THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 234, 3 October 1934, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

Dear M.A.T.,—Re Peter MeCullough. Peter belonged to the Queen's Company, First Battalion, Grenadier Guards, and his correct

heigtit was six feet eleven A LONGER and threequarter inches. PETER. Aβ I was serving in the

same battalion at the same time as McCullough I ought to know. I am live feet eleven inches myself, and I used to look very email marching beside him when mounting guard. McCullough "was the tallest private soldier and Captain Ames, of the Life Guards (who led the procession at Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee), was the tallest officer at that time. Captain Ame6 was six feet eight and a half inches tall. —Once a Soldier.

Mention has been made herein of an occasion when Sir Joseph Ward, in the uniform, of a colonel of the Southland Rifles (N.Z.V.),' reviewed the Glasgow NAVY AND Boys' Brigade on a horse ARMY, selected for him by his secretary and Captain Donald Simson. Well, when the march past was over, all three gentlemen retired to the apartments set aside on that day for officers who had taken part in the hilarities. Sir Joseph Ward, relaxing after the ordeal, stood in the anteroom, his back to the door and leaning up against a bit of furniture. A young Navy officer who had partaken of any festivities that were going, seeing an officer of the lesser service whom he thought he knew, ami feeling friendly, stooped, roguishly pinched the New Zealand statesman, and ran Lie finger and thumb over the colonel with a gleeful "Hello, my dear fellow!" Sir Joseph, starting at the unaccustomed pinch, turned to tihe officer, and chuckled, "Submarined, by Jove!" Sir Joseph's secretary subsequently asked the Navy man if he knew who the officer was. He did not. "Well, he is a member of the War Cabinet!" The officer was alarmed, and was all for rushing with an apology to Sir Joseph. He was .persuaded to desist on the ground that Sir Joseph enjoyed the pinch immensely—and had been young himself. The occasional presence in New Zealand of young Japanese intellectuals, students of our methods, reminds those who are of riper years that there is noEAST AND WEST, thing excessively modern in this movement from tho East. Here, for instance, comes a man who was at Cheltenham College (Glos.) in the days of Dr. Kynaston when the school was practically knee deep with the darker skins of opulent students, ranging from young rajahs with laks and lashings of rupees and diamond waistcoats in their kite, to Japanese .princes learning English vowel sounds (as spoken by collegians) and exhibiting that physical and mental activity that made them eo admired. In those days, when the safety bike was new —even before the solid bike tyro had passed into the. limbo of forgotten things, these Japanese gentlemen—of an average "height of four feet ten—startled the gravity of the playing grounds (where W. G. Grace performed) with antics on bikes. In a few sihort weeks they had learned in secret all that a' bike could be used for —played handball on them, stood on the saddles either right side up or head down, stood on the saddle, holding a fellow prince in the air, or stooped from the saddle, scooping up a rolling polo ball. They played football as to the manner born—fives with aplomb, Latin with ease, Greek without pain, and tricks without end. Very likely those Japanese —if they were not killed in the Russian affair —are at present aged and opulent loaders of new thought in mass productions. Who knows but that their trade Waterloos were won on the playing fields of Cheltenham?

Rude Boreas has been Wowing the Wairarapa about. Anyone interested in wind will recall many instances of its ferocity. As far as New Zealand, is conBRISK BREEZES, eerned, the south end of this island seems to be trounced most frequently. Since one last told the story of the new bright specks on the South Island mountains a new generation of readers is with us. It was a beautiful day at Island Bay, Wellington, and two friends stood on a cliff gazing at the Kaikouras on the South Island. Number one eaid, pointing across the foam, "See those bright patches on the mountains 1" "Yes," said the other. "That's the tin roof of my fowlhouse," he moaned. Then, of course, there is the undoubted fact that a train climbing out of Wellington towards the Wairarapa was blown off the lme holtis bolus, necessitating an ultimate fence as a windscreen. The fence was blown over, too. Again in the vicinity there are large railway, yards where movable huts for the accommodation of railway workers are dotted down on one side of the permanent way. The story that men returning to their little homes at evening found that they had merely been lifted over the lines and planted right side up is not true. Two of them were standing on their heads. Curiously, the only unbeliowible story conioe from Tc Aroha. A suburbanite ono calm day finisihcd the painting of his house. Boreas blew in the night. Next morning the citizen's house was bare of paint —but the house of a neighbour on the opposite side of the road 'was spick and epan in a new suit of cream colour. It blows somewhat at Karori (Wellington). Once a threc-horso dray team toiling upwards with two yards of spoil was blown like a feather, horses and all, into the gully below. No, the man was not hurt. He was walking alongside his team at the time with the reins in his hands. He let the lines go. Pam and her sistera at Home, on the authority of a colonial wanderer, have taken to the pipe, thus joining with the Maori ladies whom wo THE PIPES know so well as kerbstone OF PAM. representatives of the briar family. Pamela, it is also said, is to be seen 3n lounges and otherwise under cover, a cigar between her lips. It is, of course, the thin end of the wedge, and but a step from the lounge or the boudoir to the great open spaces no longer dominated by anti-tobacchanalians, Carrie Nations and other spoil-smokes. Fashions in the incineration of the acrid weed change almost imperceptibly. What a woman may with reasonable propriety do now with a pipe or cigar, superior man might not do but a few short years ago. In the oft-quoted 'nineties the gentleman with tho well-padded shouldrrs, and the navvy (and all the word connotes), were easily distinguishable by their public smoking habits. It was an outrage for the gentleman to be seen in public smoking a pipe, although he might smoke himself black in the face in a club, either per pipe or per black Indian cheroot —tho deadliest of the species. To-day even J.P.'s, Prime Ministers and chairmen of sixteen companies blow pipe clouds and cigar smoke screens wherever there is a bit of air to pollute or aphis to be asphyxiated. It is but a step from women in trousers to women wearing pipes and masticating cigars in this fair land. Only yesterday, as it were, local Pam, reluctant to be seen inhaling cigarette smoke under the sky, stole into cover and did it privily, but to-day the glorious emancipation of the species has made a fag a synonym for chic. What shall you buy Pam for her birthday? A silver-mounted briar would be nice.

THOUGHTS FOR TO-DAY. He that Icaveth nothing to chance will do few things ill, but he will do very few tilings.—Marquia of Halifax.