THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 249, 21 October 1935, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

It is appropriate on this— Trafalgar-day to revive the old crusted yarns on the grounds that there is a perpetual perambulation ot new readers who know BRIGHT BRASS, not their Nelsoniana. There ie on the deck ot old Victory a 'brass plate marking-the spot on which the great seaman fell when he was shot from the foretop of a French man-'o-war. \ dear old lady seeing the sights was conducted to this spot. A sailor man, indicating the glistening spot, solemnly said, "Here Nelson fell." The old lady replied, "An' I don t wonder he fell—l slipped on it meself." The Silent Service invariably keeps mum. Neither admiral nor matlow buttonholes his pal in the street, the pub or the club and r • imparts the whispered SEALED ORDERS, news that the old teakettle is bound for the Island of Such-and-such to plaster the scenery or to indulge in lawful occasions as per latitude and longitude herewith. On occasions, however, reticence may be thrown to- the winds—and Captain Cosmo Graham has many friends. It necessarily followed that these many friends hoped that the captain of the H.M.S. Diomede should whisper the unknown destination of the cruiser and the duty on which .she sailed. And eo he did! "We are taking reinforcements for the All Blacks!" he solemnly told his friends. ;

Prattling' about those lucky people- who dispatch a scrap of paper and a few shillings to sinful countries and receive ten thousand pounds in return, a man £S D. . told present non-gambler of the lady who went to the money order counter of a post office some years ago. She asked for an order for six shillings and threepence. As the expert behind the wire was complying with the instruction the lady winningly asked, "I suppose you couldn't tell me a good address to send it to, could you J" The teller of the story declares that the astounded official, himself, of course, no gambler, nearly swooned. As this is the anniversary of the dispatch of the. first New Zealand troops for Africa, the story of the sovereigns is not amiss. A young soldier brought home to New Zealand twenty Kruger sovereigns—equal value to our own. He gave them to his mother. Hie mother paid them into her account. Six months later she went to the bank to withdraw them. The teller paid her in English sovereigns. "You don't mean to tell me you've lost my Kruger sovereigns, do you?" she gaeped. He had!

He came into the office beaming brightly and rattling a large weight of coins in a pocket. "Come out and have a spot!" he purred. "I'm holding this OLD GOLD. morning!" And eo he was, by Jove! He displayed an English gold five-pound piece, issued at Queen Victoria's jubilee and as speckless ae at the moment of minting. It bore the old Queen's effigy and the inimitable device of St. George and the dragon. Old pietists will be delighted to know that it bore the old Latin intimation that Her Majesty wae by the Grace of God Defender of the Faith. The Auckland lady to whom the gold fiver was given as a wedding present will not take a tenner for it. The presiding teetotal amateur niimiematist complained that among the owners of valuable coins none ever left gold fivers behind on the table, and the exhibitor casually mentioned he could have the coin for a space to look at. The temptation • Then that George 111. penny. No pocket would ever stand a shilling's worth of these coins, which would be good missiles in a street brawl. Georgius 111. was a gay-looking old gentleman in a peruke and he also was Defender of the Faith and Rex^—although not Imperator. Can't make out why the people of 1797 didn't spend their pennies. Thie hefty bit of bronze ie almost-unworn. In the day of Georgius Tertius it would have bought as much as one of our tin shillings—but it ie hoped our forefathers didn't throw their money about—too dangerous!

Wo do not star Trafalgar Day in New Zealand, and Nelson was not an All Black, anyhow. To-day, which is the day, is singularly free from bunting, KISS ME, HARDY! which occasionally is flown upside down, or right side up for lesser affairs. Not to enter volubly into the story of Nelson, who may often be confused with Wellington, Napoleon and Mussolini nowadays, one almost wondere if we should be inhabiting this fair spot if Nelson had not cropped up. Mind you, many a schoolboy knows that Nelson was shot on a deek and that the great admiral 3aid,- "Kiss me, Ilardy," and all that, but one often wonders if people in comparative safety feel the tremendous significance of that affair at Trafalgar. We need reminding, don't we? But for the persistence of a local uchoolmaster, the flret Governor of New Zealand would by now be more completely forgotten—and Hobson was a navy man. People do go along to his grave nowadays and say nice things about Hobson, and they will suddenly remember the little man with the one arm and the one eye if somebody tells them. It is a fair ibet that thio poor little paragraph is the first intimation to many a man, who, however, knows the All Blacke, etc., that October 21 is Trafalgar Day and that Nelson was the lad who won the little affair that made All Blacke possible. By the way, New Zealand began real soldiering on Trafalgar Day in 1899, and Wellington was en fete and Mr. Seddon wore a nosegay. The Germ of the New Zealand Army moved out of Wellington in the Waiwera to the plaudits of people to whom soldiering was new. The first man killed among the first New Zealand soldiers was George R. Bradford, who had joined from Paeroa, but had previously belonged to the Grenadier Guards.

Mr. Hore-Belislia, the British Minister whose Department is revolutionising traffic in England, with a special microscope on the Hub of the Universe, ie THE CLEAN-UP, preventing the delivery of household fuel per horse-drawn vehicles during certain hours. Up to now, London fuel delivery hae gone on at any hour. Serves to remind one that tens of millions of tons of coale have been ehot into round holes in millions of pavements in England for generations. Thousands of jokes have, been drawn and written about coal heavers pouring! coal on to paeeers-by, of gentlemen in top hats stepping into coal holes, being pushed into them, emerging from them, and so on. This Hore-Belisha person will ruin the joke trade if he isn't careful. British officialism, too, has enormously interfered with the odours of millions of houses. In endless serie6 of identical houses for many generations every backyard contained a brick rubbish container—the "midden." Into this the tenant poured every scrap of rubbish, where it remained for weeks until the scavenger was warned. The scavengers had no route to the back except through the front and tramped with large boots and a dirty basket through millions of houses throughout the kingdom. It would be interesting to compute the hundreds of miles of ashes, cabbage stalks, dead cats and hob-nail marks on the linoleum of the English people. The enormous horse population inevitable under the old dirt system complicated the difficulty, especially in fly time—and the Hore-Belisha reign with the sad but necessary disappearance of Dobbin and dirt brings a new era in which the travelling colonial hardly ever steps into a coal ' hole, runs into a heap of festering rubbish j or is hurled into the gutter by a scavenger. J