THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 114, 15 May 1936, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

A facetious paragraph in an otherwise serious Australian paper mentions that the stall of an orphans' home jMied the neeille night and clay mending TIN TROUSERS, the seats of tree-climbing boys' pants. It adds a free advertisement calling for a tinsmith to solder patches on the boys' pants. It recalls a true incident. During the march to the relief of Kimberley scouts observed a bright moving light 011 a hill. They were not signallers, but concluded that a heliograph was sending messages —and investigated. After a long trek and a hard climb—they came across the "heliograph." It was merely a soldier climbing up a hill. He had mended his unutterable trousers with a piece of thin, bright tin torn from the lining of a regulation biscuit box. Field-Marshal Lord Allenby—the most arresting military figure of this generation is dead. The great soldier, administrator, organiser and conqueror JERUSALEM. was a singularly modest man, as he showed when he came to New Zealand with Lady Allenby for a health tour. A New Zealand officer of distinction who served with him in his epic operations in Palestine, and accompanied him 011 his New Zealand visit, remarked that his sense of humour was excellent and that simple things pleased him best. When the news | reached America that Jerusalem had been captured by Allenhy'a forces, an American paper, noting the news, put up the heading in good fat capitals: "ALLENBY'S FORCES CAPTURE CHRIST'S HOME TOWN." When Allenby was shown the paper he laughed so heartily that "the sound thereof might have been heard from Dan to Beersheba." There are many reasons why trout fishing colonels and others should come to New Zealand, where the fish are many, and fat at that. One of the reasons BIG GAME. is that the colonel will not require a military escort to get to Taupo. Dear old boys freezing in Blighty have lately been fronting in Ceylon, Malaya, Kenya and Kashmir so as to get warm. One old troutist says you can have all these exotic spots, but ho prefers Afghanistan, where you have to take your rod and your life in your hands. It is necessary to have a strong military guard, as all sorts of sportsmen with .rifles pop at you. You have to trek through rough, hot, dangerous country for two hundred miles in from Kabul—and then you may be able to catch a trout weighing anything from a pound to three pounds. Ye gods of war and little minnows— three pounds—and your life at stake! j

An indignant correspondent, writing 710 doubt willi his tongue in Iris cheek and a twinkle in Iris eye, has pointed out that an "o" has licen left out THE "LITERAL." of a newspaper, quoting the fearful omission thus: "Several pints of Government policy," etc. He points out that there are only 224 columns in the paper, and even if these 224 columns approximate a mere half-million words, it seems easy enough to spot a little thing like that. And the fearful mistake reminds him of the other joke. An Anglican clergyman gave an address. It was duly reported in the "Lyttelton Times." The reverend gentleman wrote to the editor: "I am sorry to disturb such a beautiful pen picture a A your reporter has conjured up for me. What I really said was 'How nice it is to sit in front of the fire and reflect on these things over a pipe,' not 'over a pint.'" Our vivacious friends the Italians are still worrying John Bull about the dum-dum bullets he didn't sell to the Abs. Mr. Bull has categorically denied THIS MERCY, the allegation, and one has the infernal cheek to ask why it should be very wrong to shoot a nan with a dum-dum rifle bullet and quite right to blow a hole in him with a soft-lead regulation revolver bullet. There is no nickel on Webley ammunition—and anybody who has been smitten with a service revolver bullet is probably no longer with us—or is a fearful mess. These artistic discriminations make one a little tired. Once there was a soldier who was captured. The enemy found home-made dum-dums on him. He had made them by merely filing the nickel points flat down to the lead. He had never fired a shot at a man in his life. He was the regimental butcher—and used them for shooting cattle.

Ardent sportsmen a while ago complained that imported ducks became so tame that when mother went out to feed the domestic poultry she was bound to BORN SHOOTERS. find a few—"mallards." wasn't it?—waiting to be f,ed. too. Recent portraits of gentlemen draped with ducks infer that the "shocking tameness" noted by Alexander Selkirk on that island is observable in Xew Zealand, too. In the matter of the henyard wild duck, the sportsman has merely to sit on the back step with a gun and shoot the wild duck as they feed. Lord Bledisloe, who was brought up with a gun 011 Lydney, remarked with wonder that our local sportsmen shoot 'em sitting, a method lie had never seen employed before. A current news note infers an amiable indiscrimination during the glad shooting season, especially in Otago. A lady who keeps geese there has presumably expected casualties among them' each year, but this year the sportsmen have so frequently mistaken her domestic geese for wikl game that she has complained. ° Sportsmen will, of course, wonder why keepers of geese are so Jidgety. A point of interest is that the loser of domestic geese said that if the guilty sportsmen went to her and asked for a goose, she'd give it to them, "but it is not Bntish fair plav," etc. This opens up a tremendous field of thought. All these sportsmen who shoot 'em sitting or fire into domestic poultry with two barrels could go round asking kind ladies for spare live geese —and get them! One wonders. What intrigues the sportsman who decimates the sitters and the domestic run is the gun. We are born shooters.

Gazing for a moment, morning by morning, at the tumbling old post office two doors removed —and the stone saints, pakeha and Maori, at present residDEMOLITION. ing in makeshift shrines erected by kindly destroyers, one has felt that destroying is 'a very special job. Gentlemen of the demolition parties at present working all over the world to arrange for taller buildings and new roads for democracy, take about the same risk as a soldier does under shellfire. You'd think that a man striking at tottering walls with a pick raking down a Niagara of pulverised mortar and bits of brick, or removing ancient kauri timber armed with jagged nails, would often become a casualty. Instead of which, these gentlemen stand firmly planted on one or two brick-wide walls high up in the air and end the day without casualty. Now you couldn't handle falling material all day without tearin? your fingers off. sustaining bruises, getting choked with dust or falling over moving morasses of rubble. Yet you will gee these gay destroyers reach for their coats at knockoff as good as new without a single scratch and hardly soiled. You've seen the demolisher portrayed in comic pictures. The man with the pick is standing on a single tottering brick high up in the air looking down on the busy street. To his mate he remarks, "Ruddy dangerous, them motor cars, Bill, ain't they?" Unskilled work? Try it!