THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 182, 3 August 1932, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

THE CROOK. A Bulgarian tailor's cutter was eo ashamed of ibis crooked nose that.he became a.burglar. He would not appear in the street in daylight and spent much of his -time straightening his nose. —News item. There was a crooked *allo>r, And he had a crooked nose, He used some crooked scissors lor To cut some crooked clothes. He wouldn't show in daylight When the people were about. Because they used to "chivvy nim About his crooked snout. He passed awny his leisure hours With spanners and a file, Endeavouring to rectify The horrors of his dial. He finally resorted to An atmosphere of crime Br breaking in and entering 'To wile away the time. Eventually, tiowever, He finished in disgrace Tlirn' failine in exhibiting The blemish on his face. Whatever soTt of avenue The fellow tried to seek, He finished up a loser, for He had to face the Beak. H

Cuthbert Harold Blakiston, headmae-ter of St. Mary and St. Nicolas College 'Lancing) M the educationist who is reported to have said that the modern boy is THE BOYS. timid, untruthful and dishonest in comparison with the boy of thirty years ago. Cuthbert has explained that he only meant mental defectives, which is probably what the Outhberts since the time of William the Conqueror have meant, as in every generation the boy has been the target for moral blasters. The point to be considered is that the headmaster of Lancing is fifty-three years of age, a time of life when almost every man says, "I am just as good as ever I was"—and isn't. Another point as that Cuthbert is unmarried, eo that the coming statesmen, sailors, soldiers and business men who are not as good as they were in 1902 are the other fellow's sons. Come to think of it, the boye of the succeeding generations who are not as good as those of the last are the fellows who hasten into uniform when the bugle blows and do some rather notable things considering they are so inferior to their fathers or to men who are not fathers. One wonders whether the unmarried Mr. Blakiston really did say that the old spirit of adventure in modern boys had been destroyed. Perhaps the spirit of adventure has died in a man hurtling- towards sixty and he imagines this sort of dearth of enterprise in lads of sixteen and thenceforward. Each ,year among the nations there are many hundreds of youths who have ventured into the clouds and have crashed to their deaths. They could do no more even in Trojan days. After all, the world is wider than may be seen from the rectory at Shoreham-by-Sea.

Pursuing the theme of luck that's in and luck that's out, there is the cabled case of the man at Twickenham who was killed by lightning under a tree THE FLASH. while watching a cricket match. Very likely there were hundreds of people who watched that cricket match who are still alive. There is the case of the Auckland suburbanite, who, being overtaken by an electrical storm, raced madly for the only available tree—a. very large Norfolk Island pine on a lawn. While he was racing lightning struck the tree and simply tore it to shreds, leaving part of the standing trunk, resembling a gigantic corkscrewphotographs of the same being still extant. Happily, lightning in its most dangerous manifestation is uncommon in New Zealand, but in South Africa, where during the season there is thunder to waste and lightning to burn every day, it is different. Discriminating element, too! Cases have been frequent where lightning would kill a rider and leave his horse alive, or that would slay a horse and leave the rider intact. Lightning is certainly a respecter of cattle, for in "Darkest" part of a team of working bullocks or mules may be wiped out in a moment, the other part, still alive, wondering what's happened to the leaders. There is the New Zealand case of electric discrimination in Nature. Several hundreds of school children running out of the playground to escape the downpour only got clear as lightning struck and partially destroyed a huge macrocarpa tree —not a child being harmed.

Consider for a minute and a half the cussedness of luck. The confirmed foseicker from youth to crabbed old age, hoping for the best, will swing a pick JUST LUCK. and agitate a dish in an auriferoue district for forty years, making enough to keep the Alsatian out of the tent door and considering an odd pennyweight or so a. fortune negotiable at the storekeeper's for bully ■beef. Then there is the chap who doesn't know gold from mundic who makes one welt with a pick, or pans off a dishful of rubble, and strikes a Bonanza. There is the case of a man you very likely know who had done very well in business — so well, in short, that he accumulated motor care, launches and so forth, and retired. This retirement got on his nerves, and just to pass away the time —this particularly rotten time —he* took to fossicking for gold in the ranges which aforetime showed much gold and on which "tucker" diggers have been ckeing out a bare living for many years. The tirefl. retired man with two mates, quite new to the game, astonished the tucker diggers by cleaning up about seven hundred pounds in a remarkably short time. If the retired man goes on this he will probably undergo a double retirement before long. ]n short, one man may fall out of a throe-storey window and break his. arm, while another may hop down a single step and break his neck.

Mr. Stanley Bruce, Australian statesman, at present arguing about beef, mutton and wool at Ottawa, has been made a bencher of Lincoln's Inn. In case A NOTED INN. the uninitiated- may believe that the inn in the ease has a license for the sale of malt or spirituous liquors, it is as well to explain that it is an Inn of Court, there being four of the same, the others being the Inner Temple, the Middle Temple and Gray's Inn, all in London. These four inns have the sole right to admit law students and to call them to the bar (how this licensed victualler nomenclature persists!). At one time a barrister served an apprenticeship in an inn of chancery before ho joined an inn of court, but, unlike the laws of the Medes and Persians, this one has been altered. Of course, Mr. Bruce will not have an ordinary innings like a new-fledged wig. He is to be a "bencher," and as he is to live in London as a consulting Federal Minister, he will be able to attend the meetings of the "bench" —the high hats who govern the Inn. Presumably, however, an Inns of Court bencher could live in Australia and still be a bencher. Under the circumstances, he would probably vote by cable if there was anything doing. Or perhaps he could do it by proxy and leave it to Psniith.

THOUGHTS FQR TO-DAY. The most miserable pettifogging in the world is that, of a man in the court of his own conscience.—Henry Ward. Beeeher. Call not this life a sorrow, A blur of trars: To-day tlia murk —tomorrow The vista clears. —Charles Jerome.