THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 268, 13 November 1933, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

Casting a horseshoe may bring good luek, but casting a horoscope, lias cost a man a three pounds' fine. Probably fortune-telling

existed Detoro Adam, and. THE HOROSCOPE, may persist until nobody has any fortune to tell. Forty years ago a. dear old Auckland gentleman' used to east medical horoscopes. In a remembered case a man acting for a bedridden friend, who was mortally ill, interviewed the "psychometrist," who commanded him to bring any object familiarly carried by the patient —or, better still, a look of his hair. The friend returned later with a lock of hair. The psychometrist, placing tho lock of hair on his farehead, lay on a sofa and was instantly in a five shillings' "tranoe." He rose later and described with great minuteness the symptoms of the sick man, then dicta-ted treatment (which was quite harmless), received ■his fee and dismissed the friend. The friend begged for tho lock of hair, and the seer kindly 'returned it. The lock of hair was long preserved as a souvenir of tho old gentleman's magic. It had been cut from an old goatskin mat.

Mentioned in current news that Continental dope fiends are sending their devilish goods to England in onions, per Brittany sailors, who take real STICKS OF onions with false —the ONIONS, fake being full of the iniquitous goods (or bads). Reminds one that the Continental onion has been getting to England per sailor for many generations. Bristol used to exude foreign sailors, each bearing one stick on which onions were tied. With a few pennyworth of onipns on a stick a sailor would walk uncounted miles in the west of England. He would think himself fortunate if he returned to his ship with anything from ninepence to eighteenpence to take back to Italy, the South of France—even Spain. As one used to watch theao dismal foreigners tramping from town to town hoping to make mere pence for their pedestrianism, one wondered what sort of wages Continental sailors got for being sailors. No doubt the modern sailor with imitation onions containing heroin and similar forgetfulness on a stick, is better paid than the onion hawker who hopped off his ship into the crooked quays of old, old Bristol a few years since. An ordinary Spanish onion in itself is a soporific, but hardly offers such a Lethe of forgetfulness as an artificial onion full of dope..

A London typewriter king has informed tlie world that Queen Victoria took to the typewriter as soon a 9 it appeared in really usable form, thus making way TAPS AND for the millions of typists TINKLES, who have been tapp : ng the keys ever since. But Queen Victoria did not use one of the earliest typewriters, which were about as big as a young breakfast table, needing the village blacksmith to thump out the earlier messages. Yes, the earliest machine was distinctly portable. A sturdy lorry and a couple of draught horses could pull it everywhere. Nowadays a budding author carries any number of potential best sellers in his machine, little heavier than a vanity bag. In time we shall have little machines that write novels without extraneous aid —the days of the perfect book. Typewriters began to type efficiently about the time that telephones tinkled with persistence. Telephones are so recent that one personally remembers old John Banks, aJi English publishing celebrity, who, on being confronted with an active disseminator of telephones who wished to fit his large establishment with the same, swept the man into oblivion with, "Have we no messenger lads?" —and installed 'phones six months later. The head serangs of Her Majesty's Post Office, faced with the ordeal of a letter from telephone interests, replied that Her Majesty's Post-master-General begged to state that in the past the system of intercommunication by means of speaking tubes having proved adequate, H.M.'s P.M.G. saw no reason why the system should be altered. His successors saw several reasons.

A lucky Wanganui man has a bread roll thirty-two years old. It is one that nobody ate on the Royal yacht Ophir, when the present King and Queen BURIED KAI. visited us in 1901. People

have prized old rolls for centuries. There are petrified rolls in the Xaples Museum taken from the ashes of Pompeii. They look all right. One has never tried them. Rolls, persist in the graves of Kings of Egypt, and archaeological ghouls, looking for corpses, find 'em and twitter gladly about the find. People absolutely prize these inedible relics. One knows a man with an 1899 tin of Chicago bully. Facetious soldiers eating beef of a similar pattern in the early 'nineties called it "potted Arab," in reference to its first appearance in a Sudan campaign. The hoarding of food for exhibition is inexplicable. There is the case of the soldier who, among some thousands of others, got the "Queen's Chocolate Box"—1900. Most soldiers ate the contents instantly. One soldier carefully refrained. Thirty years after he boasted of his treasure, opened the box—found it empty. His children (then grown up) acknowledged that during the years they had sucked it away a bit at a time—sacrilege! Beer (and stout) lying in bottles on the floor of the ocean, relics of wrecks, have been raised to tile surface, covered in barnacles, and exhibited in shop windows. People with watering mouths have stood gazing wistfully. Ale thus imprisoned and subsequently drunk is said to be quite good, thank you. Now a bread roll, not eaten by Royalty in 1901, has none of the keeping qualities of submarine stout. Why save rolls?

"Ohevron" wants to know why eminent ex-warriors entitled to wear purely military decorations and having been anything from subaltern to general durRANK AND FILE, ing war become Universally "Mr.," while gentlemen whose last command \vas of forty-four Volunteers, in the streets of their village retain by public consent "major," "captain" and what not. Few really worry, least of all the generals who rule islands and the generals who sit on magisterial benches and are now "Misters." If the myriads of civilians who Were oiice soldiers insisted on their ranks in daily life, daily literature would be cluttered up wltli enough titles to make a new Army list. Then, too, you'd possibly have to write to Corporal A.8., managing director of a great firm, Sergeant C.D., ruling half a million acres, or Colonel E.F. working steadily as a wharf labourer. An old volunteer officer tells a story about himself. "1 was serving a customer with a tie during the war when a staff officer came into the shop and said, 'Captain X., the officer commanding the district would like to see you at once.' And I answered, 'Good heavens! Is Kitchener dead?'" After all, the old boys were the foundation of the system that gave us our New Zealand fighting army, and all that talk about "butterfly shooters" Was a bit cheap. One old boy found it hard to bear. He had 'em all on, brass-bound helmet and drawn sword, leading his company round the corner of Tul-tul Street before an enraptured audience. One of the audience called, "Hi, captain, wipe the blood off your sword!" On a recent occasion at a meeting la major was in charge of the proceedings and was addressing the meeting when a gentleman in the audience rose and began, "Comrade Major ■ It is new, it is inspiring—it is [impossible.