THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 98, 27 April 1932, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) It will be universally admitted that every Maorilander sojourning abroad is an enthusiastic New Zealander and speaks up for the lana he loves. There is the SOLO. story of the New Zealand business man who tarried in Canada for a space and while there had the opportunity of meeting a Canadian merchantWhat debate ensued was about our butter and. Canada's cars. The New Zealand travellers wife was in waiting, and when the husband returned to her she asked him whatever he had been doing all that time "Oh, Ive been having a conversation with Mr. X." And the lady replied: "You didn't have a conversation. You gave him a lecture." Yes, the returned traveller tells the story himself.

Colonel Lindbergh, the famous American airman, is unhappily in the public eye at present because the Lindbergh baby was stolen F and is held for ransom. LINDBERGH'S It is recalled that after FEAT, his historic flight he was entertained by the two notable British sportsmen, Lord Lonsdale and Lord Roseberv, at the Derby. The entertainment took place in the dining room of the Jockey Club, and it was here that Lindbergh astounded everybody present with a feat hitherto unknown in Jockey Club circles. When a waiter politely asked him, What will you take to drink, sir?" the great American quietly said, "Lemonade, please." There was a burst of. merriment, for the diners thought the airman was being funny. As a matter or fact, he was only being teetotal, as he had been all his life.

This is the story about the man who found money. He is a notable amateur "■ardener and wields a clever spade. On a n recent Saturday he was SILVER LINING, engaged in turning over what Walt Mason calls "the fertile gumbo," when, to his joy, he picked up a shilling. He put it in his pocket and proceeded to dig. He picked up another shilling and put it in his pocket. Encouraged by this success, he adjusted his spectacles and dug even more furiously, wondering what former tenant had sown shillings instead of seeds. When he had for the sixth time pocketed a shilling, he could keep the good news no longer to himself. He raced into the house said, "What do you think, mum. I've dug up six shillings in the garden?" Mum looked incredulous. "Here they arc!" he said, diving a hand into his right-hand trouscr pocket. There were no shillings. Then mother said, "Oh, those are the trousers with the hole in the pocket—l was going to mend— (etc.)"

A cablegram from Calcutta mentions that antagonistic forces have revived the ancient pastime of "setting fire to pillar boxes." It is, of course, the contents THE RED BOX. and not the iron pillar that are ignited. The idea is not original to the Indian National Congress, for shortly after the introduction of pillar boxes in England, hooligans, having no letters to post themselves, used sometimes to drop lighted oily rags into the aperture, and the rest was chaos. The first posting box to be raised in England is still doing duty in the home of its birth, Cheltenham, which has "iven its name to the fastest train on earth and other marvels. When this red erection first appeared the authorities felt that nobody could possibly be honest, and a sentry was posted to guard the scarlet innovation. However, as the sentry did no business for three months the guard was withdrawn and has been withdrawn ever since. Thereafter unlettered people frequently posted letters in pumps, shop shutters and any other place that had a slot. The universal adoption of the scarlet box is based on the supposition that anyone other than a man who is colour blind would prefer a genuine pillar box to a pump.

They teach us almost everything per cablegram nowadays, including the art of love.° Canon Elliott, at Manchester, declares there is no harm in THE ART OF flirting, and very likely LOVE. King Solomon and the late Sultan Abdul of Turkey would have been glad to hear him say so. True love-making, according to the canon, is gradual and progressive, and one therefore deprecates the methods of the stone age man who apparently picked his future partner by eye and went after her with a club, dragging her to the dear old cave. Canon Elliott further remarked that gradualness should not end at courtship, but should be taken into married life, some people never learning that love-making is an art. One is glad to know that art and artfulness have superseded instinct, and that the clergy and the laity are bidden to practise the arts that appear to allure the female of the species. Love baited with a diamond ring, for instance, is art, while a menage with linvousines, mansions and period furniture as a lure to love need not be forgotten. The canon might have invented some remembcrable phrase such as "Marry in haste and repent at leisure" to cable to the far ends of the earth, and he might have suggested that love-making that ended in divorce had not been gradual enough. Of course, the canon's advice is only for those people who seek peace with bombs, bayonets and decrees nisi. It is not for the heathen who, like Solomon, Abdul or the caveman woos from afar, the African heathen buying his lady loves with bullocks and estimating his wealth by the number of his wive 3. Most men will agree with the clerical dictum that there is no harm in flirting, and it certainly leads to the gradualness he prescribes. Ovid would have been interested.

If you have seen a recent photograph of the Queen in walking-out apparel you will note that she still wears the unswerving queenly toque and. reTHE CHUBBY, frains from carrying a chubby umbrella—t ha t, in fact, fashions do not change with. Her Majesty. When the long feminine umbrella with the sharp steel ferrule at the end vanished in all but Royal circles the innovation of the foot-long brolly was hailed with solemn satisfaction by those who had been poked in the ear in a surging crowd with the more formidable weapon. One remembers so well the lethal quality of the lady's long gamp because one is forced to shriek in the ear of a friend who lost his hearing through a poke by just such an umbrella as Royalty still carries. Prior to the introduction of the medium-long umbrella, Society for a brief space carried umbrellas five feet long designated during their short life "husband beaters." They were so obviously inappropriate for crowded life or for vehicles that they disappeared and are only to be found in collections. The portrait of the Queen with a long umbrella caused one to look with satisfaction at the modern miniature parapluie. The average woman in a bus or other vehicle in which she is sometimes forced to stand, miscalculates the length of the chubby and therefore carries it at the trail, poking the front rank in the waist or under the arm, endangering the King's lieges a bit further up. It is not inappropriate to mention that the umbrella was known in China in our eleventh century and that searching antiquarians have found elaborate specimens in the graves of the great at Nineveh and Thebes. The brolly was known in AngloSaxon times in England and then disappeared for centuries. When Joseph Hanway, returning from Persia, carried a gamp in London streets in 1712 the shocked people stoned him. As for Her Majesty's umbrella, long may it reign!