THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 203, 28 August 1935, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) , "Bookworm" writes enclosing a from a London paper which mentions a con dence. In a signal box at Bnnkworth m\\ Ht shire, there worked to COINCIDENCES, gether two *»«£-£ Brewer and J. Beer. Out side the box on the line worked J Porter, a platelayer. New Zealand is dotted he e and there with curiously appropriate names. One of the neatest is "Bishop and Parsonage, Cabinetmakers." recalling not only the domestic sideboard, but a rather old English method of settino- up a government. But by far the most thought-compelling in its appropriateness was on a carrier's express in Wellington. "A. Coffin-General Carrier." It is a universal truth in miniature. Once upon a time there were two young Maori boys. They were adopt*! and brought up by a "pakeha family. Call them Jim and 1 " Sam for short. Jim the THE ARGUMENT, elder became a scholarly young man all the same the well-schooled pakeha. Sam, with like advantages, retained his Maori outlook and his methods of instinctive analysis. In his bovhood Sam came home one day and said, »I*see te weasel." Then he said that if the pakeha hadn't come to New Zealand there would be no weasels—an argumentative subject. And so the housefather said to Sam, "But the pakeha brought the dog to keep down the weasel." "Who keep down the dog? asked Sam. "The man," said the man. "Who keep down the man?" proceeded the young logician. "The woman," said the man, and then asked Sam, "Who keeps the woman down?" "Nothing!" rapped out Sam. Leaking treacle at a Wellington railway station and the official suspicion that the treacle was opium necessarily led to police action, the result being SWEET OLD the discovery that the STORY, treacle was treacle. Searching the archives of the mind (if any) for some prior event in which treacle, golden syrup or molasses figure; the only classic instance one recalls is that of the little lad who went to the store to buy threepenny worth of treacle for mum. In those days'the treacle stock was kept in a barrel with a tap. and customers brought their own jligs. The boy handed his jug up. The grocer filled it. The" lad took the jug and made for the shop door. "You haven't paid, my boy," said the storekeeper. "Yes I did," replied the boy. "Where's the threepence?" "I put it in "the bottom of the jug," replied the lad.

'Australian anthropologists have been rooting around the scrub in Papua trying to find where their own abos. came from. They have hoped to v lind among THE UPPERCUT. the several races thereabouts some trace of ißinjie. No luck, so it is decided that the black fellow didn't come from Papua. While they were poking about the scrub and digging up bits of dirt they came across stone "axes" with remarkably thin blades so much like the Maori greenstone mere that it is now claimed that the Papuan tribes who fought with meres and wore "wigs" are culturally brothers to our own Hone. The "wigs" lately discovered were, it is assumed, merely head-protecting helmets, so that when two Draw hoys got to it with stone axes or meres they were protected somewhat. It is stated that these helmets suggested the "uppercut" in stone warfare, the Tighter bringing the edged weapon sharply against the foe's unprotected chin. The modern bayonet fighter has this uppercut (with the rifle butt) to perfection. The town is swarming with platoons of jolly young schoolboys from somewhere else, here fqr a week's worship at the Shrine of Football. The visitors are OH, BOY! well provided with the wherewithal for a corker time by the benefice of the public, and dear old pa and ma. These jolly youngsters are the guests of ' jolly local youngsters and their parents, and local youngsters approve of the excellent plan of providing visiting future All Blacks with pocket money. It will be obvious to grown-up boys that these visitors and their boy hosts do not go hungry. One case will sufficiently explain the almost divine capacity of the footballing boy to take sustenance. One lad with money to burn, during a run round the unfamiliar city enjoyed every minute of it and so did his young host. Each boy partook of a large pie, washed down with the necessary mineral waters. Then they strayed further and dodged into a caravanserai to eat a couple- of "ice blocks," regardless of the prevailing temperature. Some minutes later the young visitor asked his host if he was hungry. The answer was in the affirmative, and the visitor bought a pound of block cake, which they consumed without distress, finishing the round with a couple of oranges each. The joyous footballers went home in time for dinner. The visitor showed no particular keenness with the knife and fork, but his young host, took two helpings of everything, from Irish stew to pie. And as he overcame the last spoonful he cheerily addressed himself: "Oh, boy, what a day!" and subsequently remarked that football weeks are not frequent enough. A visiting railway meal-providing potentate from New South Wales has been telling Xew Zealanders—who are devotedly interested in copious supplies of THE BUTTER food—what terrific quanBRUSH. titles of tucker Australian travellers consume. He mentions the various types of machinery from perpetual-motion potato peelers to dishwashing contraptions that clean sixteen thousand pieces of crockery every sixty minutes. Have they got a bread-buttering machine? No? Why not? At least forty years ago a large institution in Adelaide (was it in Light Square or thereby?) made a point of providing for visiting bushmen (everybody is a bushman in Australia who lives outside urban areas). The bread having been cut into slices, the slices were fed into a machine with a handle and a supply of butter, which was brushed on in n regulation thin layer by the said blushes. The butter-brushing invention thus eliminated the good colonial plan of leaving whole pounds of butter ung'uarded for eaters to do what they liked with this product ■ —nothing go as you please about the Bushman's Kest. or whatever it was called: The tempetature of Adelaide made it unnecessary to melt this -butter for spreading, and the waste was nil. It will be obvious to the least observant that if a butter-brushing machine is not boiled for a day or two in an Adelaidean climate there is a gentle odour of the cowyard. The High Panjandrum of this butter-brushing establishment was a gentleman of great piety, who would interview bushman guests as soon as they arrived, beseeching them to band over their money. retaining only a few shillings a day. He did not wish them to spend it in unbrushed beer, lie charged a percentage for banking and good advice, and kept pounds of butter well hidden for fear some nefarious bushman should dodge the brushed bread and butter and indulge in an orgy of half an ounce at a time. Them was the days!

THOUGHTS FOR TO-DAY. The tilings that belong to man must be understood in order that they may be loved: the things that belong to Ciod must be loved in order that they may be understood.—Blaise Pascal. When a man's knowledge is not in order, the more of it he has the greater will be his confusion. —Herbert Spencer.