THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 183, 4 August 1937, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MEN ABOUT TOWN.) The decision to form in New Zealand a Clan Mackay.Society has brought into prominence the large number of ite clan septs, which include McCoy, Macghee, CLAN MACKAY. Macghie, Mackee, Mackie, Macquay, Macquey, Macquoid, Macvail, Morgan, Xeilsen, Paul, Poison and Williamson. As all are entitled to be enrolled under the clan banner, the society should be a fairly extensive one, which will have among its objects the fostering of clan sentiment and the collection and preservation of clan records and traditions.—Haggis. The Town Hall audience gasped when "Strangler" Lewis appeared. He is decidedly massive, scaling 18st 101b without his socks. Talking about big men, A TALL ORDER, the Xew Zealand Division boasted a soldier in the O.S. class. The largest tunic in the quartermaster's stores looked like an Eton jacket on "Tiny." It became necessary, of course, to make a special rigout for him. Even the largest "Bill Massey" boots in stock defied his feet, so footwear also had to be "tailor made." However, once completely rigged out, "Tiny" looked a truly awe-inspiring spectacle and even the regimental eergeant-major murmured as he passed: "Thank 'eavene 'e's on our side."—B.C.H. "Robin Hood'e" paragraph about the ideal speech gives excuse for mentioning , a summing up by Mr. Justice Fair in the Supreme Court during the criminal seeVERY BRIEF. eions juet ended. The case was one in which a woman was arraigned on two serious charges and in which, by the way, the jury disagreed. After the evidence had closed for the Crown —none was called for the defence—and the Crown Solicitor and counsel for the accused had addressed the jury the clock showed three minutes to 5 p.m. Mr. Justice Fair in a few words directed the jury to find the woman not guilty on one of the two charges and on the other to carefully consider the evidence presented and return a verdict. And when (he rose to leave the Bench the clock was showing 5 p.m. exactly. In a case of the kind it must have been the shortest address to the jury on record. But the shortest reply must go to the credit of A. E. Cooke, the famous All Black. After touring abroad with the New Zealand Rugby stalwarte, Cooke arrived back in Auckland with the other Auckland members of the team, and at noon assembled at the Town Hall, where a civic reception was held. When the opportunity came the audience called upon Cooke for a speech. He looked about as pleased as an adult with the mumps, but the audience would not be denied, and at last Cooke rose. He looked uncomfortable, then emiled, looked uncomfortable again, and —sat down. Not a syllable did he utter—not even "Mr. Chairman."—Johnny.

"Give a dog a bad name. ..." A woman makes a cranky motor driver. This we know to be a fact. * The reason we know is that we have been told WOMEN DRIVERS, often and often, and. in motor driving ae in other things, if you are only told something often enough you will believe it. One effect of the widespread belief in woman's incapacity in a motor car is that whenever a traffic mix-up occurs nobody bothers to inquire into the cause if the driver of one of the cars happens to be a woman. "Just another woman driver," you say, and pass on. I have just seen a curious illustration of. the manner in which this state of affaire is being capitalised by eome male drivers. Xot, mark you, gentlemen drivers, for gentlemen would not take such unchivalrous advantage of a ladv. We were driving about the city and I noticed that in most things he was meticulous in his observance of the traffic laws. He slowed down at the intersections, he signalled properly, he gave way to the right, and all the rest of it. But only so long as he was dealing with men in the other cars. At one intersection a car came along on the right. He merely accelerated and barged across. It was a blatant breach. "Oh, I always do that when it's a woman driver," he said. His theory was that the woman would probably get the blame in general opinion if anvthing happened, and the woman knew she would! Therefore she was less assertive in insisting on her rights than a male driver, and one could afford to take risks, knowing she would always give way. Perhaps the traffic people will one day disguise an inspector as a woman driver. If they do there is going to be a lot of trouble for one man I know.—B.O*N".

"Touchstone" writes: The correspondent who said it wae "a sin" to applaud the failure of a player on a sporte ground left no doubt ee to his meanins. His WHAT IS SIN? homely phrase was an emphatic variant on the older saying "It's a caution." But what is sin. or rather what ie the word that the correspondent ought to have used in describing this transgression of the law of good sportsmanship—this going "over the odds" in the art of barracking? It is not an easy matter to decide. l -lt has often been remarked." said Dr. R. W. Miller, one of the translators for the British and Foreign Bible Society, "how varied are the words, and how varied the shades of meaning, to express different kinds of evil in English." Describing the translation of the Bible into the Hausa language, he continued: "We have sin, evil, wickedness, crime, offence, fault, failure, transgression, unrighteousness, error, iniquity, depravitv, and' so forth. Similarly we have' a large number of worde in Hausa for this group of ideas, and our English mentality ie further removed' from the African's than it is from the Jewish or Greek; we are often therefore in real doubt ae to whether the right idea is being conveyed, though we undoubtedly get nearer and nearer the longer we live among the people. To translate such words as 'mistake, , 'error,' the Hausa kuskure, to aim and miss, was adopted; for transgression,' 'trespass,' the compound taka sharia. to tread on law. To represent the parent thought, the universal idea of ein, the word chosen is zunubi. ceremonial uncleanness, because to the Moslem Hausa this was the most serious form of ein he could understand; a new eense of the word hae to grow up. Mu?unta is anything in essence evil; hence a form of it. mugum. is used for Satan, and in the Lord's Prayer 'deliver us from evil' (or the evil one). A strange word with a wide range of meaning is bata. It may signify the wandering of a sheep, a mistake, or even a faux pa*. In the Hausa Bible it is often used for Ho go astray.' metaphorically. Another word, zamba, is 'evil' in the eense* of crime, and includes the cognate ideas of to rob, cheat, injure, etc." "

RHYMING PUZZLE. Dear M.A.T., —Seeing , that you occasionally lapse into poetry, could you tell me what word will rhyme with orange? I think that it is a poser that would try even the skill of "Sinbad," who writes veree ir, your column. A Lemon. THOUGHTS FOR TO-DAY. God forbid that I should under-value the warm and faithful feelings of my fellow creatures!— Jane Austen. There is no darkness but ignorance.— Shakespeare.