.A.T. has of this Oriental celebration was one of extreme age. We bangers of kerosene tins in Auckland talk of the 'sixties as "olden times." The Chinese who made exceedingly loud noises so long ago talk of six thousand years ago as if it was last cabbage season. And all. the noise they made so long ago was by way of driving out devils. Same with us really; it has been a devil of a year! ...

The incurable politician, believing Christmas time to be par excellence the time for reminiscence, spoke to M.A.T. of two giants of the past—Sir John MackenTHE zie, the famous Minister SHEPHERD BOY. of Lands, and Sir George Maclean, also a politician. The first was a shepherd on the station of Ihe second, and it may be remembered that Mr. Mackenzie opposed .Mr. Maclean for his seat. The first Mackenzie meeting was sprinkled thickly with people who were the employees of Mr. Maclean. One Scot rose to ask the candidate if he didna think it was an impertinence for a shepherd to oppose his master. Mr. Mackenzie instantly retorted: "Do ye not ken that David the shepherd boy became King of Israel?" There was no further disturbance of the meeting. ' Edgar Wallace,- the human literary' pantechnicon who oozes .crime but never commits one, has deplored in Berlin the absence of master criminals in A MASTER CROOK, real life. Edgar has always regretted that he didn't invent Professor Moriarty, Conan Doyle's master criminal, who even outwitted Sherlock Holmes and killed him for literary resurrection purposes:* In real life, however, there are maestros of crime. M.A.T. has had the dubious honour of holding a hand that had few peera. as. an, implement of forgery. In expansive moments, the owner of the hand would take the signature of a stranger for the first time and reproduce it at a gallop. But the most amusing, thing about this cheerful crook, who Tras a gentleman in every other attribute except that of forgery, was that he would practise assiduously and untiringly. It was one of his funny little pastimes to" take the front page of a newspaper and to reproduce with the pen in exact facsimile the whole thing. It is strange that this man was deeply pious and would weep tears while practising writing the Ten Commandments on a piece of paper the size of a threepenny bit. He detested the use of Lad language, and never used it. He had two university degrees and a corn on the first joint of his second dexter finger from practising his art. He is no lon-pr with us. His passing was self-imposed.

They're going to stop all-day parking in Auckland streets right away. Oh, memory! You mind the time, if you are bald or grizzled, when Hone parked his THIRTY YEARS eayuse, pinto, prad or GONE ! ' brumby attached with *"* rope harness to Ms staggering sulky in front of the Bank of New Zealand and there let it bide with a nosebag on the front end until the sun sank into the, flaming west. You mind the time when Queen Street was dotted with hitching posts, to which adhered patient horses. Citizens of the day, having spent the pleasant hours in friendly communion, frequently unhitched the •wrong horses from posts that had grown into forests during the interregnum and rode away singing happily. You mind' the time when beJltoppered intelligentsia grouped themselves where safety zones now flourish and discussed Dorcas meetings, school bazaars and horse races. You "do not forget that horse cars frequently developed a maximum, speed of five miles, stopping every few yards to pick up citizens in gentle dalliance. The guards, who were skilled in dropping off backwards from the knifeboards,- played fantasias on the whistle. Once a man was killed bv a horse attached to a- pig-slop vehicle, and sinister articles about murderous speed were dotted through the Press. When interfering officials determined to eliminate the crush of vehicles and nosebags in the city " the tradespeople called just attention to the loss of business that would result if the nosebags were relegated to side streets or stables. ° Those were the rushing, days when hoys a eheval rode draught horses up Wellesley Street hitched to the horse-tram teams and rode .back to the foot to haul another seven passengers to the top again. Little scavenger boys, too, were romantic features of the time, their little trousers pointing to the skies. A gentleman who is a link between buggy and automobile mentions to M.A.T. that when first time he drove a car in Queen Street he absent-mindedly roped it to-a hitching post.