THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 284, 1 December 1933, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

[ Dear M.A.T., —Dunedin does seem ratlier 'a chilly place in -which to start a nudist club, but, alter all, the inhabitants there are mostly Scottish, and Scotland is A BIT OF DOG. a bit on the bleak side.

I daresay the first man who sported a sporran was thought to be "putting oil dog" (literally and figuratively), and what an uproar there must have been when a few of the "bloods" of the period added a bit of coloured flannel to the sporran! One can imagine the irate and indignant old clubmen saying with disgust, "What are our effeminate young men coming to? The country is going to the dogs, sir!"—AjS.T.

Dear M.A.T.,—We all know the saying that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, but it seems to me a very difficult question to really know THE GAME. how much play a boy should have, or how much work. In England we concentrate on play in the most extraordinary way. Boys think of nothing else,'and they are encouraged by their parents and teachers. What is the result? Till only a few years ago the proud parent, would wave his arm magnificently at the world and say, "The British Empire." To-day it is no longer asserted that the British Empire is the result of playing games; but that does not mean that the British have given up games. They are playing them more and more. Perhaps they are right. Although the Empire looks as if it were in a bit of a mess, the rest of the world is in ,a worse mess. There seems to be in the British a sort of inherent common sense which has nothing to do with books and the study of them. Learning does not make a man wise. It only makes him learned. That is why a man who has devoted himself to bat and ball is as equal to dealing with a crisis as any of your studious people. —iSafdar Jang.

A tall, dark man who knows a bit of crossbred when he sees it, took M.A.T. by the Merino lapel and said. "Don't run away with t'ne idea that because HIGH FINANCE. <00l is gloriously up the country is to be sprinkled with sovereigns to burn. Don't you see that plenty of sheep men, probably with a twoseason's clip, borrowed forward' on it from financial institutions and what not—so that much of the money the squatter might have spent with you and me naturally goes to satisfy prior claims, if you see what I mean. Mentioned, too, how conveniently common is the habit of financing the grower of all kinds. Once there was a grower who had dealt with a produce firm for years and years. Th© firm at the nioment was selling strawberry plants. For cash they were halfi-a-crown a thousand cheaper than booked. The grower went to the head of the firm and. said, "Lend me ten pounds, will you ?" The head instantly obliged him—in fact handed out two fivers without a | blink. The grower thanked him kindly, trotted down the stairs, found the head's brother, asked about the price of strawberry plants— and bought ten pounds' worth, handing over the borrowed fivers —a cash transaction. Maybe'vou think the firm was a bit peeved? Not at all! The brothers chuckled. They recognised in the grower a mail who understands the high finance on which so much colosSal success is based. It pays to pay cash, even if the cash is borrowed. l

(Here's a letter from Cheltenham —the Garden Town of England. It is in the handwriting of the veteran, author and journalist, ° Douglas 'Sladen, famous in SALUBRITAS ' Australia. Sladen is an old ET Cheltenham College man. ERUDITIO. So. was Adam Lindsay Gordon, the national poet of Australia. Gordon entered the great school on its opening day in 1841 at the age of eight. Mr. Sladen raised the money for the centenary memorial to Gordon which adorns the wall of his former home, 28, Priory* Street, Cheltenham. M.A.T. knows the house as the back of his hand, but until Mr. Sladen's letter .came didn't know it is now a courthouse. Mr. Sladen, senior prefect at the college sixty years ago, talked a couple of columns about Gordon at the centenary. Gordon never mentioned his college. Nobody knew how he escaped expulsion. Spent all his spare time at a low boxing place and at training and racing stables at Prestburv. Prestbury, by the way, is an old-w or id village—ancient church, almshouses and the village stocks. He was three years at the R.M. College, Woolwich—and was asked to leave. Studied poetry and riding at Prestbury and used to imitate other poets. Black Tom Oliver, famous jockey, taught him riding but no poetry. Gordon is said to have been "expelled from Woolwich for stealing a horse and winning a race with it. He kept the public school touch all his short life, for lie was great-grandson on both sides of the fourth Earl of Aberdeen. Married a working girl in Australia. When lie suicided she married a working man. Sladen calls Gordon the finest rider in Australia and most heroic of poets. Gordon of Khartoum, who was at Woolwich with Gordin the galloper, claimed, him as a cousin. Adam Lindsay Gordon never claimed anybody—but he is commemorated at last in Cheltenham and Westminster Abbey. He was born in the Azores, reared in Cheltenham, and, of course, is an Australian.

Each day Things its unforgettable sights and sounds. He who observes revels in precious memories. Sounds there bo in Queen Street hardly consonant with the TIP-TOES music of l .he spheres, and AND TULIPS, there have been atmos-

pheric statics that the celebrated lost soul would envy as a howl fit for Gehenna. Old familiar sounds are very dear to old familiar people. For instance, there proceeded down /the half-crown side of Queen Street a good-looking, well set up, sunburnt man, possibly weighing fourteen stone, standing a bare six feet and diffusing an air of broad fields. Sartorially he was new to the point of perfection—excellently-tailored blue serge suit, cut by a master, a gleaming hat unidentified as to its genesis. May have been Bond 'Street or Broadway, or even from the Strada Delia Mussolini. Then the glittering shoes, shining with the newness of the factory and the loving care of the shop. Well, what about it? The shoes squeaked! It was the first really-truly pedal squeak M.A.T. had heard in years. He cherished it as a spur to the memory of an infinite procession of pedal squeaks common to the pavements before boot manufacturers thoughtfully eliminated this foot music. The tall, blue man with his wool well sold practically tip-toed among the imagined tulips like "the person in the song. He loved every bit of his perfectly new outfit, barring the squeak. He blushed beneath his tan at this intrusion on the larger noises of the town. How has the boot trade eliminated the squeak, except in rare cases? Time was when eleven pairs of footwear—especially boots —out of a dozen sang songs on pavements, in concerts, in theatres, in church. Little drops of air imprisoned in the soles played the universal tune. Wearers used to stand the squeaking soles in water, used to bore awl holes in the soles, used to drive wooden in to drive the air out. And here at last is a glittering pair of absolutely up-to-date squeakers. It is almost like the dear, dead days.

A THOUGHT FOR TO-DAY. If a man had no person whom he loved or esteemed, no person who loved or esteemed him, how wretched must his condition be! Surely a man capable of reflection would choose to pass out of existence rather than to [live in such a state. —lieid's Essays.