THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 1, 3 January 1933, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

This is tli© time of year when it is nice not to let your right hand know what your left hand docth. So many people are temporarily embarrassed, poor RESOURCES. chaps, and it is unkind to judge the man by his output of speech. For instance, a man who had been to the races met an old acquaintance, college chum or friend. They entered into a New Year's conversation—hot weather, hard times Don Bradman, Don Bradman, hard times hot weather, hard times. They were about to part with kindest good wishes for a bright and prosperous New Year when the old acquaintance said, "Oh, you might {end me a half-crown—until the banks open.' Who knows what immense resources lie behind the temporarily embarrassed—when the banks open! 'Sitting on the beach at St. Helier's Bay on Wednesday a little family party were waitin"- for the tide to turn for a dip. Seagulls were flying about, and AIR-MINDED. one in particular was very busy fishing. All at once it was seen to fly high and drop a mussel from its beak on to the sand below. This performance went on for quite twenty times before the shell was cracked and the gull could get at its dainty morsel of food. During this performance a little girl of the party (aged six), who had been particularly interested in the gull's antics, remarked, "Perhaps ho is doing a bird stunt, daddy!"— Vista.

It is obvious after a perusal of a terrifying cablegram from Paris that nude Britishers and Americans will soon be seen in the Rue de la Paix. No British A FRENCH suits are to be allowed in GESTURE. France, and as it is point-

Ed out that swell Americans and well-dressed Britishers in France always wear suits tailored by British tailors, it foilows that the tailors must perish and the swells go naked. It is of interest that nearly the whole range of patterns for British suitings are designed in France, so probably Mr. Bull, in retaliation for Jean's conduct in barring Bond Street styles, may make patterns of his own. It is humiliating to have to acknowledge- that even though Fritz of Berlin goes to London to be tailored, London for_ so fong owed its. most expensive clothes to Fritz. There are people alive old enough to remember the sacred name of Stultz, the London tailor without whose aid no duke dare be seen in public. At the moment one of the most fashionable of London tailors is a Hindu.

The temporary respite from work during the introduction of 1933 has given original people more time to talk of the weather. Computing the conversational THE portion of the population GREAT OUTSIDE, at about seven hundred

and seventy-five thousand people, it is probable that seven hundred and seventy-Ave thousand people have> remarked, "My word, it's hot!" or its equivalent. The myriad motorists, whose idea of a perfect day is to shut themselves in a closed car immersed in the faint aroma of benzine, have all made the remark, while it has been heard from those remarkable holiday-makers who eat from morn to dewy eve, piling up enough calories to drive an ocean liner. In holiday moments in the great outdoor spaces among panting persons with peeled countenances and scarlet shoulders the universal exclamation of, "My word, it's hot!" has been heard. There was a slight variation of the universal exclamation when the young man, for want of something to say, said to the young lady, "Wasn't it hot yesterday?" And the young lady replied, "Yes— very close in the pictures."

Now that the joyous holiday crowds have fewer occasions for showering e%ery beach and every camping ground with tons of cast-off lunch papers, bottles, socks POST NOW. and other fragments, -it

seems appropriate to mention Mr. John Buehan, the famous novelist and historian. John went back from a holiday in Scotland to his home in an Oxfordshire village. He took a Scottish device—an imitation of a posting- box, but painted green—not red. On it was written "Post Your Litter." The Post Office wondered why few letters were reaching it. It transpired that practically the whole* population was posting its letters and not its litter in the green box. The first posting box in the world was erected in a Gloucestershire town and a guard "posted" to see that nobody robbed it. There were no postings for six weeks. Then the spate of letters began to flow in. But the people were educated slowly, and thereafter hundreds of letters were posted in every kind of slot that turned up— holes in the wall, slits in shop shutters, and, in several cases, cavities in public pumps. In an age when people are better educated and even politicians sometimes nass the sixth standard, the marvel of the Post Office appeals only to tlie Imaginative. It is an enthralling thought that the butter box with the slit in it at an island in the gulf is to all intents and purposes the G.P.O. at St. Martin's le Grand and that the exile at Whcrekirauponga who posts New Year's greetings to his aunt at Llanvihangel Goblan Llansaintfraed is morally as certain as man can be that auntie will receive them.

Dr. G. Sharp (sounds a bit musical, doesn't it?), Archbishop of Brisbane, is the authority for the statement that girls are born into a pleasant world nowadays, THE BOARDERS, basing his contention, not

- on the possibility of a job for girls, but on the fact that there are plenty of boarding schools, whereas when he was a boy people had a hard job to establish these schools. The Archbishop mentioned one of the pioneers of girls' boarding schools in Cheltenham, England, and, of course, means that famous establishment, the Ladies' College, which is a comparatively new school, as schools go, having been established the other day in 1534. What one wants to say, however, is that Miss Dorothea Beale, who became headmistress four years later and stayed there .for the jubilee of this gorgeous place, was one of the pioneers of the boarding notion. Duchesses and other mothers, regarded the innovation with some hauteur at first, but in time about a thousand girls boarded in the eighteen boardinghouses and in St. Hilda's College, which is also a boardinghouse. Amongst the minor wonders of a magnificent collection of architectural beauty is the fact that girls, unlike boys, do not hack their desks—and there is no caso among the acres of classrooms or in the Princess Hall to seat 1500, of initials scored on any bit of furniture, nor has any coming peeress scratched her name on any of the thirty beautiful stained-glass windows. One of the old features of the famous school was the riding school, conducted by a notable riding master named English, and his staff —all old cavalrymen. A cavalcade of fifty or sixty young aristocrats, all accurately turned out, driving tin-tacks at-the trot in the Promenade of the Garden Town of England was a solemn sight. Nowadays in this town of innumerable schools the haughty residents speak more of the Cheltenham Express (the fastest train in the world) than the riding school or Dr. Dorothea Beale. And nowadays there are overflow schools for coming peeresses all over the Garden Town. A THOUGHT FOR TO-DAY. God made the. flowers to beautify The earth, and cheer man's careful mood; And he is happiest who hath power To gather wisdom from a flower, And wake his heart in every hour To pleasant gratitude. i I _.. ' —Wordsworth.