THE PASSING SHOW

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 127, 31 May 1935, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

It is meet that anxious young fathers should prepare their young ones for the stern battle of life—both intellectual and physical. The little lad is just of K.O. school age. He returned to his home from his first day's education in a thoughtful mood. The following conversation took placc between his pa and himself. "Been to school, son?" "Yes, dad." "What did you do?" "Played." "Anythin.' else?" "Yes, I drawed a pig-" "Is that all you did?" "No, dad, I had lunch in the sun." "Anything else ?" "Yes, dad, a boy pinched me." "And .what did you do?" 'Oh, I uppercut Mm." Marylebone, leEser Cricket Councils and bodylin© antagonists will, one fears, have to get together and fight the tendency in representative cricketers tp IS IT CRICKET? declare that 'cricket is a game and not a war. Here is A. P. F. Chapman practically repudiating the- lethal aspect of this field sport. He says: "Village cricket is best. It docs not matter if you get four knocks in one afternoon, or lots of' bodylinc bowling—they don't mean 'it. That is the way to play cricket. There is nothing serious about it." Not a single FincHey player rose and smote Chapman, and up to the moment this is the only public reference which pointedly asks Chapman to reconstruct his/ideas. What one wants to know is, "Is cricket war or is cricket cricket? Dear M.A.T., —When X. got off the bus in front of me this morning he had no difficulty in evading the collectors for the Sunshine children's fund. GOOD DEED. There was such a crowd that only about one in ten were "button-holed." Again, I was behind him when he came out of the Ferry Building . on the other side. Here he experienced great difficulty, but making a sharp turn to the right up Little Queen Street, he shook off his pursuers. Safe for about .another hundred yards now, he took a good breath of air and seemed more his cheerful, benign self. Coming down Customs Street W. into Queen Street, however, things began to look black for him. Making a furtive duck into a crowd on the corner, he once more escaped eapturo by the skin of his teeth, but the worst was before liiin. Two or three colleens with boxes held the opposite corner, and there was no escape any other way. But this is where the fairy part of the story' conies in. Stepping from the kerb to cross the street, X. picked up sixpence. It might have happened to you, .or me, but no, X. had all the luck. With a benevolent air he dropped the "tanner" in the nearest box, received the little flower in his lapel, and strode up the street to work as proud as a king.—S.L. The pars, of "The Brigadier" always raise points of interest. His question 011 this subject will continue to remain open to doubt. From various lists I have SEVEN WONDERS, collected the following: The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Tomb of Mausolus at Halicarnassus, the Temple of Diana at Epliesus, the statue of the Sun God Helios, called the Colossus of Rhodes, the statue of Zeus (Jupiter) by Phidias at Olympic, the Pharos lighthouse at Alexandria, and the Pyramids. Those are in the list of "The Brigadier," By my collection includes the Catacombs at Alexandria, the Great Wall of China, the Colosseum at Koino, Hadrian's Wall, Stonehenge, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Porcelain Tower of Nanking, and the Mosque of St. Sophia at Constantinople. It would be impossible to Gbtain unanimity on the question of the modern wonders": one would have to work backwards from to-day, as even the decade has produced marvels. I should say a fair list would include the Eiffel Tower, the Nile Dum, the just-completed dam in. the Rio Grande Canyon, and the Mersey River Tunnel. Since there "is still controversy on the ancient wonders, and one might raise a whole slieaf of correspondence if one essayed to be didactic concerning the moderns, let us add to the above four to complete the list, and, for the sake of peace, our country, New Zealand, and Messrs. Forbes and Coates, and then everybody will be happy.—A.L.D. A second-hand story, but touching. A girl sat at the side of a road much used by motorists. She was weeping over her dog, which lay alongside her CAR AND 011 the grass bleeding proBARROW. fusely. It had been run down by a motorist, who did not stop for so small a thing. The girl sat 011 the side'of the road hoping that some passing motorist might stop and take her and her dog to some place where the animal could receive attention. A hundred or so cars passed, but not one of their drivers halted. But at last a brand, spanking new car, shining like a diamond, pulled up. The driver offered to take the weeping girl and her damaged dog. But the girl, seeing how beautifully clean the new car was, told the Samaritan that she would wait, as she didn't like to let a bleeding dog soil so lovely a car. And so, unwillingly, the motorist drove on. Later a man wheeling a barrow trundled it up to the girl, picked \ip the dog, and all three went to the village three miles away. The swell car was parked near the village bowser. The swell car belonged to the clergyman who had invited girl and dog to take a lift. The man who trundled the barrow from the village and wheeled a bleeding dog back to it was the same clergyman. It might, of course, have happened in New Zealand—but it really took place in Victoria. Browsing in a strictly literary manner in a Home paper seeking advice as to what to read, one murmured, "What a devil of a lot of English writers V.G. write about writers, and not only write about writers, but the writing writers write." A vicious circle that has not really joined for hundreds of years—writers who wrote about writers a century or so ago snarled so violently that their snarls are still extant, although it wore better had they been burnt at the stake. One has often wondered why the poor, voiceless public which buys the best-sellers and the best-smellers does not rise with its halfcrown in its hand and ask if it has anything to do with the matter. Is the public really guided when it is hovering over the bookshop by what G. H. Swells says about Hugh Flagpole's latest novel—or vice,versa? Does the public—the inchoate millions who actually buy the books and make the fortune of bestseller writers (the writers who write about ■writers and the writing, of writers, get 'em free) —really buy books because. Swells tells it to or not to, or does it read books because it has learned to spell, too? The public (the dear old buyers) apparently never says anything about the hundreds of millions of books buys, unless the police discover that tl: ' millions of copies of Balzac's books, written by one of the world's supreme artists, should never have been issued because one has shocked a modern policeman. Still, the public does make its own remarks 011 books. One possesses a copy of a book 011 which a voiceless member of the buying public has written "V.G." Another precious volume has this critique at the end—"N.B.G." A THOUGHT FOR TO-DAY. The end which at present calls forth our efforts will be found when it is once gained to be only one of the means to some remoter end. The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from I hope to hope.—Dr. Johnson. ;