THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 169, 18 July 1936, Page 8

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

Dear M.A.T.—How is this for contentment ? He is a dear olcl soul, over eighty, ami lives on 15/ a week interest on money saved. Out of this (>/ CONTENTMENT, pays for his bach and the remainder provides gas, food and clothing and a little to the chinch. He has not had. a lire for six years, but is quite liapp.v. A friend suggested he should buy an annuity with his money or else apply for the pension, but the reply was, "1 need no pension or charity, and what , should I do with the extra money from an annuity? I have everything 1 need and shall leave my bit of money to someone in greater need than myself."—Cheerio.

Whether the public is welcome among the giant machinery of the ocean liners which come into port, one cannot say, but it seems certain that a muchEXPERTS. interested visitor is often

loosed into the ships- and stands transfixed among the doings, while some engineer (the politest breed of men in the world) carefully explains the intricacies of his charge. Quite recently a smallish man might have been seen among the workings of a liner personally conducted by the second engineer. The engineer began his lecture, but the visitor instantly collared the bowling and for ten breathless minutes gave that engineer a lesson in his profession that astounded him. And the engineer said to the visitor, "Good gracious, you seem to know a bit. about it. "Yes, I should think' so. I'm a watch repairer."

Chivalry is not dead. There are humble knights out of armour who rescue beauty in distress Take the case of the sweet girl who, having lunched at a rcsTHE RESCUE, tail rant, paid her ticket and passed through the door. Said the lady at the cash register to a young man luncher, "Oh, please stop that young lady—she gave me an American 25cent piece/' The young man pursued the girl and told her. "Dear me, was it a 25oent piece—l didn't know. Whatever shall I do? It was the only coin I had." "That will he all right!" said the gallant rescuer. "Give me the coin and I'll give you a shilling." The exchange was gratefully made, the girl paid for her,ticket —and the gallant knight out or armour strolled up the street of the town he was in and bought himself a pa'cket of cigarettes with that quarter-dollar.

Dear M.A.T., —The Auckland Acclimatisation Society has answered its critics in its own convincing way. Splendid! For years past the number of cock PHEASANTS. pheasants liberated for license holders per annum has been one for every six guns. Xow, by raising the license fee from £1 to £1 5/, and thereby getting a record collection of cash, there is every prospect of the quota being raised to one-third bird per gun. There are 2514 license holders this year. It sounds too good to be true; but one never knows. In America, now, the shooters are not nearly so beneficent, for one club, with a mere membership of sixty, demanded 3500 pheasants and 1100 ducks, and got them, and in one single afternoon's shoot bagged 012 pheasants with but twelve guns. The Auckland Society's warmlv-expressed pride in its splendid-natured sportsmen is completely understandable. — Morepork.

Boar with one wliile one prattles of love for thirty seconds, suggested by a wet morning and a nice boy and girl snuggling together under a brolly. It occurTHE LOVERS. red that spring will come when the young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts, etc. Caveman stuir, apart from the talkies, has vanished in our own circles, but in other lands a certain violence is prelude to the winning of a lady's affection. In Abyssinia there used to be a custom—and it is no doubt still extant among the eternal hills—that no man might marry until he had proved himself a proper man by killing another man. A thoroughpaced killer became an embarrassed wooer, for girls, marking a nice young murderer, would flock to him, rub grease in his hair, stick his hair on eiul and show by other tender graces that they loved him and would marry him. He, for his part, chose whom he would from amongst the bevy. A young man who was an eligible parti would fly pennons of white calico from the roof of his house if he wished the girls to rally round. If ho flew, say, six pennons, it meant that he was a perfect young gentleman who had slain six other young swells in single combat. He was thoroughly entitled to marry under the circumstances.

Commercial elements do not differ fundamentally wherever they may be. It seems as natural for our fellow citizens to anticipate a rise in wages bv putting TUTTI FRUTTI. up the prices of necessities a few weeks beforehand, as it does for thirty-four railway wagons to land Italian fruit in London before the sanctions end. "Thrice armed is he who hath his quarrel just—but better still to get your blow in fust. 3 By the way, our vivacious friends from Italy practically introduced the tomato to the mouths of the British. A fewdecades ago in England the tomato occurred only in hothouses—and most people thought it was rather a nasty thing, although it looked so nice. It was frequently said that a taste for tomatoes had to be acquired—you had to learn to eat them. The Italian exporter trained the British people to acquire the taste, but only the opulent in the early days of imported "pommes d'amour" could'afford the price. Some queer bird started the absurd rumour that cancer was traceable to tomatoes, since which, of course, Britain grows nnthinkably large areas of this apparently indispensable edible under glass. It has often been suggested that the tomato was the forbidden fruit of the garden of Eden. It isn't forbidden in this, our own Eden.

The other day a man with an umbrella went tapping along- a c Jt y street. He wasn't a fast goer, and a younger man stepped on the end of the broil v INSURANCE, from behind, skidded wildly for a few yards, miraculously recovered his poise, smiled, jincl that's all. The point* for the citizen is—if the man who stepped 011 the umbrella end had fallen and sustained injuries would the man with the umbrella have been liable for damages? People from time to time have been mulcted in heavy damages for swinging a gamp which caused injury to a. passerdn" but one remembers a case in which a woman' manoeuvring a steel-ended umbrella poked it 111 the car of a passer-by, destroying the hearing. A new form of insurance has arisen 111 the Old Country protecting not so much the man struck by the lethal umbrella or stick but the person who owns the stick or unibiella. It protects the insured ari^in" out of his neglect in the swinging of a stick, crossing the road carelessly and causing an i accident, failing to control a dog, throwing down a cigar, cigarette end or lighted dotte? ' thus causing lire and damage. A family insurance costs a mere half-a-erown a thousand pounds, or eighteen pence for single humans. With a few a year a man could »o about spreading death and devastation, feeling that he'd have money to meet the liability ,ii iX ca.u&) W a cwh* U^-out.