THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 208, 3 September 1935, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

JUST A DOG. At tho recent dog "rodeo" at a local theatre maV 3 the film-thirsty aspirants were classed as "just dogs.

1 *i am* as Man has made me. Powerless to choose my fate rV r04 .,, Love and Kindness? Hunger? Hate? These one and all have swayed me.

Devotion ever stayed me.

as Kindness made me. Playmate gentle to a child; Aa N O o ra ch°nd U h n a d s^r : betrayed me.

r 7 Hunger made me Gaunt and starving, beast of prey. Ffehtins. thieving night and da J , For there was none to aid me.

rm am "as & has made me. SnarHnK, vicious, brute untamed Mischievous and unashamed; My vices all degrade me.

ri I amae & has made me £^Ed e kin^ne^^n^ate ? Butdonotthenup^dme.^^

The prescience and wizardry of the British rnNE—NO without delay a letter that ADDRESS, had been posted in a pump thirty-three years previou.lv \ New Zealand boy received acknowtedpnent of his letter addressed '" -choolboy French to an English relative—the international scholarship of the V.O. is tremendous. So the recent delivery with thrilling promptitude of a letter addressed to a non-existent road is really not one of the greatest feats of the organisation. Australian authorities, equal in prescience to their colleagues of St. MartinVle-Grand, possess a letter that has never been opened and never delivered. Successive experts have pondered this address; the letter lias no doubt travelled myriads of miles. It is torn and earmarked and much stamped—a veteran, dog-eared missive. It still bears the address, "No. 3, Queensland." .

For some centuries the Western writer copied the initiator who had written of the "inscrutable" East, inferring that the poker face of the West was but SCRUNCH. a poor mask in compariSCRUNCH. eon with the immobile features of the East. Quite a large number of Japanese gentlemen of the sea were discovered strolling about Auckland this morning, none of them with enough facial inscrutability to make a paragraph in a best-seller, for in every case observed there gleamed spotless teeth, all in order and as planted by the Giver. One thought after envious glances at these smiling Eastern mouths that a friendly parade of visiting Japanese might be arranged by the Dentists' Corps to ascertain what Old Nippon does to obviate the necessity of applying forceps and porcelain to the local jaw. It would be a pleasant sight to see (and hear) an army corps of Japanese biting apples in unison, accompanied by the personnel of the Grand Fleet engaged in the mastication of regulation biscuits.

An acute observer who merely stains his trachea ami other internal arrangements with unseen nicotine per pipe lately called

attention to the yellow STAINED finger tips of a nearby FINGERS, gentleman. "If fags do that to your lingers, what musH: they do to your innards?" he asked darkly—and the other, not knowing what to eay, murmured, "Yes—what?" As a matter of fact, the non-smoker of cigarettes in a normal life of coloured medicine must have an interior comparable to a modernist oil painting. Surgeons undertaking postmortem examinations can remember interior Reinbnindts and hitherto shrouded Turners, solar effects, scenes by moonlight and rainbows at their best. Human colour schemes are not confined to the tobacconalian'e finger tips. So the man who smoked a pipe called hurt attention to the stained fingers aforesaid. And the other said. "Yes, that's Vid Charlie Charles—never smoked in his life. He's a photographer."

The unintentional eavesdropper, plagued with too acute hearing, is bound to listen to curiosities of conversation, hating to permit them to go unrecorded. LOVE STORIES. For instance, in the spring (seo our window display) the young man's fancy (and that of has grandfather) lightly turns "to thoughts of love. One conversationalist recalled to his man mate the case of the unattached girl who was in the habit of following linked lovers. When they halted to sit on a log, seat, gate or milestone she would softly move up and sit alongside, obtaining by deputy those sweet sensations referable to the gentle passion. It became so usual that all the lovers in that country place expected to have this deputy present. Curious, but it sounded true. Then there was the lady who was acquainted with Burma and the life out there. She declared that young British officers or young British civilians on long leave instantly sailed hot foot for London, where they immediately and invariably married girls from Lyons shops. Unhappily, just as the eavesdropper was wondering if these invariable marriages turned out trumps, the tedy from Burma reached Auckland and the record terminated—and one had to content oneself with the mixed love stories of a newspaper.

There was a closed-in van on a wharf, unusually bedight in chromatic colours, either to distract (or to attract) the human eye. The old soldier, scanning CAMOUFLAGE, this exuberance, recalled

the war days of camouflage, when trees went about disguised as guns or mowing machines lurked in paddocks pretending they were gune; when ships stalked the mighty deep 100-king like nightmares and even men strolled across No Man's Land grazing like cows and carrying rifles beneath their borrowed hides. And it occurred to one who had watched (in safety) the strange colour schemes of ships that in the great commercial war (just as lethal as the steel, nickel and poison affair) the need for human camouflage is indicated. The promoter of snide opportunities for the wary (and unwary), instead of the diamond 'tiepin and the exuberant watch chain, might camouflage his apparent rascality with clerical clothes, inferring lamblike innocence; the confidence man could reduce his raucous voice to a meek whisper, cover his predatory eyes with smoked glasses, and wear "gloves on his sharpened paws. There is no doubt whatever that in the Italo-Ethiop campaign, whether it be a war Of rifles or a war of oil, there will be white men camouflaged as Ethiops permeating the camps of the Dark Barefoots. The white man will have an advantage, for a bit of charcoal will do the trick. A whitewashed Ethiop in an Italian camp woudn't fill the bill at all. He'd be spotted at once, especially during heavy rain. A THOUGHT FOR TO-DAY. The true way to be deceived is to think oneself more knowing than others.—La Rochefoucauld.