THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 269, 13 November 1935, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) The news from Hawke's Bay that it is common during festival time to exhaust urna ,-boys with long race. THE MIDNIGHT and silent at the evening MEAL. concert, will, of course, remind you of what a young devil you were yourself in your own bovhood. It will further remind i different adults rcact differently to the fiendie ! activity of the human boy. For instance, | scene was a coffee stall, one of the delectable wheeled vehicles at which the night worker may feed sumptuously for a reasonable sum. ; And besides the polite proprietor there were present an old ■•rentlcman, a lady accompanied by boy and a night worker with his pie and : coffee. The little lad was still ' at his peak energy, although presumably he had been i exerting many tons of it all day. He firmly {tapped down every cake jar lid so that tliey ! would be ultimately hard to move, examined | tli j whole premises, and was obseryed climbjing about tlie roof while the jndulgent ladj ; looked at him lovingly and remarked what ' spirits that boy have got. The old gentleman, I equally indulgent, remarked that he was fond of children, observing the unsocial activities 'of the dear child without animus. And the ! tired worker who longed for a moments peace land a cup of undisturbed Mocha barked, "Have | you got any children?" Tlie startled veteran -replied, "No, but ." "I've got seven!" said the man with the coffee. "If he was a kid of mine I'd give liim a damn good hiding.' What is one mail's recreation is another mail's punishment. After eleven days of consistent summer weather, the colanders of heaven having been perpetually opened—and some prior months of equally enjoyable meteGREEN PEAS, orology ■ — mother was found at the stove at breakfast time melting the butter before it was soft enough to spread — ; and this is November 13, within a reasonable shot of Longest Day. The episode of tlie summer butter partaking somewhat of the qualities of rock reminded one that the diminishing band of Eskimos in early spring sit round the stove and scrunch frozen reindeer milk, break off a bit of meat with a hammer, or crosscut a wedge from tlie reindeer pat of butter. A local continuance of this persistent summer weather would necessarily impose Eskimo table manners on Auckland people. You might find a banker or a merchant masticating frozen wax candles for breakfast—a dessert dear to the Eskimo. The whales and blackfisli which Providence strands on our beaches, seejn to l>e sent to supply the lack of warming food for summer eating. Yet not a single ounce of blubber is available on tlie tables of'local restaurants, and fish oil is not on any November menu. Tlr.s, of course, is written after an Arctic night spent under extra blankets and inside two pairs of speckled pyjamas— and before the sun sinks in the west at five minutes after seven o'clock this evening the local Eskimo will have perspired and frozen, have been wet and dry, have sampled every season—and have written Home to say that we always have green peas at Christmas.

Ho had l>con dreaming —and scribbling— about old tilings—distant old tilings. Among them an old, old bedroom in an old, old land. To his infant imagination THE DINTS it was about an acre and OF TIME, a lialf in area, with a huge darkened window (or four) at the far end and a four-poster bed shrouded with gloomy hangings stranded in the centre like a dark island in a lugubrious ■sea —food for dismal dreams. Unthinkable old harridans told naughty children diabolically pietetic tales in those days, and hell and the devil-for children who didn't eat their bread and butter were bedside stories of the time. The lad was left alone in the shrouded wilderness, and ultimately slept with difficulty. And looking; towards a distant window he espied the devil hanging bv his toenails, head down, tapping and leering at liis boyish victim. Those old ivy-clad homes of Home! Devils of ivy glaring in at poor little boys—dear me! And all the time this old chap who had been thinking of the distant old things was sitting at a recently acquired ofirce table thick with history. A dark, solid okl table, immovable as the Sphinx —hand polished with many decades of use. Eight dark drawers that really drew when they were pulled, every one a human document, pulled successively by innumerable hands—a little history of the living—and the others. Never a thoughtless knife had scarified that old desk, but the top had innumerable deep little dints—mysterious little pocks all over. Ah, a link with the past! And an old, old hand explained: "Years and years and years they used to pay the wages over that table—those are sovereign marks!"

A dear cliap, otherwise as conventional as yon are yourself, freely admits that he is a fishing fanatic. Ho thinks trout, he may even eat trout; —and he THE FAIRY POOL, certainly dreams trout. Very well, then—he had a dream, and this is it. He dreamt that an equally fanatical pal had given him the supreme fly, and that he found himself oil the lovely bank of an exquisite pool fringed with superb vegetation—a replica of the fairy pools of song and story. Disporting in the pellucid waters of this fairy pool were trout of iridescent beauty, many of them as large as sharks, but of a pleasing countenance. And he made a cast with his magic fly. Instantly tlio prize trout of the Fairy Pool rose to the fly, the dream fisherman played it with supernatural skill. Still he was unable to land his prize. The magic trout' climbed up tlio line, leaped on the fisherman —and punched him in the stomach, leaving him wounded and bleeding on the bank. He started violently, relieved to find that ho had caught no flsli to-day, that the pillow was slightly disarranged, and to hear a voice chanting, "Show a leg, Bert, old thing—it's ten to eight!"

It is noted with the necessary hear, hears that motorists will be forbidden to pass suburban schools at a faster speed than fifteen m.p.li. Tliis, as you will SPEED THE agree, will enable the BOOT! school authorities to restrain the school children from reaching a higher speed than fifteen miles and a fraction per hour when threading this slow traffic. Children who have presumably hitherto reached a speed of anything from twenty to fifty m.p.li. while crossing traffic may in future amble from kerb to kerb at a mere sixteen. It is within the memory of old boys of the schools that Auckland showed corner warnings, demanding that wheel traffic should "Walk Round Corners," when street speed was restrained at points to a maximum of five m.p.li., and when horse driving at a pace comparable to that of a 1905 motor car on three wheels and a tea-tree stick was "furious driving." Within the last few years an aged man was killed at the corner of a city street by a horse-drawn vehicle. He couldn't dash across to beat the gig or whatever it was. If any old fellows want to dodge across near a school in front of fifteen m.p.li. traffic all he lias to do is to reach, say, 10 m.p.li. on the boot. And so many motorists (whom God bless) are annoyed at this official fussiness and this degrading slowness. Why not proceed at thirty, forty or fiftv m.p.li. in order to be in time to reach some" place to do nothing at?

A THOUGHT FOR TO-DA.Y. AVhat mankind needs is not more good talkers, but more good Sa^naritans. —Anon.