THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Issue 111, 13 May 1935, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

Dear M.A.T., —The desirability of bazaars and sales of work as a means of raising church finance has once again been questioned, this time by the Rev. H. L. K. THOSE BAZAARS. Islierwood, of Northcote, who declares that most people hate bazaars. The question has been popping up at intervals for many years. Soon after the South African War a distinguished soldier, whose wife had officiated at a bazaar opening ceremony, inscribed the following verses °in a young lady's autograph album.— The Brigadier.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers, That you think bazaars a bore, That of sales of work you're weary, And that tea-fights you abhor.

Cash is needful, casli is scanty; At our efforts do not growl, If it can't be raised by fair means, Must it not be got by foul.'

Finance troubles, darkly brewing. Present pleasures but enhance, •r.pt us. then, be up and doing — Nothing, while we have the chance.

The current remarks of a ripe official who declares he is frayed somewhat with giving advice to farmers for years and years and is going yachting to the THE DOTTED islands to temporarily LINE, escape is not, one assumes, an official precedent. New Zealand is so densely officialised that should tho precedent become a lead the public may wake up some bright morning to be told that masses of officials in plus-fours and presentation suitcases are moving along the wharves en route to New Guinea, Samoa, or the Falkland Islands. What astonishment there would be if seventy or eighty boards in amalgamated decision suddenly announced that they were bored with boarding and had all decided to cut adrift and seek the coral reef-' of comparative silence speckled with blue and green fishes. Every citizen who pays taxes is almost instantly changeable into an official who sees that others pay taxes, and the heart of the People frequently heats in consonance with officialism on the stable ground that one never knows when one may become one of the Elite Corps. It is a littie comforting, however, to find that official life does sometimes pall and that our rulers supreme and subordinate do sometimes desire escape. There is almost a promise in it that fewer than, say, a fifth of the population, will remain officials in the years to be. They used to run British India as a company!

A London message indicates that a hen owned by a Chatham licensed victualler, loyal to the backbone, has laid a Silver Jubilee egg

six inches by five. PrcJUBILEE JANE, sumably high thinking

and perfect loyalty on the part of the hen aided her in laying a perfect letter "J" on the narrow end of her masterpiece. Tt is assumed that the hen intended the "J" for "Jubilee," but i*, is at least arguable that she may have meant it for Jane or Judith, Joyce or Janet, prognosticating a pullet as a result of this Jubilarian ovation. The size of the egg, of course, indicates double yolk in which, supposing the hen intended the "J" for Jane, she anticipates an impossible fertility, showing, indeed, that high thinking in hens may be absent. The innkeeper, who obviously expects some applause, although he himself is innocent of ovation, refused an offer by the Mayor of Chatham of five pounds for this initialled egg. His Worship may be a commercial man without knowledge of poultry, hoping should Jubilee Jane appear he will be able to raise families of liens who will lay phenomenal double-yolked eggs all with a different letter of the alphabet on the sharp end. When lie hears that no double-yolked egg ever produced either a Jane or a Johnny, he will be glad that the publican decided to hand the egg to the King. The King's poultry advisers will presumably know what to do with it. One of the necessities after a fortnight or so of kingly admiration will bo to bore two holes in the shell and "blow" che same. You can't have mature eggs lying about Buckingham Palace.

Thoughtful citizens, bound to aid the State in its philanthroplcal exercises, do not, one thinks, invariably disclose the presence of

wealth that might be taxTHE MONEY BOX. able, and therefore the

nest egg for another of those surpluses so dear to the hearts of statesmen. On a recent day a taxpayer with twothirds of a dozen children found that each of them possessed a money box containing varying amounts—money obtained by means other than by the exercise of a calling, trade, profession or business. Careful espionage convinced the visiting taxpayer that these money boxes contain sums varying from a penny to eighteenpence, and that no. State detective, policeman or inspector had up to now demanded a share for the State. It is true that the unknown numbers of children in New Zealand possessing these untaxed hoards are all minors and are not themselves liable to taxation on unearned sums. But for the sake of the country is it not possible to regard the parent or guardian of a hoarding child as the responsible person within the meaning of the Act? The taxing of children's money boxes and their school accounts would at least lead to the appointment of a large number of inspectors, who so badly need the pay, and the constant reminder to children every three months or so would train them to look forward to an adult life, spent Jin the perusal of State documents and in cheerful obedience to their pliilanthropieal demands. Almost any qitizen could point out the presence of hidden threepences in a thousand baking powder tins with a slit in the top.

He tunie<l to the column, scanned it with a jaundiced eye, flicked over a page or two, and said to the scribe, "Why don't you write something about whisWHISKERS, kers—there hasn't been a

hair in the column for weeks." The difficulty in writing about whiskers is that there aren't any. Battalions of photographs of every kind of mayor, councillor and local body gentleman, as well as those who are not any of these officials, show a regrettable absence of beard. The ripened fruit of officialism remembers when hardly anyone would dare to beg the vote and interest of the ratepayers clean-shaven. A barefaced politician seemed almost indecent. If you care to turn up ancient news photographs of our ominents you would find almost every pair of eyes peering out of an almost impenetrable bush of undergrowth. It is true that legal gentlemen even in those hirsute days compromised with side whiskers (facetiously referred to in other terms by the roughneck proletariat), but in general a heavy fall of jbeard connoted respectability. Even a comparative youth, if he could grow a beard, might slip past the octogenarian candidates and find refuge in a council, a body or a board. Doctors wagged their Dundrearies over recumbent patients in the bedside manner of the day, Premiers breathed' undying words into the underbrush, oflicials carried beard combs and youths of twenty-one bought bottles of Beard Balm to achieve the hirsute heights of leadership. And now? livery man by da'lv mowing trios to eliminate hair from his system as if Providence which planted the seed didn't know her job. What a pity!

A THOUGHT FOR TO-DAY. Every human being Is intended to have a character of his own, to be what 110 other is, to do what 110 other can do.—Channing.