THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 237, 6 October 1936, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) "One touch of Nature makes the whole world kin." Also "East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet." One heard the story from a KINSHIP. man who went to the hospital to see a sick friend. Sitting by the bed of a man who was obviously inert was an Indian man showing the greatest solicitude for the patient. He had since the admission of the patient not failed to visit him when visitors are permitted and had shown an unobtrusive devotion touching to those who cared to notice. The story is quite simple, and being told second-hand, one hopes it is quite accurate and inoffensive. The Indian was in Albert Park and observed a man lying on the ground. He ascertained that the man had been stricken with apoplexy and at once obtained the necessary official help—and admission to the hospital. Apparently conceiving it to be his duty as it was his desire to continue the acquaintance, the Indian gentleman has been a constant visitor to the bedside. It is a simple record of a simple act, but it is of service as showing how men of difference races may become bound •by the ties of a common fraternity and a universal pity.

After all, you know the names of the great cooks, the sublime chefs of the world have been men's names, so there is nothing remarkable in teaching the young COOKS IN Escoffiers of the New TROUSERS. Zealand Medical Corps to break an egg in a pan, and all that such a breach connotes. Old bush cooks with corns on their ■ knuckles achieved from fighting with the diners may or 'may not remember the time when officers in the army were taught to cook, and it is even now possible that many a bloodthirsty ruajpr can fry a biscuit in mutton fat or a report in ink. When this cookery teaching broke out sergeant cooks were detailed to teach field-officers. Someone Kiplingesque became vocal thus. Nobody but present ex-cook remembers the words: "Wot is that funny smell I smells?" Sez Files-on-Parade. "The colonel's makin' Irish stoo,' The sergeant-major sez; "'Oo's goin' to eat the flamin' stuff?' Sez Files-on-Parade. "The likes o' you. the likes o' you!" The sergeant-major says; "For the good Noo Zea'and mutton, It is frozen wiv surprise, > At the langwidge e's a-usin' The potatoes is all eyes. And the colonel 'e carn't make The gravy thicken if he tries, So yer marchin' for the doctor In the mornin'."

There was a shocked husli in the community when it was learned that a butt with one hundred and six gallons of whisky (which had travelled thousands THE CASE. of miles to keep its strength up) had fallen out of a ship's sling and staved itself in, much of the precious balm diluting the Pacific —a pretty weak mixture. The abstemious conduct of those present shows how remarkably disciplined we are. History is dotted with stories of burst barrels. Barrels of wine in myriads have burst in France through the centuries, empurpling the people who never forget in the records to wallow in the gutters, lapping the gift. Frantic men and women assisted by children have dipped hats in the flowing wine and have squeezed them into eager mouths. Whole communes have in books reeled home flushed and victorious to their beds. Records of the Gordon riots in London detail the orgies of rioters who looted a great wine and spirit vault, broaching the barrels in the gutters and partaking of the same from every kind of utensil. The records tell of people, soaked in spirits, igniting in 'contact i with torches and burning to*death; of people ! sopping up the liquor in the gutters with rags and neckcloths and sucking them, of drunken babies—and other horrors—and one recalled nothing of the kind in any related incident in Auckland. Once certainly a hogshead of beer fell from a lorry in Queen Street—but didn't smash! It rolled abr,ut a bit to the horror of peaceful crowds-, who reverently delayed it and witn an air of the purest piety assisted it back again on to the vehicle. It was a picture of communal restraint that should be a lesson to Gordon rioters and French revellers.

You read the "auto-obituary" of David Low by David Low, the most famous cartoonist alive (or dead for that matter), the New Zealander (not "ex-New SWIiET AND Zealander" or "former LOW. New Zealander," but just New Zealander), in Monday's "Star," who gets ten thousand per annum (and perks) for making black marks on white paper in London? Very likely this post-obit, of David by David is the quaintest ever written. Adorned with John Hill's extraordinarily good impression of tiie shiny-eyed cine, it will l>e clipped by thousands a::d hung in waistcoat pockets the Empire over. But present adorer of this remarkable New Zealander really wanted to boast that he was one of the last men in this country to say solong to the eminent one before he took a stump of pencil, a pen or two, a bottle of ink—and genius—to London. David entered the room respectfully. He was attired in a new suit of modest clothing designed not to frighten Fleet Street master-birds off their perches. He lifted from his head a perfectly new hard-hitter hat of meagre brim, flickered those all-seeing eyes under the sealskin eyebrows over present adorer and said with great humility that he was off to London. He said it as if he really ought not to have the infer-n-1 hide to face a London commissionaire, but all the same, he spoke hopefully of trying to drag down a few pounds a week smudging the drawing board. What struck present fareweller of this stupendous power in politics was his modesty and his humility. He hadn't grown the celebrated chin-whisker then, he wasn t so hald and his eyebrows were not so sealskin—but he was the embryo of what he was to becomc—and he becomes it. If New Zealanders would only notice the genius of the great Maorilanders BEFORE they go away!

One wonders if the additional leisure awarded to the toilers by a fatherly State lias induced them to search for intellectual employment for these HEARTS precious hours. Those OF HOAX, humorists, for instance, who by ingenious messages—essays in Action—cause tradesmen to fly to streets that are not there to do jo-bs that are not. It is unfortunate that the public —which is not in the least amused —cannot observe the inspired hoaxers grinning in their j mirrors at each result of their novel writing. | There is nothing really new about literary ! hoaxes. In Mr. Seddon's days the award of I State billets was almost as common as now. , During one opulent period citizens who pos- • I sibly thought they deserved them wcri ■' apprised of their appointments to various important positions. There was a certain boldofficialism and accuracy about these appointments that gave verisimilitude to the j string of hoaxes—for hoaxes they were. The | "fortunate" ones, it seems, in some cases con- | templated the breaking up of the happy home and a prompt occupation of the yawning sinecure. A man who was invited to leave his shop to undertake the chief secretaryship (we will say) of the Blackberry Bureau would naturally feel elated. When the fearful news was disseminated that there were no billets but merely a grinning hoaxer ladling out fiction the gnashing of teeth sounded like an earthquake in a porcelain factory—and the I nominees went back to their counters and J farms to work—ye goods, to Work!