THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 29, 4 February 1933, Page 8

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

Three men in a boat, loaded with bread, bully beef, a frying pan, one of those fizzing stoves, some plates and pannikins, have lately spent a fortnight amon„ THE SEA COOKS, the islands of the gulf. They returned exceedingly bronzed, but after having undergone ablution with land soap and fresh water they are much blonde* tiaa when tiey eitpvei out oi launch. Yet, they cooked for themselves although none had ever cooked before. It was a happy thought of the younges o three who was cook to take a cookery book aboard. Close study of it resulted in some hummer feeds." On the last day on the journey up from the Great Barrier, Jack the cook promised them fish rissoles and sat down m the cockpit with the fizzer. He st^ d th ® book carefully, and then sadly said, We can t have those rissoles, you chaps—it says in the book of receipts 'Take a clean dish One may go to bed unknown and wake to fame. A schoolmaster was recently interesting his class in the common things so v often misunderstood by adult THE MILK MINE, cogniscenti, and he asked "What comes out of the earth 1" "Minerals, sir," piped a boy with an upthrown hand. "Y-e-s," said the master, feeling perhaps that the answer, though true, was inadequate. "And what else?" Liquids, sir!" "Such aa V\ asked the Vaster. "Milk sir!" The master laughed, as did the class,.'the master remarking, "Somebody ought to tell M.A.T. about that" —and somebody has. The thoughtless may conclude that the lad pictured perspiring men with diamond drills and vast machines boring the earth to tap the rivers of milk flowing beneath the surface But one prefers to believe that this lad may be a budding Rutherford who seeks first causes. He may reason, with perfect truth, that milk actually does come out of the earth, for the earth produces the grass, the grass feeds the cow, and certainly furnishes Jersey Queen and Tante Japie with their milk. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings cometh forth wisdom. Very likely if you set the grave-diggers in "Hamlet" to work in Auckland they would find many emblems of mortality oiitside consecrated ground for the RELICS. Prince of Denmark to soliloquise on. The recent finding in a local garden of an easily-explain-able slcull suggests that equally explicable remnants have been more or less commonplace since the early days. One easily-explained relic did duty as the top end of a scarecrow in a Devonport garden for years, but it used to be commonly accepted that this or any other publicly-exhibited skull was merely the fruit of a yachting trip. Keen yachtsmen, having obtained grisly relics, would bring them home, not so much as a link with Maori tribal wars as for' curiosity. Many of these gatherers found the relics so unpopular for home decoration that they would confer them on whosoever desired, but so few wanted to be reminded of the inevitable future that they were difficult to quit, and thus were to be found occasionally in unexpected -places. One possesses a flashlight photograph of a fewhilarious Devonport bachelors sitting in their den each with a yachting "trophy" on his knee and most undoubted shinbones held proudly aloft. No, the possibility of Shore bachelors of the year 2133 waving the legbones of the gentlemen in the snapshot never occurred to them. It is cabled that a determined big-game shooter of St. Louis, .U.S.A., thirsting for trophies, purchased two apathetic and aged circus lions, turned them BIG GAME. adrift with great difficulty from their comfy cages, and shot them dead. You are inclined to smile at this, but Mr. Denver Wright, the lion slayer, is merely following the royal precedent of nearly all crowned heads who pursue the felidae with nothing but a tigerproof shelter and fifteen hundred natives between them and death per tooth and claw. The only great personage to nearly lose the number of his mess per big game was the Earl of Athlone, who alone was charged by a gnu or wildebeeste in Africa arul was bowled over before he potted the animal. Mr. Wright i who shot the worn-out lions lias very likely seen Geo. Morrow's series of drawings, inferring that heroes of history were not always what they seemed. He shows Nimrod, that historic hunter, perched high on a spectacular dais surrounded by his harem and slaves and armed with a bow. Slaves hand him hie arrows, just as the duke's loader nowadays hands his Grace (who sits on a stool) his second gun so that the dangerous partridge may not escape. Beneath the dais is a cage of lions, and the intrepid royal hunter, frightfully bored, is potting them as they yawn round the ring. One has sometimes felt that the intrepid godwit shooter might for practice sit on the backdoor step with a fowling piece and pot the family hen as it cackles round the run.

It is in the lap of the gods whether flumonia leaps from the North Sea to Oceania or stays where it is. Dismal subject, but of in reminding one LEMONS. of lemons. During the dreadful visitation of 1918 the enormous palliative value of lemons was (so constantly proved that lemons were gems saleable at most unlemonlike prices, wherein the incurable commercialism of all races was shown. There are, of course, people who would either' give a railway truck ffill of lemons away or corner the supply while dying humanity gasped, and there were cases in 1918 in which owners of lemons, went lenionless to aid their suffering fellow beings. It is recalled that medical opinion was so impressed with the value of lemons and the immediate scarcity of them that hospitals planted lemon groves, so that in the future no patient lacking this wonder-worker should go without; but the most potent philanthropy could not prevent the price of the fruit rising to prohibitive heights, putting it beyond the reach of many sufferers, unless philanthropy rushed to the rescue bearing lemons. It occurs to one that if flumonia should take it<» leap it would be well to deal with the lemon situation before it leaps and not afterwards when the price is eighteenpence per squeeze. Governments, as you are no doubt aware, can peg exchange, and, with a wave of the pen, fix prices so that a single class may have financial health. A 'Government could even go to the extent of fixing lemon prices 111 flumonia time*, preventing monopoly and giving the lenionless underdog a chance to breathe. . Dear M.A.T., —An English visitor interviewed at Wellington: "The Old Country has been through similar conditions to those prevailing in New Zealand, METAPHORS. but lam glad to be able to say that although she may not be out of the wood she has breasted the worst of the breakers." Presumably a kind of tidal wave made hay of the London kauri bush.—J.C. . Dear M.A.T., —May I be permitted to ■point out a flight printer's error appearing in the Press recently ? I note that Mr. Forbes, on being interviewed bv APOLOGY. a reporter recently, is alleged to have stated: Everything in the garden is lovelv." Obviously "garden" should read "Gordon."—B.C.H.