THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 262, 4 November 1932, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) Voronoff, the gland merchant whose name is cropping up again as a human rejuvenator, will probably be alarmed at the waste of: good glands by those un-speak-THE able people who shoot LAST STAND, apes. At Home at the ■nioment there is a large newspaper correspondence about 'the 0 ■"■orillas —one of the links between the dark forest and you, sweet reader. The gorilla, •the most interesting of all animals of the wild, is absolutely harmless if undisturbed., and he is nearly wiped out. Commander Attilo Gatti, an Italian slayer for museums, mentions that he shot a gorilla in the Belgian Congo which weighed four hundred and eighty-two pounds and was six feet six inches in height a P UI ® waste of glands that a Prime Minister might be proud to wear. A Belgian slayer went into the twilight forest, where the few gorillas are making their last stand and killed one nine feet seven inches tall and weighing six hundred pounds—another shocking waste of o-landular material likely to afford a rich nonagenarian sincere pleasure and renewed yout.i. ft is computed that there are only two hundred of these simian people left in the Congo and the sainted naturalists are after them with rifles. Many naturalists would shoot their grandmothers if grandmothers were as rare as gorillas.

Gazin<r at a queue of patient Christian people tailing on to see a show, one irresistibly thought of the hundreds of millions of patient heathen who had taught

THE TAIL. the Western folk how to do it. The Chinese have been walking in queues for many centuries, and you will observe that the habit has been handed down to our own local Chinese. The queue idea grew very slowly in Auckland, and even now dad from the backblocks occasionally tries to push his frame into the middle of the tail (queue means tail) and wonders why the people are so stubborn. The queue comes from the East because there are so many people there —and did not get here for so long because there were so few. The necessity of tailing on in China originated in narrow footways not wide enough for many to walk together abreast. The habit is destructive of conversation and very likely it is the silent procession idea that gives us our notion of "the inscrutable East." By the way, the queue, or "pigtail," that has disappeared from the heads of unthinkable millions in China was a mark of servitude, and very likely you don't remember that prisoners, servants or staves used to be strung together with these "pigtails,' thus forming a queue like an Auckland talkie show audience, who, however, never, never shall be slaves and have no pigtails. It occurred to one as one watched the talkie queue that it would have been romantically enhanced by the presence of baskets on bamboos carried by ardent film fans.

Belief workers were recently alarmed to hear that their friend, Mr. Montague Norman, the poetic-looking Governor of the Bank of England, got merely two THE thousand a year. Indeed, WAGE-EARNER, the office liai mean emolument for forty years, and London is seething with inquiries into the variation between a picture star's screw and a great official's dole. You are entitled to wonder why in 1095 the Governor of the Bank, the Deputy and Directors each got three thousand pound* per annum and need not turn up to the office if they didn't feel inclined. Thus a one year's salary was a life fortune in those times. Another State service has retrogressed, too. During the period when the above amateur bankers each drew his three thousand p.a. many a noble personage who found it difficult to sign his name might easily find himself suddenly in j charge of a great "State Department with the dreadful necessity of showing up at the office several times a year. To compensate the noble lord or the retired admiral or the successful general for having to work several afternoons a year an estate was frequently thrown in with the salary, and a State Secretary might wake up one working day to find himself master of a job, a few thousand acres of park, a castle, and so forth. Great officials had the further advantage, if the diarists of the period are to be believed, of taking a "cut" out of the wages of the under-dog, often receiving for many years the whole wages of men who had been dead for some time, but whose names were still on the pay roll.

Perhaps you noted the "Star" photograph of a hefty lady in manly bifurcations driving (or about to drive) a plough team? Australian, too, but very likely THE FURROW, the picture might be seen in the Maoriland hinterland, too. Nothing very new about ladies at the plough. Fritz, of South Australia, very early in the colonisation scheme, thought of the Frau and the kinder not only as drivers [but draught animals, and much of the "fertile [gumbo" of that stupendous bit of dirt owes its present smoothness to Gretclien and little Hans. Most people forget that much of the ancient Australian ploughing was done with assigned convicts for draught, the draught animals being stapled to trees when knock-off sounded. The plough has ( always been a fertile subject for poet and artist —and talking about the human draught horse, there is a notable gallery picture ofi a dear old Scots crofter at the handles of a wooden plough of Adamic aspect, driving a sonsy lass and a bonnv boy as a team. Apparently the only pathetic bit of this picture is the exceedingly ancient crofter at the handles. People who have ploughed know full well that no mortal woman and boy hitched in as a team could possibly .pull that funny old log plough through the ground. There" certainly is a sort of pathos in that Academy picture, "The Top of the Hill," shewing a two-horse team with the offside noddy dead in his chains, for horses get heart failure the same as drivers. And talking about drivers, there is another Academy picture, "The Last Furrow." The horses are in excellent health, but thoughtful, and the near side horse is looking round to see what's happened to the driver. He is lying over the handles of his plough, the lines still in his dead hand. Now with a tractor — but there!

Perhaps ,you have never experienced the agonies of stage fright, or have never been tongue-tied on a public occasion ? On a recent evening an excellent THE young man, rising to STORM FIEND, speak to a small crowd, was so nervous -that he couldn't say a word. However, applause broke out, and the young fellow, his scattered wits, made an excellent speech without the least hesitation. It reminded a hearer of Bill, a station hand, who had been asked by a visiting parson to give a recitation at a forthcoming church social in the township twenty-five miles distant. Bill chose his recitation and for four weeks in the men's hut made tire lives of his pals a perfect misery, getting them to hear him rehearse "The Storm Fiend" until he was word perfect. On the great day Bill with his friends rode in to the township, as everybody else did. At the social was the bishop and all the notabilities of the district. The time came when Bill had to do his little stunt. He ambled awkwardly on to the stage, scratched his ear, pulled his forelock, and thus began: "The Storm Find looked ercrost ther waste—blow me if I haven't clean fergot it!" raced off the platform, threw himself on his horse, and galloped for home. It is appropriate to mention that Bill did not say "blow." All the same t even the bishop laughed. * j >, u