THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 299, 18 December 1935, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

Little sketch from Nature. Scene, an Auckland tram passenger waiting shed, ihe time is night. The persons present are two misty gentlemen, botii THREE fast asleep and both ah, PASSENGERS, well! The third is a man sitting in the gloom and liable to hear the conversation—if any. One of the gentlemen rouses from his slumber and moans, "Bill, Bill!" Bill hears and also rouses. "Wot?" "I was only a pound and a nari weight wen I was born!" "Go on—and you're alive still!" "Yes, and I'm fourteen stone ten now," rolled over again, and slept. Later a tram came along. "Gerrup!" said Any. "Right-oil!" said Bill. "Come on," said the sober man.

He was a personable man of middle agehe even had distinction. He walked down Queen Street with a gentlewoman. With these two nice people CHANGE OF DIET, were four young people

—three girls and a boy, all in excellent but unostentatious garments. They had probably come from somewhere else to sample the city joys during holiday time. And so the rather masterful-looking man halted suddenly before an excellent restaurant and examined the displayed menu with a rapid eye. Tlie lady and the children waited almost respectfully while father perused this document. Suddenly he turned to the lady. "No, mother," he said, "there is no mutton of any kind on this menu —we'll have a meal here." So the sheep farmer, his wife and 'his children sampled Auckland after a year of waybacks.

Reading tliat the back of the seamen's strike in South Australia lias been broken reminds an old fellow that lie saw the back of the seamen's strike oi THE OTHER 1900 (or thereabouts) beSTRIKE. ing stiffened or broken. It was the year when newchums entering Adelaide wondered if there was a war on. Groups of sinister-looking ruffians hung about every corner, probably with concealed arms. For a fortnight "a brickiielder" sandstorm blew. All the shops were closed. Armed police troopers —cavalry swords, carbines and revolvers rode in pairs, chums arriving at Port Adelaide were rushed by swarms of hooligans—and here is an oldchum who never saw his portmanteaux from that day to this. In those days the train from Port Adelaide used to run up the centre of Adelaide's main street—King William Street — with a bell clanging on the front. Strikers had a go to stop the train —but didn't. The first impression of Adelaide people of those days was that they looked jaded, haggard and i ill-clothed and —in innumerable cases —Ger- | man. Grapes were a halfpenny a pound and one could get a fruit lunch big enough to fill a sugar sack for sixpence. And any one of the hooligans growling about the sandswept .streets would take you down for your socks. Once upon a time a nice girl went down town to shout herself a duck of a hat for Christmas. She dropped across a half-acre of the sweetest little straws CHERCHEZ on a great table (or six) LA FEMME. and thev were marked

fifteen and ten a whirl. She ached for one of those hats and fingered the sparse cash in her little white portemonnaic, finding she could ill afford so much seeing that she had to buy a present for her pal Beth. Suddenly she caught sight of a hat among the battalion different in design and texture to the mass. She pounced on it and was enjoying it lovingly when an assistant moved up and smiled at her. And the girl with the bat in her hand wistfully said to the girl in the "sales force": "I absolutely love this hat, but I'm afraid I can't afford it; now if I could get it for. say, ten shillings, I'd take it." The sales lady took the dinky little hat in her hands, gazed at a mark, and smiled. "Oh, this hat has got mixed up with the others. "You can have it for three and sixpence—that is the marked price." "Oh," said the girl who was about to shout herself a Christmas hat. "I didn't know it .was so cheap —I don't think I'll take it, thank you." And so she fluttered off to another acre of real ducks and bought one for fourteen and three. Mention by a correspondent that the summer topwear of the Auckland tramwaymen is in effect the French peasant's blouse (or the French chiffonier's JEAN'S BLOUSE, rag-picking garb) reminds one that the Frenchman wearing the universal garment would never pronounce the word as we say it, but "bloos." showing that colonial pronunciation of foreign words sometimes becomes good usage. The French working blouse with a band round the waist was a common garment for men in I Australia when you were very young. The blouse much fancied by 6tockmen was made in dungaree or other tough substance. Fitting snugly 4 it gave a young mounted man [ the smart "waisted" appearance of a young [Hussar l.fbited ir a shell jacket, the lower I part of the figure bulging over the seat of the saddle as a rear view. No one is interested in the rear view of a tram conductor—it is always the front view one is thinking of— "All fares!" In the matter of colonial pronunciation of common words, "scone" —the tliree-cornered bit of baking-powder bread auntie makes—is almost invariably rendered "skon," when, of course, it should be said with a lovely long "o," as they say it in Perthshire, in New South Wales, as in Ontario, in all of which spots there is a town or township of the name. The curious thing about the denizens of either town is that all say "skon" for the cake and "Sco-o-ne" for the place. Mr. C. Bailey, of the Auckland City Council, having soldiered in Sinai on a pint of water a day, has told a particularly wellwatered public that he THE KITCHEN has since liked to see TAP. water flow from a tap. And any man who has really thirsted in tropic lands or waterless stretches will tell you that he hates to see a tap run to waste even in New Zealand, where rain so often drops from the heavens four or five hundred tons to the acre and washes the scenery away. One once interrogated a large, hearty Zulu boy, desiring to know what he would best like to do after the war was over. His ambition in life was to live in a house with water taps in—always running! There was another ambition equally powerful in his soul—but it is not for this column. Every New Zealaudcr has heard stories of Australian kiddies who have grown up to be five or six years old without having seen rain—and most dampened New Zealanders murmur under their breaths, "Sez you" —and it is so boring to explain to the unbeliever, who practically lives with his face under a tap from January to December. Thousands of people have died of thirst within an easy walk of water. In Australia there are many of those inexplicable "native wells" that a Ponsonby resident might never find in a month of Sundays. Blackfellows go to them as straight as a bee to a hive and have so often taken whitefellows with blottingpaper tongues to save their lives that specific instances would only bore constantly irrigated Maorilanders. People who have gazed on the new Mount Hobson reservoirs may be interested to hear that millions of folks have from time to time gulped mud down to save their lives, have regarded a drop of wet dirt in a canvas water bag as more precious than gold, have fondled an army felt-covered waterbottle with a spot or so of liquid stink in it as nectar of the gods. Turn that tap off when you've done with it I