THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 136, 10 June 1936, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

Richard Seddon, the most notable figure in the political life of New Zealand, died on June 10 thirty years ago None before or since has seized tiic ROYAL PURPLE, imagination of the people as he did. No tribute to any man in New Zealand was so wonderful as that of his funeral. Wellington on that day was filled to overflowing with those who really grieved. People wept unashamedly, and the; e was a brooding silence quite unprecedented in our annals. To a stranger the universal use of royal purple mourning along the route ot the cortege and elsewhere would have been incongruous. But "King Dick" seemed to have been a veritable monarch to the subjects who accepted his regal rule.

Reference herein to the recrudescence of umbrellas, necessitated by a .sprinkle, brings in a lady who vouches that the tale she bears is not true. She said that HER BUSY DAY. she attended a local bargain sale with five or six hundred fellow women. In her excitement she put her umbrella down on a table. Having wrested her bargain from other determined women, she grasped ar, umbrella from the counter, lifted her parcels, and departed. Pattering little feet were heard, and a rather excited lady dashed up, seized that umbrella, and panted. "My umbrella, I believe?" The other looked at the brolly, said, "So sorry," handed it over, went back to pick up her own, and discovered that it was not there. Shopping elsewhere a little later, it occurred to this woman to buy half a dozen brollies for self and family. So she did. She emerged, carrying the neat bundle. She heard the patter of little feet, and the lady who had claimed the gamp from her elsewhere stepped up and said with great politness, "Let me congratulate you on a most successful morning!" Docs it sound like a vintage story to you?

People who love their own, their New Zealand butter, rejoice to pay more for- it than do the people to whom the bulk is sent — and those who can't afford ONE AND to buy their own butter FIVEPENCE. eat dripping. Butter ie more of an exhibit than a food than it used to be. When Mr. Overhead was younger restaurateurs used to dot the immediate scenery with butter —you could practically slide the whole length of your favourite' scounery on butter. Waitresses, noting that Mr. A. had eaten the nearest halfpound, dashed to the rescue with more. Owners of eating places vied with eacli other in the quantities of butter displayed. Waitreesce contemplating , * departing customers wistfully wondered why they had not eaten more butter, and one sometimes fancied that proprietors would have liked to wrap up a free pound or two for customers to eat going home. This departed butter age reminds one of two young gentlemen, obviously from the pastures, who exterminated all the butter in sight at their city meal—and then called for replenishment. And what the red-headed one eaid to the blackhaired cow farmer will never be forgotten: "Hog into ther grease. Bill —and keep the price of butterfat up." And Bill did.

Physical disabilities in so many eases only enhance the courage ancl mental ability of individuals. There are innumerable examples —of which Franklin HIGH COURAGE. Roosevelt, President of the United States, is the most apt. We have notable examples, too, in New Zealand. There is, too, a young Australian writer (Dorothy Cottrell) who is becoming known for her adventure stories, although she has never walked. She is drawn about by four big dogs in a wheel chair —and was a good riHe shot at the age of twelve years.. Brought up on a vast Queensland station, this clever cripple seems to have had as many adventures as if she had been fitted with all the physical attributes. Here is one which couldn't happen to a girl in a wheel chair in Auckland. One day her wheel chair ran over a seven-foot tiger' snake —a deadly serpent which not only kills you if possible but actually chases you —a rare attribute in the serpent world. The snake was caught between the spokes —the dogs were muzzled to prevent them eating poison dingo baits—the girl had no rifle and no stick. One of the muzzled dogs attacked the snake, which turned. The girl grasped its head and beat it against the wheel until it was dead. And this courageous girl has had pluck enough to write books, too!

You remember old Tliingummibob of the "Rubaiyat"? "1 often wonder what the Vintners buy one half so precious as the stuff they sell." Same with icePINK CONE. cream makers —yet here is a chap who returned from a gathering of the local ice-cream clans, perfect in all its parts, barring ice cream! Still, he laughs indulgently. Astounding figures, these benefactors throw about. One philanthropist can do with twenty thousand gallons of milk and five thousand gallons of cream at a time when the suffering cocky wouldn't know where to throw it if humanity didn't have a throat as "deep as a Mendip mine" ("G.K.C." and not Omar). What a swallow —one of which does not, however, make a summer in the ice-cream trade. This preliminary to saying that the ice-cream biz —which throws its tentacles world wide—was hardly hygienic in it* earlier manifestations. Giuseppe of the unholy finger nails, greasy locks and greasier earrings, used to confer halfpennyworths of this comestible from dirty little wooden buckets nestling under poisonous little counters —or alternatively oil an unhygienic truck carrying the can of loveliness from which he so often dipped typhoid. People so readily guzzled the dangers of Giuseppe that there was a bound of hygienic persons into the field. Even duchesses lick vanilla loveliness from pink cones nowadays, and Ministers of the Crown carry it home in bags.

It has been pointed out and discussed that, single blankets are shorter than double blankets for reasons of cost. It probably amounts to this—the unSINGLE accompanied sleeper in BLANKETS, single blankets these nippy nights draws his toes further towards his eyes and escapes that complete comfort known to the double-bedder. People forced to sleep in short single blankets may take the tip of a snoozer of great experience, that newspapers wrapped round the end of a short single blanket keep the warmth in, and although they rustle in the night one gets used to this music. Enclosing the feet in a sugar bag is a good wheeze for single sleepers, but sewing the bottom of a single short blanket (thus making a bag for the little tootsies) is not recommended. It leaves great spaces of chin and face open to the gales that sweep every thousand-pound bungalow in the country—a system of ventilation that is to be perpetuated in State ukase. The argument about little blankets for long legs reminded one of the hospital patient who really and truly was six feet seven in his stockings when he had them on. The authorities butted one hospital bed end to end to give him leg room. Blankets were boiled frequently. A short single blanket simply became a sort of a woollen handkerchief and the tall gentleman whom one watched with interest was tiled every day with these woollen shingles. . When the giant laughed the tiles rained off the roof oil to the ground, and nurses rushed to the spot to retile portions of the patient. They never thought of splitting a wool bale and covering the son of Ana*k with it.