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THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

Dear M.A.T.-Truly the gold fever -has seized every person.who knows the value ot it, or the want of same, as witness the energy of the gold buyers. I was GOOD SPECIMENS, interested in your par re nuggets (the very worn has a fascination). Up to 1867 boWydazzlers of- the first grade to the number of- 150 weie recorded-five to America, nine to .V to Russia, four to Scotland, two to Ii eland, one to England, two to Canada and one hundred and twenty-two to Aussie, lhe .New South Wales Hill End specimen (not a nug--ret) measured 4 feet 9 inches by-2 feet 2 fnches by 4 inches, weighed 0301b and was valued at £13.000. -One strange fact about some nuggets may be mentioned, and that ie they have been found in a clay bed some feet below the surface (not in the wasn). Question is, did they drop from the sky or were they vomited from a golden bath in the bowels of the earth by volcanic action. If the Tatter, why talk about a world shortage .' —Nine-Mile Spring.

He is one of those "hard-doers" whom everybody likes. Heart of gold and all that sort of thing. Has strayed farther than Ponsonby and knows the THANKSGIVING, world even better than a Grey Lynnet. He is 'engaged at the moment i'n endeavouring to sell household articles to unresponsive housewives, and it is a hard row to hoe. One recent day he was observed to be in pensive mood, h»s thick eyebrows- gathered in a knot. From the left-hand top pocket of his waistcoat he withdrew a piece of tarry rope and smelt it affectionately. Having taken a full smell, he replaced the bit of pungent rope. His brow relaxed. A smile irradiated his weatherbeaten countenance. H& was asked to explain his olfactory exercise. And he said something like this: "From the time I was a boy of fourteen to the time I was thirty-five past I wae a sailor on windjammers. Them was the days when if a sailorman's fingers wasn't all fish hooks he had a dog's life. If you had been round the Horn a few times messing about with icy ropes and frozen sails, you'd understand. Salt junk and blasphemy, frostbite, hard tack, and poor pay. So when I feel down the doldrums and things is rottener than usual, I takes out me bit of tarred rope and gives it a sniff. It brings back them rotten memories. 'Strath, these ain't hard times! They're heaven.on earth," and he pushed off, his hard face wreathed with gratitude.

A man who had done the Grand Tour, including the United States and the Balkans with a letter of credit and a suitcase about eighteen inches long, is in LET US HIKE, the habit of climbing the local mountains and gazing at the scenery, walking terrific distances to achieve his objects. He wrote to M.A.T. wondering what the amateur swagmen and swagwomen who hike about carrying rucksacks bursting with heavy stuff carried in them. •He has sinoe been buzzing about the hills and hollows waiting to note if any hiker ever unbuttons these stupendous burdens. He has been fortunate enough to not'e a young lady hikiste staggering upwards with a pair of knitting needles sticking out of the bursting mouth of her swag, , but, the remainder of the load is not disclosed.' Obviously, in the case of some fair hikistcs the real object of carrying half a hundredweight of load up a tall hill is to sit. on the top and knit woollies. The stupendous loads ; carried by little ladies who so often, let mother do the . washing up is really in imitation of the professional swagman, who adds a brick or two to his burden" as he creeps towards the eighties, or the African carrier boy, who, having taken a, load for a hundred miles, has to return "empty," and picks out a large rock to carry back on his head. Reminds one rather ofi the bricklayer's labourer .of hod-carrying days. , Hβ had carried his sixteen bricks up a ladder to.the sixth storey when the knock-off whistle blew, so, as he hated to work overtime, he carried them down again. " ■ "• He who starves, .in the,early stages of his delirium babbles of gigantic, meals and dreams of fair lakes, streams .and rivers of water. One has often BITE OF FOOD, wondered why people who are short of tucker do not dream themselves satisfied, or- read books in which portly chefs bear prodigious, mounda. of roast beef, aromatic fowls and steaming dishes of vegetables, to allay the pangs' by suggestion. Nowadays we have so few novelists who revel in. written food. Dickens, who himself had a wretched digestion and confined. ■ many of hie meals to liquid sustenance, filled his books and his people with gargantuan .meals. For a small party of four he will give us a procession of waiters carrying enougli food-to keep an Auckland relief kitchen queue. full fed for a day. Recently at a local Dickenfeian' meeting a lady told the story of. the Cockney coster who at,a meeting was asked if he had read Dickens. "Not 'arf!" said 'Arry. "Oi've read the 'ole blinkin , lot." "And what struck you mosi in the reading of them?" asked the literary person. "The w'y he torks abaht the grub! Lor' lunime, you might 'a thought you wos a-eatin' of it!" There are in the -whole of Dickens' works about sixty-five meals, including Bob Cratchit'e turkey -and the Pickwickian picnic, during which the Immortal one got so precious tight he was wheeled away in a barrow by Captain Bodwig's men to the village pound, where he -still babbled of punch. Still, you know, if you asked for bread and they gave you a copy of. "David Copperfield" to stay your hunger ■ . A gentleman from Whangarei has looked in to mention that an adult thoroughbred horse, mare or gelding (he didn't say'which) had recently fetched a FARM V. ■ mere fourteen and a half RACECOURSE, guineas and that a yearling Jersey heifer had sold at Whangarei for sixty-three guineas. Hie point is that the cow is perhaps coming into her.own. Days were when Strawberry would perhaps bring a couple of pounds while a blood horee or his female or sexless relative might bring untold gold. One is expected to moralise. It i<s, for instance, extraordinary that Mr, Charles Chaplin slio.uld drag down, say, one hundred thousand pounds, for amusing people, when during the same period a farmer scratches along on, say, three pounds a week. There really has been no real change. An illustrious ram capable of becoming the progenitor of a long line of descendants fetched as much as three thousand, pounde long before the depression set in, beating most thoroughbred horses in price, even though the neddv was kept for the amusement of people .and the material benefit of hisowner. Old-time Strawberry very likely brought thirty or forty bob because she wae only worth fifteen. With the cow, as with the man, it is often breed that counts. Come to think of it, the blood horse which fetches untold gold, if he is masculine, may become the sire of a victorious brigade of war horses, so lie is in some degree justified in the price he~ brings. The text, of course, is J arms or Racecourses?" At the present moment there are so few people in. New Zealand that there is enoughrootn for prize rams, expensive Jersey heifers, bulls of royal breed, Phar Lap 3 relatives, Charlie Chaplin, farms and racecourses. Personally, O ne would hesitate to prevent a man; giving ten thousand pounds for a racing stallion or beseech him to plunge his money on Jersey Lass instead. Let cm all have a go. Most of us arc only here lor about forty-eight or eighty-eight years.

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Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AS19320613.2.65

Bibliographic details

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 138, 13 June 1932, Page 6

Word Count
1,312

THE PASSING SHOW. Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 138, 13 June 1932, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW. Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 138, 13 June 1932, Page 6