THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 206, 1 September 1936, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

Respected citizens awarding liquid sustenance to clients at a most reasonable price at intervals during the day accompany it with free food. There is the LUNCH TIME. ~ story of the clients who were grouped around the glassware and provender who preferred brawn. One of the free diners cut a generous piece and bit 011 it. He withdrew a piece of wire and exhibited it. "What the dickens is that?" he asked. And a mate remarked, "Oh, that's a bit of the horse's harness." After all, these little accidents are not common. Certainly there was the case of present smoker, who found a human finger nail embedded in a plug of dark and treacly tobacco, but a man says that in a long life of tobacco and counter lunch he has never found any coins or diamonds or other negotiable securities. Sailors and soldiers notoriously complain of tinned provision, which has been imprisoned since the wars in Egypt in ,the 'eighties, and produced for modern sustenance. They used to call it "Potted Arab," but there is no evidence of the nationality. String and bits of skewer are, of course, common enough in machined provisions, and in fiction trouser buttons have been found in the sausages. A bit of wire in a piece of five o'clock brawn is neither here nor there.

The railwayman is retired, so he will not be called upon to "Please explain." In his boyhood days he was very junior to an important and pernickety THE OFFICE BOY. official, and one of his

duties was to prepare the great man's working tabic. This lie ditl not do to the satisfaction of tlie great one. The boss matted him volubly—instruraed him that every morning he should remove everything on to the official blotter, carefully dust and polish the table and replace the doings in their exact position as before. The boy, of course, after the official drubbing, was most careful. But the next day the great man called liim in and asked him why he had neglected his duty. He had come to his table, and in removing the blotter found a large number of small pieces of paper —careless, most careless! "I beg your pardon, sir," said the boy who ultimately climbed to dizzy heights in the service, "but you told me to dust everything and replace it —I initialled every bit of that paper before I put them back!" "That will do—that will do," boomed the great one. "You may go!" "Thank you, sir," said the boy, grinning his way out of the Presence. And after all these years that boy exclaims, "One for liis nob—what?" We are an anticipatory people and always notice with self-congratulation that there are signs of spring while winter holds fast the country. So easily do the SPRING. seasons merge in this favoured land that if you asked an average person if it was spring or winter he would have to think hard —for there are samples of all four seasons sometimes in a single night. Monday night was an excellent sample of winter and Tuesday morning a desirable representation of spring. Come to think of it, we are lnqky. Other countries are less fortunate, and it is probably because the grass has a habit of growing all the year round that one wants to buy Christmas presents in June and chortle, of the spring while it is yet months away. Unseemly ewes think nothing of producing twins two months before the bulk of potential ewe mothers haven't given the matter a thought, and we are often so unseasonable that octogenarians marry girls of fifty and yodel like the 3 T oung man whose fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. In short, it is meet that the scribbler again woting signs of spring—the same that were noticed three months ago —should refer to it. These thoughts germinated from the cheering spectacle of a noted lawyer, attired in a heavy black overcoat, walking with an equally notable laimrid up Shortland Street this (Tuesday) morning. As he began to breast the rise he removed his overcoat and carried it. Spring is come—or coming.

Ever been short of a subject? No—of course not. There is the good old day book, cash book, counter and so on yawning for

you —work ready made THE SUBJECT. every day. Here's the scribbler sans subject, sans brains. Hah! Twiddling over a newspaper one finds a commercial picture of a man sitting on a four-disc plough having a spell because his machine is so good. Takes one clear back to the days when a subject was easy enough to find—four horses with rumps like an Auckland scow hitched to a threefurrow stump-jumper plough and a "land" as far as the eye could see—"subject enough, i' faith and i' fackens!" One used to walk behind the stump-jumper and get thrown hither and thither when the shoe of a share bumped the stumps and threw the gifted performer in lovely parabolas. Ploughman used to collect himself, make a remark or two to the team, sit down on the handles, and smoke (the boss didn't mind, he was fifteen, miles away in another paddock). On several occasions one rested the dead pipe 011 the plough handles after the smoke —and ploughed on another mile or two, thus depriving one of the next smoke. But what one wanted to say when the pipe was ploughed in was that 60 precious was the pipe that after burying the only available specimen the lad, lacking a hack, walked fourteen miles into a township and fourteen miles back for a pipe—and to the plough again next morning at six. Subjects?

Here is a Scot of middling age who says that as a young member of a Church of Scotland family he was brought up to feel that anything that ■ wasn't THE gloom on the Sabbath NEW SABBATH, was Sin. Said that the piano was locked up 011 Saturday night and kept locked till Monday —pianos were wicked. He is smiling broadly at the progress of things—the new Scots religion that recognises the need for gladness —municipal golf 011 Sunday, fun instead of frowst, the worship of sun and air and Nature. The Scot produces a newspaper report of the doings of St. Mungos Parish, in the Scottish midlands, where Sabbath gloom was most pronounced in days not so lang syne. little precis of the doings of St. "" Mungos—large dances at sacramental services—the accommodation for communicants taxed to the utmost. For two summer months 110 evening services in order that the people might be in the open air at sport and recreation. The minister said the call of the country was rightly heard by tens of thousands of the young—and there was this note that would have profoundly shaken an "Auld Licht"—on four wheels, two wheels, three wheels and on their own feet they were answering it. To .the Sunday motorist or bikist or hikist he would say"Begin the day as a Christian with God. If you do that you will have stamped it with a character which it will not lose. Come as you .please—in your biking kit or your hiking kit—l don't care—but do come."

THOUGHTS FOR TO-DAY. When you say a thing "will have to do," you may be sure it won't do.—Greville Macdonald. The world depends upon the minor parts being played well. —Anon. God has given you only o ne voice, but claims from you your music.—Rabiudranath Tagore.