THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 21, 25 January 1936, Page 8

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) Latest from the Front. —The Italians have new versions for "Tipperary" and "Pack Up Your Troubles" as marching songs. The Abyssinians, one- 'believes, GRASSHOPPER, are anxious to get a new version about the One Grasshopper Who Jumped Right Over the Other Grasshopper's Back. Of course, we know the Italian for grasshopper —grasslioppero. But what is the Abyssinian "for it? Does anyone know? Auckland's part in the Empire's historic ceremony on Thursday had its significance and reactions. One sturdy fellow, having freed himself perspiringly from ROYAL TOAST, the swirl of the crowd, landed with " a sense of relief at his favourite city corner and there greeted his pal. "Well, Jim," says he, touching back nonchalantly the felt hat which had been pressed tight (manlike) on his forehead, "we've proc'd young Teddy goc>d and hearty to-day. Suppose next thing is to plank the crown on his napper and everything*!! be jake!" "O.K. with me, sport, and as the prelim, is over and it's so blooinin' hot, what abaht it—one for Teddy Rex, his health and our thirst," came the reply. As the twain disappeared into the hotel Bill was heard to be nominating a "long 'un." The vernacular notwithstanding, there were many celebrations of varied character about town yesterday, with glasses lifted to "God Save the King." No doubt those good wishes for King Edward VIII. formed part of 1 a Dominion and Empire setting—a spontaneous, sincere tribute in the midst of a period of sorrow.—E.B.

Following 1 the par. yesterday about superstition, a reader asks the origin of the superstition about bad luck attending a person who walks under a ladder. All TOUCH WOOD, the writer knows is that

tradition in England says that when prisoners were brought out of the courts after trial by the ancient Romans they did not know their fate till outside the building. If he or she were taken under a ladder reared up for the occasion it meant death; outside the ladder meant freedom. The origin of the superstition that it is unlucky to pass under a ladder can be traced t© the old days of public executions, when the hangman and hi 6 victim ascended the) ladder. The hangman placed the noose of the rope from the gallows round the prisoner's neck and pushed him off the ladder. He usually swung under it, so going under the ladder was unlucky. It is maintained, then, that the ladder superstition is simply a survival of the "good old days" when hanging was a penalty 1 for a host of minor crimes, which in these days would be punished by the imposition of a fine or the sentence of "seven days' hard." Tho condemned man or woman —and women, then, were hanged with as little compunction as men were hanged—would ascend to the scaffold to die in the presence of a huge crowd of persons by walking up a ladder, and it was under the ladder that their bodies were carried. Rut the writer isn't a bit superstitious —touch wood!

It was a free show and naturally there was a large audience. A fine, big, strapping fellow who looked like an outsize in kewpies, albeit lie "wore a bathing MAKE IT suit, had gathered round SNAPPY, him the Navy, or the juvenile part of it, on board the ship which, frequently can be heard in the gulf shooting shells which cost a whole heap of money at some inanimate object that has no feeling and wouldn't know if it had been hit. However, that by the way. The deck had been cleared and the aspiring Joe ' Louis donned the mits and generously offered to take on the younger stuff in turn, three two-minute rounds each. . It was sweltering hot. Even the Caledonianite« : —is that the right word? —who were on a neighbouring ship and also lined the Wharf, although the enter- 1 tainment was staged gratis, were uncomfortable. Then the bouts started. The champion in bathing togs tip-toed lightly darting in, tap, then darting out again the while his younger and less knowing opponents tried in vain to put over a heavy right which would send the champion to his cabin. At the end of each round the champion stepped smartly round the deck as though doing tho maxina, but not so his opponents. With arms outstretched they propped themselves up against the rails and used every moment in getting in a fresh consignment of puff. Like all firstclass boxers, the champion did not forget the gladiatorial ceremonial—while strutting round ( lie would place the palm of the right hand glove against the corresponding nostril of his own face, turn his head slightly to the left— and blow. They all do it. He had tapped and taunted one opponent after another and was doing his stuff with the last of the bunch. As they came up for the third and last of the rounds he said, "Now make this one snappy." The little bit of Navy, with perspiration oozing from face and body, merely lcioked up and said, "Tell, me what we've been doing."

An American M.D. Agrees that stocky— stoutish—persons are "likeable and useful as lubricators of society," but lie asserts that

what they need is LAUGH AND "morale," to which end he GROW FAT. advocates feeding them on a "bulky, coarse diet of low fuel value." So now, ye fat, you know what to do if you desire to acquire morale and want to avoid being more human and less ox-like. Try oats! In the course of a newspaper discussion upon laughter and its causes read again the oft-repeated aphorism, "Laugh and grow- fat." The aphorism prompts me to ask, "Have you ever seen a fat man who does not enjoy a laugh ?" I cannot recall having encountered one. Whilst there are— there must be—stout men who are misanthropic, the fat man is the embodiment of good humour. His very fatness radiates it. Is it not one of the jolliest of spectacles to see ah obese man "splitting his sides with laughter"? There is laughter not only in his face and his voice, but all over his big body, from top to toe. As his whole frame shakes with laughter, he mops the perspiration which beads his rotund face, and we who are near him laugh, too, not at the laughter, but with him. Laugh, and the world laughs with you." How different is it_ with the antithesis of tlie fat—the lean! Skinniness arouses not merriment, and though it would be a libel to assert that lean folk radiate nothing but gloom and sadness, the general impression undoubtedly is that thin people are more prone to look 011 the dark rather than on the bright side of life. If a man is wedded it is not so easy for him as it is for a bachelor to guard against obesity. Wives, strangely, believe in "feeding the_ brute." They appear to have a fixed notion that all men require, and demand, enormous quantities of food. Was it not the idea of our mothers, when we were youngsters, that if we said we could not demolish all the' meat and vegetables or all the pudding piled on our plates we must be unwell and "sickening for something"? Now that we are men, our wives seem to adopt the same attitude. There must be something serious the matter with us if we say we don't want a second helping of this or that—if we don't, in fact, stuff ourselves to repletion.

THOUGHTS FOR TO-DAY. We are not here to play, to dream, to drift; We have God's work to do, and loads to lift; Shun not the struggle—face it; 'tis God's gift. —Goethe. Everything is possible for him who possesses courage and activity, and to the timid and hesitating everything is impossible because it seems so.—Sir Walter Scott.