THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 77, 1 April 1932, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

You are mistaken in believing that All Fools' Day is no longer used by jokists to entrap the unwary. There was the father of little Dan, for instance. FAIR COW. Dan had made a sparrow trap with an old box, a bit of string, a length of stick, and some grains of rice for bait. Dad watched his opportunity, and, taking little Dan's toy rabbit, put it in the trap, lowered the top, and went to -work. Some minutes after father had departed little Dan, who is six years of ape, came running to his mother. "Mum, mum!" lie cried. '-Some cow's been and gone and got one on to me" (exhibiting the toy rabbit). "Sh.-sh, Dan!" said mother. "You shouldn't call your dad a cow." "Oil, I didn't know it was dad," piped the young diplomat. "Ha, ha, First of April."

Interesting in a time of dearth to contemplate measures taken in the past for acquiring fortunes. There was, for instance, the Professor of Political EcoAND CO. no.my who became rich, but not from professoring. His uncle died and left him the business. 'There were a thousand people working in the business. The professor rejoiced that lie could now put his private beliefs into practice. ,Ke would run a democratic factory—govern it by election and the rule of the majority. If politics is good for the country, sezee, it must be good for biz, he sez. He held an election in the factory and asked the thousand employees to vote for a managing director. They elected old Bill, a porter with a wooden leg. The professor turned over the whole thing to Bill. Full maintenance was allowed to everybody who was ill. The day after the (promulgation of this edict fifty hands turned up. The other nine hundred and fifty were ill in bed. Bill gave his relatives all the best jobs. Then there was a strike. The official assignee ultimately informed the creditors that the professor might pay threepence in the pound. The professor gave up business and went back to his 'Varsity to teach Political Economy.

Men notoriously forgot dates of birthdays and that sort of thing. Women never do, and hence through the centuries men are in hot water. There is the clasHIS SPECTACLES, sic case of the gentleman fully attired in plus-fours and with his golf sticks suspended from himself leaving his home early in the morning. The anxious little wife is saying, "Oh, Willie, are you going to golf on this of all days? Have you forgotten that it is our wedding day?" And Willie replies, "Oh, I'm so glad you reminded me, little woman. I'll have a really good round to-day to celebrate it." Loca'lly there is the case of the man who likewise forgets, his wife recently having reminded him of this forgetfulness. So he got to the office and a few minutes thereafter, thinking of absence of mind generally, he rang up his home. "Would you," he asked his wife, "just look round the bedroom and see if I left my specs, there?" The wife was absent for a minute. "No," she said on her return; "they are not there." "Please look in the dining room," he said. She returned shortly. "No!" she replied. "I've practically searched the house." "Oh, by the way," said the man, "what date i* it to-day?" "Wait till I look at the paper," she said. "Oh, don't bother," cackled the fraud, "it's April 1."

Dear M.A.T., —There is no accounting for public taste. One reads that in London a film showing the climbing of Mount Kamet, that immense Himalayan peak IN THE COLD, of fame, has been rejected on the ground that it contained no sex interest. Personally I would have been vastly entertained by the sight of alpinists and their porters at dizzy heights and intrigued with glissading and all that sort of thing that is associated with the frozen heights. But, of course, sex interest carries the greatest appeal to most people. They would probably like a young Amazon racing for the hoary top of lvamet with the hero in pursuit and a villain—or sundry villains — tumbling over precipices on the way. What a splendid climax it would be if the hero and the heroine met at the very top, the former grasping the latter in the approved style that lilni heroes have, and fiercely ejaculating: "Darling, I love you!" "With those suitable adjuncts it could not be called a cold picture. Public taste of to-day brings back memories of those times before the silver sheet came on the scene. I can remember a. good oldfashioned drama and the meeting with a young man who left at the interval. " 'Tain't much of a show," he said; "there's ondy two bloomin' murders in the first half." —iM.A.C.

Dear M.A.T., —The tone of your remarks upon the sword, following the foolhardy exploits of de Groot, hais raised the ire of

a number of people. AdTHE SWORD. mittedly the sword is merely a symbol of rank and authority, but your very statement that hundreds of them adorn walls in New Zealand shows that they have a value far beyond the ornamental, which you apparently fail to appreciate. For instance, I keep with pride the sword of my brother, who was killed on the Sommc in 1910. Why lie had the weapon in France I do not know, but it certainly came into my possession in the Held with the rest of his kit. I keep my own sword, also with pride. It has been round the world witli me, in Egypt and in France; it .actually got mixed up in the war —through the war coming to it, not by any heroics on my part, and it was stolen by a burglar in London and returned by the sleuths of Scotland Yard. I have a younger brother, commissioned in 1015, and issued with his badge of authority. Certainly he broke it off short at the hilt on the first'night in a glorious rat hunt, and had to buy another. These incidents may be amusing, but they cannot detract from the feelings of those who look at the hundreds of swords on New Zealand walls and remember the men who carried them. That is why they hang on walls and are not used to spear earwigs, or as earths for radio sets, or other purposes for which they are eminently suitable.—A.H.C.

Exiles from Ilomc not yet habituated to our moral system are at times in a quandary, finding unhappily that they are precluded from spending money. Thus ASK A we find a man-o'-wars-POLICEMAN. man at Ellerslie who, like everybody else, wanted to speculate a modest sum on a horse. So Jack moved up to the "tote" and asked an official who was in the habit of nonchalantly handling breathless sums for a "live-bob ticket." The official mentioned that there was no such thing as a five-shilling "tote" ticket obtainable there, and the tar expressed the opinion that it was a funny little country where people refused money in any amount or denomination. Then this unsophisticated stranger from the home of racing mildly asked if the official could direct him to a bookmaker! People in the vicinity visibly paled at the very idea that there should be so dreadful a thing as a bookmaker on a New Zealand racecourse just as if it was Ascot, Goodwood or Xewmarket. The official frankly acknowledged that he couldn't tell the stranger w'.ere lie could find a bookmaker, but perhaps if he asked a policeman . . .