THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 237, 7 October 1933, Page 8

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TO WN.)

GONE TO GRASS. This very Saturday hundreds of people will be swiping the grass off with a golf club and thousands will be cutting it even closer with a lawnmower. They do it elsewhere, too, and "I/ueio" of the "Manchester Guardian," among other verses, has these: At week-ends I the suburbs scan And weep to see my fellow man Still tolling 011 a senseless plan, Wfiich humbles, irks and lowers; He was (iso 'Rousseau says) born free, Yet everywhere, it seems to me, With shoulders bowed in toil, I see Him pushing little mowers. No rest the gracious week-end brings— Throughout the patient suburb rings The rattle of these tirasome things Still iQiider, later, longer. Is this a holiday for men — To cut the grass around their pen? And why? It only grows again Still greener and still stronger. Why should these sorry ritas collect Suburban sanction and respect? Why should man labour to correct What Nature means to bungle? Why not forswear this futile light, Hide shears and razors out of sight, And let his beard and sward unite In one congenial jungle?

PERSONALITY OF THE WEEK,

Mr. Sidney Evelyn Wright is held in high esteem as the secretary of the Employers' Association and as an unobtrusive, modest citizen. He admits having NO. 407. been born as long ago as 1802 at Lyttelton, receiving his education at Christ's College, thereafter going to work in a commercial offiee. He began business as a public accountant in Masterton and during his thirty years in that town took up work also for the Employers' Federation. He worked subsequently at his profession for seven years in Napier, continuing his joint duties, and about twenty years ago came here, being employed ever since in the position he now adorns. As a young man Mr. Wright was a keen rower and a member of the Canterbury Rowing Club. In Napier he succumbed to the fascination of bowling, and earlier in his Auckland career he rolled a cunning wood for Remuera. To-day his hobby is wood carving, of which he is a skilled exponent, regarding it as a great solace after work, and specially satisfying as it represents permanent personal achievement. His adopted son lives in Devonport.

Entliusiaatic dressers are hoping to trace the origin of black shirts for social rebels to its source. An admirer of Robert Louis Steven-

son, who has even read BLACK AND his "Travels With a DonWHITE. key," declares that the

Black Shirts of Italy got the notion from "E.L.5.," who rebelliously wore this type of garment in his student days so as to be unlike everybody else —and presumably as a superior advertisement. The black shirt, or at least a very dark-grey one

which turns black with the weeks, has been common wear for the New Zealand worker f<jr decades. Black shirts saucily finished with a zipp fastener may be seen every day on the broad breasts of our proletariat. Mussolini probably doesn't kr.ow this. It would cheer the Duce up a lot. The desire for being

different is not nearly as common as the desire for being the same. The world cackles at a man who does not follow the prevailing fashion. Society got a jolt when Mark Twain turned up to a public meal attired in white evening clothes—the only suit among the prevailing dark garments. Sheer advertising, of course the only pebble on the beach sort of thing, and an offence against convention. Mussolini might have been just as selfish by turning out in a black shirt and commanding everybody else to refrain from doing it. ° One of the best-remembered cases of pompous conceit belongs to Australian politics. The first Labour "Mr. Speaker" of an Australian Parliament turned up and took his seat without a wig—the headgear prescribed so long ago by the Mother of Parliaments. This bright advertiser held that the wig was absurd, but age-old feeling was too strong for this advertiser and he fell into line. He even introduced an extra curl or two.

"Fernleaf," the excellent little Auckland monthly crammed with matters that interest old soldiers—and everybody—is celebrating its first anniversary, enIarg"WHALLEY." ing itself by popular military demand. In the October number "6th How," talking of the proposal to supersede the band of the Auckland M.R., recalls that "fellow of infinite jest,"

the late Captain Whalley Stewart, bandmaster of this, New Zealand's most famous band, who, although not young when the Big Mistake began, joined up and served duration, returning to New Zealand with a new swag of stories. "It is remembered that the captain in civil life might often be seen with a group of inen who were doubled up with laughter, while he himself remained gravely silent. He was a born raconteur, and infused the saving grace of humour into many priceless stories. And, what's morp, on service he paraded the band mounted on some occasions, there being a photograph of himself on a very useful" looking charger. Let the band blow trombones at the G-A-L-L-O-P!"

Australians arc tree lovers, too—or at least, like ourselves, they are stump lovers. They don't mind so much about the tree as the size of the butt. They A have got an old 18SS ROTTEN STUMP, stump in the Fitzroy Gardens, Melbourne. The treo was slashed down in the Healsville Ranges—a unique specimen, forty-seven feet seven inches in circumference. The stump was taken to the Melbourne Exhibition to show the people what sort of a tree they hadn t got now in the Healsville Ranges. They are so much fonder of the stump than the tree that, now the poor thing is as rotten as a pear in those gardens, they have it allbound up with steel and wire. People stand about and gasp, "What a tree!" They're wrong. "What a shame!" is the just comment. Yes, of course, we have had kauris bigger than that. Look at the stumps!

A THOUGHT FOR TO-DAY. The bread of life is love; The salt of life is work; The sweetness of life poetry; The water of life faith, i . , _ . —Mrs. Jainiesoiu