THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 112, 15 May 1933, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) Not many versts from Ohaeawai there is a house of accommodation where the traveller may bo fed. A party of potential meal eaters arrived, all gastronomiTHE MENU. cally competent —in short, just hungry. The waitress, a young ladv of some beauty and unusually alert, buzzed" about busily with the written menu, evidently composed and written under «omc little strain. She would breeze up to a diner and rapidly, read the card something like this: "Steaks chops sausages cold roast beef boiled mutton bacon and eggs and there's polonies as well only I can't spell them." A Northern suburban Chinese gardener lately loaded his cart with the fruits of the earth, rising to find them all gone in the morning. History rcTHE RAIDERS, peats itself, but differently. There was the case of the Maoris and the kumara crop. Some nefarious blighters watched the kumara runners run, saw the Maoris cultivate with loving care the long rows, and chuckled. Poor simple erowers! Time came when the kumara crop was fit to lift. The nefarious blighters stole on to the patch, dug the kumara, bagged them and departed—not far, however, for the growers had had scouts posted. As the blighters were departing, the growers surrounded them, made them carry the bags of kumara to the growers' homes, welted them each on the jaw and sent them home. Cheap labour! Then there was the case of the New South Wales boys and the Chinese gardeners who lived on a hill. These boys, armed with rifles and towing pack-horses, opened fire on the gardeners' mud and wattle hut at night. The gardeners hid in the chimney, the sweet lads loaded up the whole garden supply on the horses and went home. It is of minor interest that the whole dozen lads were sent to gaol—and that one ultimately was sent to Parliament, where his boyish training stood him in good stead. He even stole a march on the opposition.

The photographic appearance of an old gentleman and lite grandson standing in knobby scrub, gazing at potential walking sticks, induced present nib to gaze STICKS. thoughtfully at pedestrian citizens to see if walking sticks are coming back again. The moment selected for this adventure was lucky, for along Queen Street four walking sticks flashed at once, the remaining one thousand and six gentlemen in view being Stickless. Two of the men with sticks needed them in the management of gammy legs, traceable, no doubt, to Fritz, while the other pair were in the hands of gentlemen in mufti either from the Royal Navy or our own Skeleton Army. Time was when droves of people combed the jungle for suitable bits of timber to complete the outdoor wear of mankind in general. New Zealand knows the inlaid walking stick formed of many timbers and lovingly fashioned by artists. One has in eye a dark red stick carved with meticulous care" bv a man who chopped it from the heart of a large manuka, crook and all. Pie wanted badly to confer it on M.A.T., but as M.A.T. had onlv recently bought a whole bag of firewood, his tactful refusal of the gift was but natural. You know, of course, that the habit of carrying a stick emanated from the medieval habit of carrying a sword, or the exceedingly plebian notion apprentices had of carrying cudgels. The lack of any necessity for poking a gentleman in the waistcoat with point or ferrule has gradually eliminated the walking stick as a universal weapon. Celebrities, however, collect old walking sticks and tell their Press agents about it. Sir Gerald du Maurier collects walking sticks—and there arc, as one says, at least four in Auckland.

New Zealand farmers will kindly note that there is likelv to be a stupendous demand for cheese, ir tliey will take the advice of a person who has toyed CHEESE. with the Gruyere, talked to the Gorgonzola and rolled a Dutch cheese backwards and forwards in skittle alley, they will insist that their factories get on with it. It is silly for you to presume that New Zealand began the sport of making cheese like soap, insisting that the cheese caters of Merry England should eat it and pay the price, for English history is thick with soapy reference. George Borrow (a noticing chap of the earlier and ensuing years of the last century) 'tells in "Wild Wales" of his adventure in Cheshire. He was there for the first time, and longed with a passion beyond endurance for Cheshire cheese and Chester ale. He was exceedingly uncomplimentary to both, and spoke of the first as soap and the latter with opprobrium. George concluded that Cheshire sent all its real cheese away and kept the soap. There is a necessity for the New Zealand dairy farmer to get busy with real cheese, a fit partner for old beer. But then, soz you, the three hundred and sixty-five million gallons of beer recently set allow in the United States is not old beer, and now beer presumably indicates now cheese of a soapy texture? Not at all! New beer demands old, ripe, full-cream, crummy cheese, and this is the type that one beseeches Mr. Fernlcaf to make if he wishes to collar the cheese trade of forty million 3 per cent ale connoisseurs in U.S.A. "Appetites wary," as Sam Weller says. New Zealand makes and eats cheese much like Double Gloster, and Texas is keen on the soapy style. One wonders if New Zealanders, in their own country, might not be trained to eat real cheese and implored to send any Skim Dick in store to Texas.

The subject was Cold Snaps, meteorological changes, and what not. The man with the zip-fastened woolly mentioned to the cosily costumed citizen THE BIG FIVE. that he knew a chap in Christchurch who consulted the thermometer every day and designed his diurnal sartorial effects accordingly. The cosily clad man hailed the Christchurch stranger as a man after his own heart, declaring that lie himself consulted the home thermometer every morning before breakfast. If the temperature was equable he would, perhaps, wear only si couple of singlets—besides his suit, etc.-—-but that as the winter went along he w-ould gradually increase his comforts. Monday, for instance, might be a tvf.J-singlet, one-shirt day, Tuesday perhaps a two-shtrt day, Wednesday a tlireesinglet and four-shirt day, and so forth. The lucky man who possessed suits and overcoats of varying weights exhibited his winter socks with pride—or, at least, his two pairs of winter socks —the day being bleak. He said that his largest pair of shoes would only take four pairs of socks, and that he had to have his overcoats made for five-shirts, two singlets, one woolly, one waistcoat and one sac coat days. He admitted that on a really cold day ■he was impervious to hatpins. As the spring conies, this gentleman —and presumably other people who hate to catch cold—will one by one pool his garments off and go about comparatively naked, with merely one garment of each designation. As a matter of fact, the thermometer and barometer man is an imitator of the Chinese mandarin, whose valet carries at least 25 coats for his master and hands them up or strips them off as the day advances or declines. It was pointed out to the thermometer man that his own extremely valuable body supplied all the warmth and the clothes merely kept it in. "Pooh!" he said, and turned up his collar and opened his gamp. A THOUGHT FOR TO-DAY. 'The snail, say the Hindus, sees nothing but his'own shell, and thinks it tho grandest palace in the universe,—Sidney Smith,