THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 141, 17 June 1935, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By TH2, MAN ABOUT TOWN.) A human story emitted in short blasts by a man who was in a hurry. Man at his work "got something in his eye"—or thought so. Eyes didn't get any betLUCK. ter. He couldn't work. One of the elder children, helping to support the family, lost the job. Man couldn't keep up his insurance payments. Lapsed. Rotten outlook. Man went to doctor. Doctor, diagnosed his condition as poison from shrapnel wounds gleaned in war. Subsequent result, a permanent pension of three pounds per week. As soon as the pension came the supporting youngster got a permanent job. As soon as the job came back a relative died and left the pensioner a sum of one thousand pounds. That's all. The amateur prestidigitator, invading the sanctuary of a man engaged with the magic of words, offered him a cigarette. The wordspinner reached for the THE THIMBLE coffin nail, but it wasm't RIGGER, there. Awarding the wordspinner an undoubted cigarette, he lit a match to give him a light, but the match wasn't there. He juggled slightly with a pencil illustrating the art of palming, explaining the simplicity of common magic. But he was most interesting when he said that of all feats of legerdemain the three walnut shells and the pea (the pea and thimble racket) is the finest and simplest feat of all because it has deceived millions of people during hundreds of years. The india-rubber pea is placed under one of the three shells in fuli view of the victim. The victim lifts the shell and the pea is truly there. The trick is infallible because when the spruiker moves the shell the pea can't stay even if it wants to. It retires under his fingers and is _ found under any other shell as soon as he lifts it and releases his finger. The demonstrator forgets how many millions of money thimbleriggers have rooked the public for, but lie says that wherever thimble rigging is permitted the dear old public still bets on the chance of some day making a cool tenner or so. The thing is so simple that it is infallible.

Somes Island, off Wellington, is a sanctuary for penguins, among the most interesting, most comic and most thoughtful of existing birds. A Wellington THOUGHTFUL message mentions that BIRDS, these Somes' penguins file

down from their homes to the sea for food every day. As a matter of fact, penguins on the march to the sea use the exact track century after century, as Cherry Kearton points out in his alluring book, "The Island of Penguins." Mr. Kearton is the distinguished .naturalist who does not carry firearms even at close quarters with lions and other large beasts. Penguins often make a track so that they may go in column of fours or more and they go to their destination year in and out during the nesting season in this formation without variation, for they must have good foothold, which they form themselves, as, of course, their real element is the sea. Mr. Kearton wondered what penguins on the march would do if anything obstructed them, so he lay down in the track of the column expecting that the birds would either walk over him or make a detour. The column on the way to the sea came to -the prone man. They were very curious about him, and held a corroboree on the spot. Not a single penguin (or a married one, either) broke the ranks, and, having found that the man meant no harm, they merely halted and camped. The naturalist lay for many hours across the track of the penguin forces, but not one moved offjthe path. It was the man who at last moved.' The moment Ihe rose the column marched on to the sea. ' . \

A gentleman who has read ahout the Beechworth (Victoria) "Wheelbarrow Derby" for which a gentleman is training every morning by pushing a sixteenRECORDS. stone gaol warder for two hours, modestly enters his own feat of endurance. On one occasion on licensed premises he swallowed six "handles" of beer in four minutes. Asked how he managed it, he said he took his false teeth out —and the rest was easy. A friend who was an egg swallower could get away with four dozen at one eating. His technique was to fry the eggs in vinegar, thus reducing their bulk considerably. People who sit up in higH trees for several weeks for wagers, gentlemen who swing clubs for part "of a ; year without stopping, fellows who play the piano continuously for ceaseless hours, ladies who trundle a push bike round the world, are mere commonplaces nowadays, but the American Senator remains the novel record breaker. He pushed a peanut with his nose up a steep hill —and won a thousand dollars. One begins to understand why American politicians so frequently speak through their noses. Apropos the Beechworth man who has entered for the Wheelbarrow Derby and is training by wheeling a sixteen-stone friend daily, the news reminds one of a New Zealand constable who exceeded this weight by six pounds. His companions were exceedingly proud of the polish on the watchliouse linoleum—no inebriated client could walk on that linoleum without hitting it. To obtain the polish the stout constable sat on a large pad, while his cheery companions gave him continuous rides until the surface was as smooth as ice.

Dear M.AT.,—Without.going so far as to say that everyone revels in a good murder, it is hypocrisy to pretend that interest in crime is confined to the cruelMURDER DAY minded or to the morbid. BY DAY. The kindest - hearted woman I have ever known, one endowed also with a most sensitive imagination and with a singularly fine taste in literature, took not only the keenest interest but the keenest pleasure in the unravelling, of intelligent crime, and especially of that crime we know as murder. Still, it is permissible to ask oneself to what is due the universal interest in what has become so rare an occurrence in modern life that there are literally millions of people in every civilised country who have never met, and who are never likely to meet, a murderer. The answer doubtless lies deep down in the roots of human nature, and in the fact that few of us have not, at some time or other in our lives, done murder in our hearts; or, to put it in another way, wished that someone would die, as the little boy said of his enemy, "a natural death." Thus every honest man and woman must sometimes feel "There, but for the .grace of God, go I"; this is specially the case with those who, by some accident, are brought in contact with the often piteous and terrible details of a "crime passionnel." To my thinking, the murder which is in any way connected with love, the master passion of humanity, is the only type of crime carrying a universal appeal. This surely is proved by the fact that comparatively little interest is felt by the public at large in murder committed for gain, while a crime passionnel—however sordid be it in detail—interests every normal mind. I am inclined to think that another reason why the ordinary human beingis so interested in all the details of a murder is because he feels that the murdered man might conceivably have been himself. What was written in the "Spectator" many years ago is true to-day—namely, that "There is one chink in the armour of civilised communities. Society is conducted on the assumption that murder will not be committed." In other words, murder is the one danger against which no one, in everyday life, dreams of guarding himself.—Safdar Jang.