THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 70, 23 March 1935, Page 8

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) Dear M.A.T., —Re "Pigeon Peril." In my opinion, Albert Park is not quite so dangerous as Shortland Street. The problem. I should imagine, is to get rid of DESCENDANTS, or transfer these birds. Perhaps they are descendants of that worthy band of'feathered couriers who did yeoman service in the more or less pioneering days of telegraphy in Auckland, and because of some hereditary instinct are loath to leave their surroundings.—Hone. Dear M.A.T.,—Surely "Lee Tore Brace" was joking when be wanted to know how many sailing ship men knew the function of a "bullwhanger." Though THESE SAILORS! not used in all ships, the '■bullwhanger" was a strop at the yardarm, brought up underneath the yard from for'ard to aft, and was used to bowse the head earring- cringle to the top of the yard. I first made its acquaintance in the ship* Carnarvon Bay, when bending sail in Queen's Dock, Liverpool, and received .a "stir up" from foe mate because, not. having been shipmates with one previously, I hauled out and made fast without using it.—C.G.

Brummagem buttons In the guise of halfcrowns are circulating. A Cornishman with nearly ten shillings' worth of change has'been experimenting with it — THE NEW and had a had quarter of BUTTON, an hour. He dropped a perfectly genuine, modern up-to-date ■ alloy New Zealand shilling on, respectively, thick linoleum, superimposed on Australian hardwood flooring, on a concrete base, on bare concrete, on a city pavement, on the domestic boards of home, on Neuchatcl asphalt. It fell on all as soundlessly as an autumn leaf on a wet paddock, except in the case of the concrete pavement, where it responded slig-htly. The alarmed man successively tested the thrum, the sprat, the two bob, the half-crown; turned pale and decided that he had been done brown—not a genuine okl-Tashioned'grandfather's ring about any of them. A Scotsman, testing- the collection, relieved his friend's agony by saying that they were all genuine—and didn't charge perusal fee. Perhaps (who knows) the genuine silent silver issue is one of the reasons for the exuberance of the dud coiner, whose difficulty used to be that he couldn't get the true John Bull ring- into his brum silver. Where lands within the Empire expect to make shillings for about twopence halfpenny and sell them for twelvepence, these Brummagem buttons will steal in.

One ie entitled to observe that Australian sun-dried fruit has no superior in the world, seeing that New Zealand is no competitor in the dried-fruit market. DUST DEVILS. But occasionally, whether

you arc masticating the fair product of California or the equally scrumptious product of the Commonwealth, your , teeth will grit- on a young rock that would interest Lord Rutherford or any other atomist. At the moment Uncle £>am is fighting the dust devils —a condition so unknown at Kaikohe as to oocaeion no perturbation among the web-footed population of the Winterless North. The dust devil—often referred to as. "the briekfielder" in Australia— appears in the far, far distance as a dark djin emerging' from an Arabian Nights bottle. As it whirls like a dervish it gathers force, bulk and purpose, and its purpose is to make life a ghastly farce, property a wreck, and dried apricots of interest to atomists. The human unit in the track of a dust devil lies down and. practically sucks the ground. The lower beasts seek the habitation of man —if any. The fowls of the air will enter house, hut or tent, and, ae the late Mr. Selkirk so feelingly remarked, "Their tameness is shocking to me." A travelled man can detect the country of origin of his stewed fruit by the occasional sand in them —quite a lesson in geography. Personally, one prefers the flavour of River Murray sand.

Maybe- you observed in , "Glimpses of Other Larfds" (Friday's "Star") four ancient dames of Brittany, probably of <a united age of :!20 years" sorting ONIONS. Spanish onions. Brittany not only soils onions in odorous tons, but cats 'en;. By the way, some of the Basques have been living on onions for so many hundreds of years that they have the onion face ami a peculiar conformation of the under jaw that distinguishes the onion eater. In sonic districts of "La Belle' , the people' are so thrifty that they only rarely eat a whole onion—which is for the market—so dear old mere cuts an onion in half and leaves it on the mantelpiece, so that pere, Jean, Jacques, Jeanne and the baby rub their slice of black bread with the family onion and put the onion back for next day's flavour. But what one was about to say when thoughts disturbed one was that the French and Italian onion (both "Spanish") arrives, or used to arrive, in England on sticks carried by continental sailors, most often Italian or French mate-lots. Bristol was (and possibly still is) {he disembarkation port for the onion hawkers. Dismallooking sailors with a few days to spend in port, each with about enough onions tied on :i stick to make an Irish stew for a Tipperary family, would walk through the West of England a hundred miles or so selling whole pennyworths. Many a successful merchant has been known to sell three pennyworth at a time. By the way, the four grandmeres in the "Star" picture -would get as much as twenty centimes for sorting ouione for fourteen or fifteen hours. Very likely any old dame found gnawing an onion would be disqualified for life.

Dear M'.A.T..—Xew light on the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, eighty years ago, has been thrown bv a diary left by Mr. William Henry PeilllillgTHE ton, who died recently in GALLANT 600. Montreal, at the good "old soldier's ape" of ninety-one. Pennington was a trooper in the 1-lth Hussars and was one of the last survivors of the charge. According to him, the order from Lord Kaplan to Lord Luean, who commanded the brigade, was: "Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry to advance rapidly to the front, and try to prevent the enemy removing the guns in No. 3 redoubt." The aide-de-camp who carried the. order was Captain Nolan, who tore down from the heights to the valley where Luean and his cavalry were waiting. When Luean read the order he had grave misgivings and remonstrated with the aide-de-camp. The excited Nolan said: "Lord Raglan's orders are that the cavalry should attack immediately." "Attack, sir? Attack what? What guns?" asked Ln-ean. Nolan's answer, as recorded in the diary, was: "There, my lord, is the enemy, and there are the guns." and the captain pointed to the lower end of the valley, which was not the place referred to in the order. Pennington was orderly to Lord Luean. and he was standing near, so his posthumous testimony may be correct. Not quite so enlightening, but certainly amusing, was the true story of the charge as told to me long years ago' by old Matt Holland, of Nottingham, who was in and out of the valley of death, also ill the nth Hussars. It was a ease of "in vino veritas." and Matt confessed that he lost his stirrups and dropped his sword in the excitement, and went in and out of the charge with his arms round his horse's neck I —

The Brigadier