THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 139, 14 June 1935, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THIL MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

"Ex-"Ladies from Hell" and even unkiltcd Scots will be pleased to hear'from London that tlie braw old soldier, Sir lan Hamilton, was tho most loudly acTHE OLD KILTIE, claimed of all the military and diplomatic swells during the Silver Jubilee magnificences. He is eighty-two past, has been hit by various enemies eleven times, can make a speech like Demosthenes, writes like an angel, and is as gav an old boy as ever refused' a second whisky. New Zealanders claim the great lan a bit because they served with him in South Africa—and unforgettably on Gallipoli. He came to New Zealand on a military mission, almost kissed very old soldiers who tottered to meet him, was almost wild with joy when schoolboy cadets marched past barefoot in the rain oil the Domain, and had to get up one in Government House to help put a fire out. Although Sμ-' lan Hamilton will be eighty-three next birthday, ho is at the moment the most strenuously engaged of any notable in persisting .on the rights of unemployed ex-soldiers. Ho is president of the British Legion in Scotland and one of' the two survivors of eight senior generals who took part in tho 1011 Coronation Procession. If he has time within the next ten years he's coining to New Zealand to look up old pals.

There is no doubt we are very proud of our katipo. Among the lower animals of New Zealand it is the only poisonous one. If. wo had a good assortment of BEWARE! snakes and scorpions,

and an unlimited family of centipedes whose bites were fatal, the little spider on which wo pride ourselves would be neglected in literature. / It is found, however, that our passion for largeness does not extend to the katipo. Insect collectors do not rush about boasting that their katipos are larger than their neighbours'. They do not compare the bite of a katipo with the bite of the black mamba, the blue cobra or the tree tarantula. Although New Zealand children . often take detonators to school and" display them to their mates ■ with pride they almost; never carry match boxes full of the only real insect celebrity wo have. There is hope,' however, to be momentarily serious, in tho fact that whenever the doings of a katipo are chronicled it is carefully explained that he is poisonous. He ■lias now been poisonous for ten. thousand years. Ho has a danger lamp on him and when he bites —it smarts. A Maori lady has just passed away at the age of one hundred and five years. She has never been bitten by a katipo—so beware.

A facetious Welsh' swell, the living spit and image of Lloyd George, is said to have recently arrived at a function in which LI.G. was the prime factor — TWO DOUBLES, before his illustrious

countryman. Ho was bo like his greater countryman that he received all the guests, shook hands with them, and jrot the whole preliminary stuff finished before the immortal one arrived. There's a point in this for colonial Premiers. But only yesterday the seafarer who is slim and hard and wiry told the story of his "double," a gentleman who is not slim at all and who couldn't come within inches of his "double's" waistcoat. Shows you how people change. The slim man said he was once in a publichouse on the wet West Coast, when a gentleman who was also refreshing suddenly downed his pot, sprang forward and clapped his hands over the slim eyes. Ho trilled in ecstasy, "You're Jack Spratt—me old friend, Jack Spratt!" The slim man denied it. The longlost friend insisted, "shouted" for all. hands, and said how glad he was to strike his dear old cobber again.. The slim man insisted that his new friend was mistaking him for .Mat Mack, who was as like him as another pea, which was indeed the fact. But up to this moment the dear old cobber of. Mat Mack is still of opinion that Jack Spratt was for some reason or other dodging the police. He ought to see them together now! They are as like as Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. George Forbes.

It is within measurable moments of nine of the morning. A ferry or two and a train or three and a bus or six have decanted a

small myriad of people in NOTHING DOING. Queen Street. All have lagging feet and thoughtful brows. It seems evident that as they trapse up the boulevard all these people are engaged in thought. Even the paragrapher wonders what the devil he's going to write about when he gets where he is going. You can't very well write a par about the crowd being stuck up by a little gang of men thumping holes in tJi-j road, or about the lovely girl who looks so much like the Princess Marina (nml knows it), or about the mnn with the dainty movement and a suitcase, who is seen on Queen Street for the first time in ten years without his walking stick. It would be absurd to bang oft" a paragraph about what building used to be on the spot where magicians with wet sacks new mud are shaping a new Tower of Babel. Nobody would take the faintest interest in the fact that the immaculately creased blue trousers of a very, smart and handsome young constable are shiny in the seat, or to note the fact that twentyone motor vehicles all in a row are waiting for the trafiic cop to wag his imperious hand. Nobody wants a scribble telling them how advertising night signs look in the morning merely lit by the sun, and divil a sowl would thank ye for observing that all the old boot cleaners are dead and gathered to their fathers, that Jones has left his pipe at home and hasn't got ninepence to buy another and thinks perhaps somebody will offer him a cigarette during the morning, or that it is a finer day than yesterday. Not a damn thing to write about—so, of course, ho doesn't write.

A fair cow —alas, no longer with us—broke away from her companions on Thursday, plunged into the harbour and swam in it. The

unfortunate animal sewed SWIMMING to illustrate the nataLESSON. torial methods of the

bovine species. Nobody but Nature over taught a cow to swim. Only civilised man lias unlearnt swimming, and he has to Ibe taught de novo. The cow, as an ex-schoolmaster explained to his entranced friends who watched, swims on an even keel, so to speak, her back in one line. Her gentleman friend swims like this also, as do the progeny of both. Of course, the schoolmaster asked his adult class of watchers how a lying cow rose—which end she raised from the grass first. Some said one, some said t'other, and the kind teacher told them that a cow kneels, raises her stern to its full height first and with a wrench raises her fore end to a general level. A horse, on the other hand, explained he to his fellow citizens, swims with his rump sunk beneath the waves—he's heavier in the stern than in the bow. Rising from his recumbent position he, unlike the cow, sticks his forelegs out as props, struggles violently to get his rump up—and eventually does it. When a horse is "down" for the last time he is so persistent in the use of his forelegs he literally digs his own grave by scratching. A vote of thanks to the schoolmaster abroad — three hearty cheers and a glass of milk! N"ot one of those present can wiggle separate bits of his skin like .a horso or perspire without sweating like a cow. THOUGHTS FOR TO-DAY. Gaiety is to good humour as animal perfumes to vegetable fragrance: the one overpowers weak spirits, and the other re-creates and revives them.—Dr. Johnson. . Wine and good dinners make abundance of frier' 1 -'; but in the time af adversity not o , o te io bo foujvl.—Anon.