THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 26, 31 January 1934, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

One would be willing to move a hearty vote of thanks to the man who perfected the modern motor car brake or brakes. The people who are not dead. UNNAMED because of brakes are as GENIUS, the sands upon the seashore. An incident of yesterday during a vigorous wind. A man stood on a'Qiiecn Street safety zone waiting for a tramcar. The wind whisked his hat off, blowing it to the asphalt. Instinctively he stepped off the zone and rushed for his hat. -& taxi bein-r driven at normal speed was as near to the hat as the chaser was. Ine car was pulled up by it* driver well within half its length. The man retrieved his hat witli the bonnet an inch from him. The pedestrian smiled, the imperturbable driver, probably without thinking of the marvel he had in his control, accelerated and was gone. Now it that fellow hadn't invented the modern brake

Immured ('that is to say "within walls") for a twelvemonth, a man one knows has joined the Wanganella for a salt vacation. In the presence of men ADVENTURE, who love their holidays spokeshaved and with weather made to order, he suddenly exclaimed, "I hope we have a storm!" "What the devil, exploded a listener, "do you want a storm for?" And Mr. X. replied, "Because I have never yet been in a etorm at sea,' which reply indicates that there still exist indomitable explorers who will brave all for a new sensation. And another listener, who lives a life of movement in a motor car, mentioned that he had lately overtaken a man on a Waikato road to whom he offered a hflt. _ Ine explorer climbed aboard, and they whirled along. Proceeding with reasonable care, tne driver hearing a sudden pop, moaned, "There sne <roes—a blinkin , puncture!" and pulled up. "rm° "-lad there'e a puncture," said the passenger. "Glad! Good heavens, why?" "I ve 'never seen a puncture before—please show it to me," said the gentleman.

Noted that "Aqua Pupuke," food for the facetious water drinker and the anathema of washerwomen of the oversea boroughs, is more

normal than before. STILL WATERS. "Geordie" writes, recalling that it was supposed to be fit neither for drinking nor for washing, declaring, however, that Shields (Northumberland) bath water may be swum in for a year and then drunk. He sends "Th e Shieldsman in official confirmation. Shields ('North and South) is enormously busy. Among other things, there are fifteen docks, miles of beaches, piers and other expressions of water life. So busy is Shields generally and so much engaged in the coal trade that baths augment the other washing facilities. And "The Shieldsman declares that after sixteen hundred people have bathed in the Derby Street baths of South Shields a thirsty soul might drink it without fear or harm. A new plant has effected a salutary change in the quality of the water, and it is claimed that it is now purer than most other English supplies. The bath people buy their fresh water from the Sunderland and South Shields Water Company at per gallon. After the one hundred and sixty thousand people have had their dip the cleaning process renders the water drinkable once more. "Many ]>ounds of mud/' says "The Shieldßinan," "are collected and deflected into the sewers." Nothing, however, is said about the shellfish harvest—if any—or of any rich subaqueous vegetation.

One learns with regret that Mr. Ramos, a Greek millionaire, is now in "a sanatorium." It is feared that as he has been giving money away for no ostensible reA WAD OF turn, he is not in good DRACHMAE, mental health. Maybe he

has that Carnegie feeling, that "to die rich is to die disgraced"—and has been induced to throw bank notes about to avoid this relatively common millionaire complaint. Mr. Ramos, who scatters bank notes up to one thousand drachmae among the crowds, is, one presumes, suffering from dementia praecox, a complaint that induces those who suffer from it, whether poor or rich, to give excellent imitations of generosity. Thoro was the case of one of the best known and most beloved Australians who went about in the care of a hard-headed servant, writing cheques for enormous sums, handing the same to his old friends. As the cheques were all given for posting to the servant, the servant merely destroyed them. One New Zealand friend", however, claims to possess a cheque for £100,000 signed by this unflortunate man. Then there is the case of the London chap I who hadn't got dementia praecox at all. He I bet a friend a monkey or two that he (the friend) 'could "not sell golden sovereigns publicly at a shilling a sow The friend stood on London Bridge with his pile of really-truly sov6 and pattered out that they could be had for a shilling each. Smelling -a supposed rat, the great London public stopped, grinned and passed on without gold —and the seller did no biz. Also he paid up the wager and wept bitterly.

When Tristan da Cunba, the Portuguese navigator, found a bu:ich of islands in the South Pacific Coean and called the best-looking Tristan da, etc., after THE RABBIT, himself, he had no thought

of rabbits. He saw a pile of rocks and. other features, about nine thousand feet high, and if he had put his tape round it he would have found the whole deplorable place forty-five square miles small. To-day there are sixty-six people there, and there will soon be another, because the Rev. {•Mr. Wilde, from England, is going there and is taking among other things two pairs of rabbits and footballs and cricketing gear. The rabbits will be pleased to know that there is grass among the rocks., because there are both sheep and cattle on Tristan, etc.—and if anything can spar for an opening among sheep and cattle it is the rabbit. Lady rabbits are fecund —several families a year are quite normal, expected and desired. It Jβ clear that fiour rabbits, unmitigated by local slaughter, would become a family of forty or fifty thousand in practically no time. These, with the "rabbits" among the local cricketers, would be sufficient. Tristan will solve the question of what to do with our boys. They will want rabbit boards in Tristan. They will want rabbit inspectors in Tristan, they will want tinning factories and wire-netting and traps and poison in Tristan.

THOUGHTS FOR TO-DAY. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.—Ezekiel xxxvi., 20. Experience is not what happens to a-man. It is - what a man does with what happens to him.—lAldous Huxley. No! Let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers, The heroee of old; Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears, Of pain, darkness and cold. —Browning.