THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 95, 23 April 1931, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) He is temperamental. He has been known to indulge in most unparliamentary language during the temporary absence of a collar stud. His artistic nature comTEMPERAMENT. pels him to see in a spoonful of scoria a veritable Mount Albert. Ruin stared him in the face 011 a recent day. He had arrived in a town with a suitcase. He crooked his finger at an apparent porter and commanded him to carry his bag across the road to the hotel. The man took the bag. "How much?" demanded the owner. "A shilling," replied the man. He of the temperament threw his anguished hands to the skies, gritted his teeth and asked the quickly-assembling multitude if they thought he had come to a thirty-third class town to be robbed. Two men he knew emerged from the hotel and asked him what it was all about. "It's about robbery!" he shouted. "Bare-faced robbery! This unmitigated scoundrel charges me a shilling—a shilling, I tell you—for carrying my bag thirty yards. Robbery, swindling, intolerable rascality." With diabolical intensity the artistic soul gave the man ninepence and hissed, "Get out, you robber!" Then, turning to his friends with a smile, he said: "Come and have a small bottle." They did. Many shillings. It is quite incorrectly held that the innocent young of New Zealand, incited thereto by Los Angelic talking films, frequently speak the language of the KING OF CHICAGO. United States, greatly to the consternation of local educationists. If these libelled infants are really experts even in the literary language of San Francisco will any of them please translate the three seven-column headlines in a recent San Francisco newspaper ? Here they are: "S. F. Wife Kills Suicide. Bacigalupi Succeeds Giananni as Pres. Bare Winship Love Deal." Any American language scholar translating the lines is at liberty to search Queen Street for prizes. Immediately under these terrific captions one is informed that A 1 Capone, the noted gunman, "Expects to Die With His Boots On." Mr. Frank J. Loesch, president of the Chicago Crime Commission, is the authority for little Al's statement. Mr. Loesch was concerned with the election of a State's attorney and other important officers and so he went to Mr. Capone to arrange the matter. The interview was made private by a squad of guards, none of whom could speak English or the variations of it appearing in these headlines. Mr. Loesch asked Mr. Capone to kindly keep his young gunmen friends away while the elections were on. And Mr. Capone replied: "I'll have the cops send over the squad cars the night before the election and jug all the hoodlums and keep 'em in the cooler till the polls close." Mr. Loetsch gratefully told the members of the Academy of Criminology that Mr. Capone's orders to the police resulted in the squarest election for forty years. They got the officials they wanted—thanks to the kind help of this highly popular bad man. Dear M.A.T., —If the statements made in a recent Saturday Supplement article on "Ductless Glands and Their Secretions" are correct, then not only are A HINT. these glands and their secretions mainly responsible for our general health, temperament and physical development but they are in turn reacted upon and the quantity and qualities of their secretions largely determined by our moods, emotions and facial expressions. This to me seems both feasible and reasonable. The lachrymose, mournful expression of a funeral mute who has worked long and assiduously at his trade is proverbial. He who acts the part of Scrooge "with a long-drawn, woeful face" becomes not only a misery to himself but a carrier of misery germs infecting all who come in contact with him. Play "with a cheery smile" the part of a Cheeryble Brother, and you shed joy and cheer-up germs all along your path. Jasper, who, "as everyone knows," is an authority, most emphatically declares: "You can't look at or think of the merry smiling faces of a lot of happy kiddies without smiling yourself, and if you smile you can't be miserable." Smiling, like yawning, is very infectious, and so is kite flying. Kites seem 'to have a charm of their own which acts upon young and old, both male and female; they, may lack ductless glands, but they certainly keep their tails up in spite of bad times and depression, whilst the amount of pleasure, happiness and cheer-up germs they diffuse is beyond all computation. Realising this fact, and wanting a Cheer Up Week of their own, a large number of Newmarket business people have formed a Kite Flying Club and are enjoying the sport by proxy on every possible occasion at the Manurewa Children's Home, the Mount Albert and Mount Eden Methodist Orphanages and the Takapuna Orphanage for boys, where from one to two dozen fully equipped kites may be seen in the air at one time. There are other orphanages and other business centres. This, as Artemus Ward used to say, is a hint. —Nuff Sed. There have been-numerous bits in the papers lately about the agony of winning a sweep, one lady running to a column of. print practically saying that she PITY THE RICH, will never win a sweep again if so many people write begging letters to her. You have seen what frightful trouble chased the Italian gentlemen who drew part of a million in the Irish sweep, and everybody Avanted a cut, whether it was obtained with a knife or per the courts. It is understood that the gentleman who won thirteen thousand odd pounds has had no troubles as yet, and congratulations are due to him. But once there was an Australian policeman who was walking his beat when a telegraph boy reached him and thrust a wire into his hand, telling liim that lie had drawn the big money in a consultation. The lucky winner dropped down dead. There was also the case of the Australian publican who received a fateful missive of the same calibre. He instantly recommended his customers to make hay while the sun shone and invited them to make free of his house and all that therein was. There is a catcli in this story. When his house had been drunk dry and the cupboards were empty it was communicated to him that the wire was a fake and that the practical joker was amongst those present at the free house celebrations. It so affected the victualler that he became a sheepfarmer and made a fortune in wool. There was the New Zealand tradesman who drew a thumping wad for a pound. Asked by M.A.T. liow he had felt when the news was communicated, he said he went into the backyard of his shop and was very ill indeed. Then he went back to the shop and carried on with his work. "And then what?" asked M.A.T. "I bought myself a new pair of socks," he said simply, but with a glint in his shrewd- old eye. CHEER UP. Distressed Lady in Queen Street: "Oh, please help me find my husband! I've lost him in the crowd." Policeman: "How will I know him?" Lady: "He has a mermaid tattooed on his chest."