THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 4, 6 January 1931, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) It is a gladdening thought at this, time of the year to know that our less fortunate brethren, temporary guests of the King, may .share with us the joys 01 MY SWEET. the season. Thus the gentle souls who invaded the gaol and awarded each prisoner a bag of lollies are to be much commended f-or this thoughtful sweetening of drab lives. The burglar, for instance, would receive with manifestations of the purest delight his little bag of hundreds and thousands $nd could confer on his unsweetened contemporaries, the unconsumed portion of his wealth. Nothing could be more touching than .the spectacle of the gentleman incarcerated for forgetfulness "with some blunt instrument" .masticating his portion of blackballs. The, professional man temporarily prevented from his art smilingly consuming his Turkish delight would be a manifestation of the touching line "sweets to the sweet." Still; the presentation of sweeties, desirable as it is, does not, one feels, compare with the American plan of releasing State guests for ten days, as was done in America lately. One imagines, however, a combination of the two -systems. The authorities might release all the prisoners on parole during the holidays and then bait the. iron gates with lollies to charm them back again when the holiday was done. Although Marshal Joffre when in uniform might have displayed a left breast like a ribbon bargain counter, most of his photographs show this son of France to be MODESTY. very much like other sons of France, most modest in display. Our own race, which is much more flamboyant, was taught for a hundred years or so to regard the Frenchman as noisily demonstrative, 'based, no doubt, on the French fashion of labial salutes man to man, and the further liabit of praising. the foreigner copiously. You may remember a one-armed French officer, General Pau, who came to New Zealand 011 a little lecture tour. He lectured in French, while a bright young soldier translated. General Pau wore 110 decorations, on the ground that he was moving among distinguished foreigners (as he said) who had not the chance to achieve the decorations. It was not, therefore, good form. Conan Doyle has kept up the idea of the boastful Frenchman in that amusing Gascon, "Brigadier Gerard," but France has the charming but extremely un-British habit of' post-mortem modesty in erecting monuments to its distinguished sons, marking any such monument with the simple name of the great dead. The imagination is stirred at the tomb of a great Frenchman, for instance, in the simple inscription "Pasteur." The worth-while world need have no other explanation of the great French marshal than "Joffre."

All that are unemployed are not unwilling. There is the case of the family that was about to depart for Sunburn Island for the day just at the moment that the THE TOILER. unemployed man eagerly applied for work. The sympathetic husband, looking round the garden, said: "Oh, A'ery well, then, you can start cleaning up the garden." He assumed, perhaps, in saying "cleaning up," the man had been a soldier. The unofficered worker, rejoicing in his job, hi their absence did it with immense thoroughness. No weed could escape that man. The fact that lie did not discriminate between a'dock and a di an thus, a Christmas lily and a carrot, a dandelion from any of mother's favourite flowers, may have had something to do with mother's tearful glance when the family returned to its devastated garden. It had .all the appearance of a shellshattered'small farm in the France of 1&18. The slayer of weeds was proudly assuming his coat. "I've cleaned the garden up, sir!" lie boasted. "You have!" said the employer. "He has!"-wept the wife. "And the worst of it is," said the employer, as he watched the satisfied slayer through the garden gate, "I've paid him for this ..ruin." And mother- wailed, "Oh, my Canterbury. bells!" . By an unhappy accident commerce was recently deprived of revenue. A gentleman observed a group of interested bovs round a threepence-in-tiie-slot soft FREE DRINKS, drink machine indulging seriatim. The ; observer, thinking the lads must be well supplied with coin, crossed to the machine, which was faithfully producing its. paper cups and subsequent drinks with touching regularity. *nd without price. It transpired that one of the dear little lads had been previously' indulging in chewing, gum, that some had adhered to his threepenny bit, and. was stuck somewhere in the machine, giving ceaseless rotation to the internal doings. It is not known how long the supply of .cups and: sustenance held out, but that the 'boys had a good threepence worth while the chewing gum held; Other free amusement has 'been' obtained by design and not by accident. During last century a number of boys attended a show in which there were one hundred and fifty penny-in-the-slot machines that played tunes. By probing the slots with difiner knives the boys thus attended a bucksliee concert that sounded like massed Wagnerian bands gone mad. One of the boys who attended the concert mentions this incident.

When the habit of amputating* ladies' locks became universal M.A.T. deplored the loss to mankind of pipe cleaners. Many a lock, v too, has been FASHION NOTE, picked (ill novels) with hairpins, and an American man made a fortune by inventing a hairpin with a hump to hold fair Lesbia's errant trees. Millions of unattached hairpins have, of course, since strewed the world, although you personally may not have seen a single specimen. But a use has been found for hairpins. Enclosed in-a dainty box of dates a hairpin was recently found. One is to be found in each box for stabbing the date and lifting it out of its container. The bow of the pin is bent in order to give a firmer hold in reaching for the date. Mention of the date pin, of course, reminds one of the universal winkle pin known to all Londoners. But 'Arriet rarely stabs her recalcitrant coiffure with a winkle pin. Now that ladies' hair is likely to flow again, there will ■ be frequent recourse to dates as dessert and in the boudoir. "By the judicious expenditure of two pounds ten," said opulent Henry, "I have achieved what may be lasting felicity. I paid the sum of ten shillings HENRY'S HOLIDAY, as a deposit on a residence site in one of our best-known islands in the gulf where every prospect pleases. For the outlay of two pounds I have acquired from the Public Works Department a tent. My family and myself will inhabit this inexpensive home for, some weeks, and indefinitely should aeroplane traffic develop. Just outside the homestead flap in rolls the blue Pacific stiff with fish. Cockles and other bivalves adhere to Nature in unthinkable quantities. On the near hills bobs the cotton tail of the welcome rabbit. The clang of the street cars is not heard; only the soft purr of the Pacific as it laves the sunswept beach. Arid all for fifty bob!" WHO TOLD YOU THAT. Teacher: "What does the sun give that the moon does not give?" Pupil: "Freckles, sir!/'.