THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 37, 13 February 1934, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) .• \ It rained on Saturday evening. Two Remuera youths hit upon a plan to save their new suits, which they had donned to attena the pictures. At the end. NEW SUITS. of the performance the first lad waited patiently until the streets were deserted, and, rolling up his trousers to the knees, he put his coa , waistcoat and shirt into a bundle, and dashed off to his home. The second boy, after alightin"- from a tram, went to a nearby shop verandah close to his home, stripped himself of his clothing excepting his shirt, and undies, carefully rolled the garments into a neat bundle, which he placed under his arm, and, seeing nobodv about, ran the distance to is home" in record time. He reached his destination unnoticed.—R. Senator Plain, the Australian who headed the delegation organised by the Victorian Scottish Union to New Zealand, got back to Melbourne and poured out MANY THANKS, his heart. The burly Plain said that having got back to Victoria lie could understand Harry Lauder who, when he got first to Melbourne, found the place 6o seething with "Scots that he said, "We're a' Scots here tlie-gither." Mr. Plain says that everywhere they went in this Dominion they saw sporrans and haggis, kilts and bagpipes, . not to mention whisky. He said, too, that in all that tour there was not a single discordant note—not even on the bagpipes? Mr. Plain is entitled to believe that New Zealand is merely a suburb of Scotland, but if he had been recently in Waitangi he could have been excused for concluding that the country was wholly populated by large, dark gents in a different kind of kilt. People beaming with benevolence still wear a track to the numismatic department, dive into pigskin purses, dig up old halfcrowns and shillings of SILVER LINING. the reign of George 111., hand them over to M.A.T. —and take them away again! One rather wonders why these particular brands of coins have been treasured so. Most of the Third George half-crowns are so recent-looking that it is°obvious they have been prized far beyond their face value in the hope that within the next few hundred years one ofi them will be worth two and nine or three shillings. The shillings are extremely worn in most cases, and the only -romantic thought they raise in the mind of" the amateur numismatist is that innumerable dead fingers, worn-out pockets and long-dead shop counters have rubbed the bust of a dead monarch off and left the tail well down. One finds that owners of these coins carry them separately for fear of spending them. Most of the owners of these relatively rccent pieces regard them with the veneration with which a trained coin fan would regard a Bagdad farthing passed from finger to finger in the years, long B.C. A coin even as old as a George 111. is useful in reminding humanity that millions of the busy fingers that polished George's intelligent countenance off one of his shillings have gone to the haven under the hill where nobody can spend it. The cablegrams fell us that the Parisian police dealt more brutally with the less dangerous second outbreak of "political" rioting. "Machine guns were THE APACHES, fired at a crowd of comparatively harmless young ruffians," indicating that young ruffians are a common feature of Parisian life. Paris chose the title "Apache" for the young ruffian, entirely because the Apache Red Indian was renowned for his superlative cruelty. Among the innumerable Apache bands roaming earlier Paris was "the Bonnot gang," consisting of a small group of exceedingly nice-looking musicians and artists —all keen on the violin and extremely popular in religious organisations. These interesting young musicians when they took to crime used to beat their victims to death with stout socks filled with broken glass. A photograph of the many weapons used by the young artists showed a stout stocking that had been filled with small steel nails. The harmless young ruffian who gloried in the use of this instrument had with loving care himself filed five hundred small nails to needle points to load this "baton." Among other little variants, an Apache gang sold logs of firewood containing poison which when burnt asphyxiated tho people in the room where the lire happened to be.

Once upon a time there was a gentleman in an old colonial city who had travelled copiously and who hardly ever forgot to mention it, feeling rather POLYLINGUAL, sorry for local ignorance. With aggressive modesty, in liberal reference to the South American Republics, he would tell his respectful hearers of his polylingual accomplishments. "Yes," said he, "I speak Spanish with the same fluency as I speak English—ltalian, of course —German, yes—'French as to the mannah bawn." A humble listener some days later received a letter from the Balearic Islands, colonised, if one remembers rightly, in the year 123 by the Romans and to-day run as an excellent business by Spain. The letter, addressed to "Messrs. , New Zealand, New York," was in Spanish, and although the recipient could get the general drift, he instantly thought of his accomplished polylinguistic acquaintance, and rushed round with the letter. "I've got a Spanish letter," he said. "Would you be good enough to translate it?" The linguist took the letter, and blushed. "Surelay," he said, "they've nevali sent it—ah —without an English translation?" They had. The linguist studied the letter. "Ah," he said. "This is dreadfully poor 'Spanish—hardly the kind educated people speak or write. Pewaps you'd bettaw see a Spanish fisherman or a Spanish laboraw." So George got the loan of a Spanish-English dictionary and worked it out. In the good old days before "overhead" was invented and social credit known an Auckland bank burst upon the astonished senses of customers and "ME!" the public with a commissionaire in uniform. The stalwart old soldier, every button doing its duty, and his medals clanking in a martial manner, led the impressed customer to the envelopes or the deposit slips or the undertreasurer —or even into the dread presence of the manager himself. This excellent example of "more like London every day" disappeared, much to the sorrow of the public, which distinctly loves uniforms and medals and waxed moustaches. It is therefore good news that a New Zealand Corps of Commissionaires is lying perdu waiting to spring to attention in full uniform when prosperous times shall come again. It has always entranced the writer, who has observed these medalled stalwarts holding umbrellas over customers, rushing to relieve my lady of a parcel, booming out, "Lord Whasname's carriage blocks the way," outside the theatres, or leading a trembling client to the front door of the eminent surgeon, to imagine such a one leading a forjlorn hope, charging the foe with a sabre, or I bombing his fellow men to death with the 'same nonchalance that he would conduct a !littlc girl over a wet pavement, or lead a .city councillor to a tram stop. Remember ;Kipling and the old swad gone back to civil life? "Me! . . . Forty miles often on end, I with only the night for a friend. . . . I'm 'taking some letters almost as much as a mile to the post —and mind you come back with |the change—Me!"