THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 43, 20 February 1935, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

Dear M A.T.,—We all know your fondness for, and how smart you think, the small city boy is I'm with you there. The following goes to show they will STOCK BREEDERS: have to look to their laurels or their country cousins will be beating thorn for shrewdness. In the countrv outside Coromandcl an organisation offered* a prize to the boy who caught the most white butterflies. Two small boys, twins very shrewd, not only snared butterflies, but searched their neighbour*' cabbages for the "rubs, and kept them for a week or so until they hatched. Result, hundreds of butterflies with small amount of labour.—M.S.

The cities of the United States are clamouring for a millionaires' museum. The millionaires are not to be exhibits themselves. The exhibits will consist' THE GERM. of articles used by selfmade millionaires before they were self-made. In this museum, which will possibly be planted in Chicago, the pen with which Andrew Carnegie, the weaver's son, signed his first cheque, will find a resting place. The first dollar earned by Jawn D. R.ickefel'er, the farmer's son, will be on view. The hammer with which Edison closed the sleeper bolts on the railway when he was not an inventor— and the first newspaper sold by the 0.-iginal Vanderbilt. And others, of course. It is possible that the four working men enumerated above gathered together about a thousand million pounds between them. Immensely interesting, of course. Still, if they could get a few skeletons of the first of the 'orny-'anded sons of toil from Europe and other despised spots who put these philanthropists in possession of their first little million and added them to the museum they would be of as great interest as Andra's wee pen, ye ken.

Cousin Aussie, like Frank Fernleaf, is only aware of his priceless vegetation when somebody else tells him about it. A gumtree by a billybong is but SCARLET a plurry gumtrec to him FLOWERS, —and it is nothing more. Australian city people, who so often know as much about the backblocks as a man who has never stirred two yards from Stepney, have been astounded to iearn that the flowering gums (ficifolia) are Australians. Melbourne is thinking at the moment of a Gumtree Day. Lately the Lord Mayor and an alderman of "Marvellous" planted two flowering gums at Prince's Bridge before an audience. The audience was fewer than a dozen folk. A bystander who saw this arboreal act complained that the trees planted were not Victorian trees, but had been imported from that recalcitrant State, West Australia, which wanted to break away from the Commonwealth. A famous arboriculturist pointed out that Victoria had only one flowering gum and that was the iron-bark — and it didn't flower worth singing out about. You'll be surprised to hear that Melbourne, the proud capital of a country that possessed forests of almost incomparable magnificence, is always short of firewood. The State brings ironbark firewood from hundreds of miles for the fioes of people on the dole. The backcountry man still ringbarks, and so kills thousands of acres of the finest trees in the world —and flowering gums are as rare in Melbourne as dodos. Auckland could send 'em a hundredweight of seed or so. What Australia wants is a bunch of arboricultural Governors with family trees.

"Taunton" writes: "Talkin' about graft," said the man who had probably "coom oop from Zummerzct," "folks might think that

them Yankees invented RESURRECTION it. but Oi could tell 'ee a TERRACE. tale." Which he did at

great length. The story concerned a graveyard long disused, on whose location the suburbs of Barnstaple were encroaching. The city fathers of that good old Devonshire town let a contract to have the site cleared up, and the contractor made a proper job of it. In that ancient burying ground the graves had all been lined with brick, as was the old-time custom, and the man who tidied up the cemetery took out all the bricks and headstones. Soon after he erected a terrace of houses and used this valuable material. The headstones laid Hut made very useful doorsteps. "We called 'un Resurrection Terrace," said Mr. Zummcrzet. "Xo, I never seen no ghostesies thur."

The man has lived in the most beautiful bit of the most beautiful suburb for years and years. He has watched a generation of

newcomers in their reTHE LOVESOME actions to arranged and SPOT. cultivated beauty, for "A

garden is a lovesome spot, God wot." Once there was a man who bought a house there with an old garden—all the roses grew there—flowered all the year round. The man who left appeared to have lived partially for flowers—had plenty of them, a nice tree here and there, a view of loveliness from the front windows, and so on. And the new owner came and grubbed up the roses, felled all the trees, and made a ivies, clean section with nothing but a house on it. This splendid barrenness would emphasise the sweet old washhouse and the dear old concrete path and the splendid picket fence and the two gallons of red paint on the lovely old tin roof. These modern aesthetes! Then there was the section which the owner had for many years planted and cared for. He had gone' everywhere for native trees. They had flourished very well indeed. Another lovesome spot, God wot. And so a new owner came along and murdered every tree, shrub and branch on the place. And in due time the whole place was one rampant bed of ironbark pumpkins, climbing the fences, reaching long arms into the neighbour's n-ardens—a veritable paradise of large vegetables that all died on the stalk, as pumpkins were worth about three a penny in a pumpkin-ridden land. A garden is a lovesome spot, God wot.

A learned judge recently desired to know from a witness the difference between a large and a email kiss. The witness offered to

demonstrate, but appar"WHEN ently there were no OTHER LIPS." takers. A kiss is of chuck-

ling interest to the unkissed because most lip salutes are private and between two parties to the secret act. It is not common among British men. It has often been debated whether Xelson said to the captain. "Kiss me. Hardy! - ' or "Kismet, Hardy!" —which is a boot on the other leg. Women kiss the woman they most dislike. Men kiss women whether they like 'em or not. Continental generals, practically bathed in blood, award medals for slaying and kiss the recipient —nonchalantly, of course, and almost impersonally. This type of salutation has no ■bearing on the marriage market. So common became the display of melodramatic kisses that the great masters of picture commerce put their feet down on the prolonged lip salute for film lovers. They considered the elongated kiss was a waste of good gelatine. A fortyfoot kiss was over the odds, the mere twoyard kiss was too short. They compromised with a prescribed film kiss between the two extremes —and cut out the diaphramie breathing, the glycerine tears and the pleased shudder as the hero sheeted it home to the painted lip of the other fellow's wild prairie Hose. The kis.s we hoar about so much is never seen by the outsider. It is a matter for two alone — and really not of vital interest to the accidental onlooker.