THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 227, 25 September 1935, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) A letter received by the authorities of the Auckland Public Library from a resident of North Auckland is as follows: "To the. Auckland Librey Book, PUKAPUKA. Dear sir or madam please & kindly send me one gentleman's letter writer and guide book with two languiuick Maori and pakeha. sent the dorget in the parcell to bo paid at the post office. I have written thin inoto to let you know if that will suite you." When a King of Siam graciously conferred a white elephant on a British friend tho recipient smiled winningly, but in private ne gnashed his teeth, for lio EYEWASH. only had a few thousands a year and lived in Park Lano with a garden inappropriate for the housing of a mammoth. Mentioned herein recently that old war ironmongery—perfectly useless and nasty to look at—had become an I eyesore to every kind of body in New Zealand—nobody yet having thought of smashing them up with a steam hammer and sending them to Japan to be made into razor blades at threehalfpenco a dozen. A marine suburb borough which has been gritting its teeth at , a couple of nasty old machine guns for years j has just wished them on to the local exi soldiers' club —a highly inappropriate idea. If there is any kind of man who should hate tho eight of any machine gun or other devilment of the kind, it is the man who has been hit with a machine gun bullet, who carries a bit of shrapnel in him, who is lamed, maimed, gassed, smashed, unfit for the ordinary duties of life. All the nations which partook in the Great Mistake have possessed thousands of these grisly reminders. Why remind yourselves? Think of the sentiment, say you. It isn't sentiment at all. It is the fag end of a very unnecessary bit of swank. Ask mother. Among the current sensations are the postponement of zero hour for the Ab-It conflict and the white overcoat worn by an Auckland municipal transport THE WHITE director. This is merely COAT, to say that white is desirable wear for gentlemen in sub-tropical climates, but it is unlikely that local gentlemen will hail the summer by following "suit." It is impossible to estimate the advantages of white wear for men during any day that seems to be summer in Auckland. It would at once necessitate tho purchase of seven suits per man of washable whites. It would bring joy to launderers and laundresses. It would introduce the Jfesirability of diurnal cleanliness in man's clothes, , so that to wear one woollen suit day in and ! day out for two years would become not only a novelty but a crime. Men in summer time would look as cool, as respectable and as spotless as butchers —and one can't say fairer , than that. Policemen in summer white would ; look twice the size, imparting extra terror into the dingy crooks who seldom launder. Apropos the Ab-It conflict, during the Great War the Italians, facing the Austrians in the snowclad hills, wore white uniforms to match | the snow. In some parts of Ethiopia (if the unexpected happens) they will soon be wearing white—or near white—for the sun. Have you ever seen an island beachcomber wearing tho same summer suit of white for six months ? Ugh! "My word, that's a of a place you live in," said an average man to an average friend, referring to a suburb the average | friend had the insolence » — OF A PLACE." to live in. The average man, like a true insular, ! had never been to the suburb before, and any place the average man has never been to ought : not to be there. So inconvenient —takes thirty minutes to get to it, when he can get to his ! own home in twenty-nine. Then, of course, | a man has to cross the water—take his life I in his hands in storms, shipwrecks and among ! nasty porpoises that might stove the bow in. Again, the average man going out of his diurnal stride once every twenty years doesn't see a single person he knows. It's a of a place where an average man doesn't know anybody. It's the love of home that is so deeply implanted in the brea«t of the insular. Christchurch is a of a place to the Aucklandcr. Auckland is a of a place to a Wellington man, Wellington is a of a place to the Dunedinite, and so forth. People who live among the architectural triumphs of Wharepuhiaka for thirty years do not always fro to Ruhiputae (which is a of a place) for a holiday. They take a two months' trip to London (which is a of a place), and [returning to Ruhiputae tell the Road Board that London cannot teach Ruhiputae anything —Ruhiputae being the only spot on earth that is not a of a place. A world-wide campaign against the noises of civilisation reminds one of the man who lives for nine hours in a terrific mechanical clatter and quivers like MORE SILENCE, a jelly at a house window slammed by a gust. A girl one knows working amid the clatter of a large number of typewriters does not notice it. but a scratching pen in tlie dear old home —ye gods! You've heard those street drills? You are wed to them, of course—love their songs and especially the duets and choruses. They are actually trying to stop this musical feature in Great Britain. An English engineer says that at the cost of a few shillings every road drill can be silenced by a sheet-iron exhaust box to surround the exhaust ports of tho air which is compressed in tho drill and which is now allowed to escape direct into the outer air. The action is precisely similar to that which occurs with an unsileneed ear or cycle. The export says that any intelligent mechanical engineer could lit one in an hour or two. Perhaps after a while they could adapt thorn to American crooners, candidates for Parliament and others bursting with compressed energy. "Luke. MeOlue" has written elsewhere about his anguish 011 seeing diners in public 1 estamants dissecting bread and butter for eating with a cako fork. FINGERS Tho cako fork is very AND FORKS, likely imposed on a public suffering from too many table tools by cutlers who want to make more money. A good Sheffield traveller could sell perforated soup spoons. Anyone who is a valiant trencherman is oblivious of what other peoplo do at table—the meal hour is too short and too solemn. You know that it is quite correct to tear a bread roll or a slice of the staff of life to pieces with the fingers, and very likely the habit of trying to cut a burnished roll with a blunt table knife is anathema to some—so why look? How rarely now does one hear tho real and undoubted soup song in a restaurant? Tho immense prevalence of porcelain dentures augments this occasional music, but in the days of long moustaches and voluminous beards ' these songs went into three octaves—so we i have much to be thankful for in a barefaced : era. It used to be considered not nice to pick up a piece of poultry in the hand and < to gnaw it as our forefathers did before tho t days of forks—but one day Queen Victoria seized the leg of a roast chicken—and it at J once became respectable. Nobody knows why i forks are polite for cake, except the makers. < Table manners are only ior other people. All peer is just as liable to eat peas with his i ( knife in private as is a navvy in public. One i has seen the younger son of a ducal house j i sitting on a river bank masticating the salt I f rib bones of sheep. Nobody handed him either t knife or fork—'cos there weren't any. Still, i bread and butter per cake fork does seem a | £ bit fastidious. j