THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 172, 24 July 1933, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

"M.A.C." writes: The Eugby phenomenon at Whangarei of a ball bursting while a kick at goal was being taken resulted in the referee ordering another ball and THE MIRACLE, another shot. It was a wise decision when something unexpected occurred, but Eugby referees often have to think and act quickly, and they have the satisfaction of knowing that theii decisions on a matter of fact cannot be challenged. There is the story of a candidate whc 1 wanted to be a Eugby referee being puf through an oral examination. "Say when a kick was being taken the ball burst and landed on the crossbar; what would that be?" asked the questioner. "A bloomin' miracle," replied the candidate. Cabled recently that David George Brownlow Cecil, Lord Burghley, hurdler, M.P.,- and the heir of the Marquis of Exeter, would not skip the hurdles any EGGS AND BACON, more because he has toe much other work to do The man with the nimble foot, the fair hail and the Wellington nose has plenty of dignity but no "side." Thinks almost more of horses than hurdles and is a master hand with the neddies. But what one wants to really say is that he's an excellent navvy. He doesn't do the feudal lord business to any great extent; but Jives in a more or less modest manor house that used to be a farmhouse near Stamford. Lady Burghley wanted a sunk garden—and she has one now, a show plae« planted with her own hands. But David himself did all the navvying requisite to the job—he can push a "banjo" with the best. You may be interested to hear that the famous hurdler's favourite food is eggs and bacon. You can't help liking a lord who likes bacon and eggs. Indian magicians astound the stranger to India with the mango trick. They plant a mango seed in view of the audience, cover it for a minute or two, raise BITS OF WOOD, the cover and show the young tree actually growing. Melbourne has lately got a scrap oi mango tree that did not grow as fast as that. It is a bit of the tree under which Livingstone and Stanley met at Ujiju, on Lake Tanganyika, in 1873. It has been Africa's most historical tree, and not a soul ever chipped a lump off it or carved initials on it. In the course of nature it died. At present the historic place where Stanley said, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" is marked with four slabs at each corner cut from the old mango tree. The rest of the tree has been cut up into convenient slices and every missionary society in the world is hoping to get a piece. Let's hope it was a big tree. You remember, of course, that William Ewart Gladstone used to cut down trees for pastime? Photograph frames were made from the chips and sold to admirers. There were far more admirers than frames— but commerce saw that no one went without a frame. The ex-Ivaiser and G." B. Shaw also are axemen —but one fancies the firewood gleaned by either is—horrors —burnt. A monument is to be erected in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey to Adam Lindsay Gordon, who is so often described as "the Australian poet," but is A.L.G. accurately mentioned by Douglas Sladen, responsible for this late publicity, as "the first poet of Australia"- —a different matter. It took a long time to induce English people at Home even to remember Gordon. Inquiries rather bored people there. Even the inquiries made at Cheltenham College (Glos.) were not particularly fruitful, and present writer doesn't know if it was ever established Gordon attended that famous school. Somebody eventually did find the house in Cheltenham where Gordon had lived. One happens to have known the quite unremarkable house, which is in a terrace of unremarkable dwellings, but nobody ever mentioned that the author of "The Sick Stockrider" had lived there, and present writer lidn't know there ever had been an Adam Lindsay Gordon until he saw it in an Australian paper. Very likely the rather disconsolate chap who died by his own hand doesn't care now whether lie is regarded as an Australian poet or "the first poet of Australia":

For good undone and gifts misspent and resolutions vain, 'Tis somewhat late to I know, I should live the same life over if I had to live again ; And the chances are I go where most men go.

Funny thing that the public figures we adore and whose names resound down the corridors of time should strike people outside New Zealand differently. THE ACID. For instance, Hannen Swaffer, a London scribe who dips his pen in acid or ink but rarely in honey, as the case may suggest, lately wrpte to say that he had met a good many Dominion statesmen and that he had got many shocks. Mr. S. didn't say how many Dofninion statesmen got shocks when they met him. Hannen says that Jan Smuts among colonial political celebrities alone is out of the ordinary—handsome, cultured, of deep intelligence. Sir Joseph Ward, in his opinion, was "an ordinary cove who in England would be utterly undistinguished," and Mr. Massey by the Swaffer standard ivas even less notable". As Swaffer writes in the present tense it appears as if he didn't know that these two statesmen have passed. Ho mentions William Morris Hughes, of Australia, as if all that mattered about him was his deafness and his tiredness. Most colonial statesmen, according to Swaffer, in England "might make, say, an ordinary Mayor of Darlington (3S,000). Some of them have not much more to do than the Mayor of Manchester." Presumably Swaffer is of opinion that the men named are the products of the countries in which they worked. "Billy" Hughes, "the Australian," is a Welshman. Mr. Massey, of New Zealand, was Irish, and Sir Joseph Ward an Australian.

A man who lias been sojourning in tlie East is among us again taking a breath of peace. He mentions among other novelties the spectacle of several CliinTHE LITERARY ese soldiers sitting under SHIRT. a tree reading their trousers and other garments. It seems that Communists distributed among the warring elements during the late uproar thousands of bales of cloth printed with invisible ink. Detectives have since treated this vast library with chemicals and have found much to reward them. A man in a cotton shirt, apparently perfectly innocuous, might be a walking advertisement for Soviets, Trousers dropped from the air might lead to new revolutions—oven a fluttering hanky might be propaganda for Redski, or a pair of socks an advertisement for a Five Year Plan. There is a notion in this for honest commerce. One buys a garment with the pattern before one's eyes. Conceive the novelty of a spotted tie that, being treated at home with chemicals, behaved like a chameleon— barred on Monday, flowered 011 Tuesday and speckled 011 Wednesday. There is, of course, nothing new in the conveyance of messages by wearing material. Dickens mentions the missionary handkerchiefs "combining select tales with woodcuts." The white family sheet has been known in Africa to convey the message to the troops that Piet and the family were peaceably disposed, and. of course, in the ! Dominions father's shirt fluttering from the I line has often been the surest evidence that father is at home in bed. Wonder have the Dominion police ever come across any Bolshie pyjamas with the "Red Flag" available to students after chemical treatment?