THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 220, 17 September 1938, Page 10

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MEN ABOUT TOWN.)

Hare yon ever noticed the variation of meaning "good-bve" takes when spoken T You can put a enari into, it that stings, or you can put a smile into it GOOD-BYE! that breathes of peace and goodwill. An old whaler once told me that kapai (good) and kopo (the finish) were originally one word, having their root iij "good-bye." The Maori assistants at a whaling station welcomed a new skipper to the coast with a plentiful supplv of fresh provision*, and the fatherly old soul invited tliem all al>oard. As they departed he stood at the rail and waved them a benign farewell. "Oa-'bve! fia-bve!" which was good. The natives returned the next day, but by then sundry articles of the captain's clothing were found missing, and the skipper was in a bad mood. He received them with a grunt and gave them a very cool reception. As the Maoris departed he now gave them a surly. "Oo bo!" which was to be re-echoed round the various whaling stations for many a long day as a pood joke—good-bye and the finish, kopo. Kopo doesn't look much like •good-bye, does it ?—P.H. ' A grim item came to my notice in the advertising column of a London newspaper the other day. It ran: "Married man, financially desperate, will FOR SALE. sacrifice si»ht one eye. Invites offers for healthy cornea." There has been much comment lately on the operation by which the crafting of a cornea from the healthy eve of a living person will, in some circumstances, restore sight to a blind person. Offtrs to surrender one eye for this purpose have been made occasionally. Xow from overseas comes the bid of a man who would jrive half his sight to escape financial trouble. Everything on earth, the cynic might say. has its price. In a catalogue this week I saw that I could purchase an excellent human skeleton for sixty pounds. It was pleasanter to remember that Datas, the memory man. sold his head a few years ago to a group of American doctors who wanted to dissect the brain which had such remarkable powers of memory That deal did not come off. The doctors died—and Datas is still alive. (Yes, lie retains his head, too). — Johnny.

It may bp interesting to some old-timers to review again the good old days when j>til>s were pubs aiid women had 110 vote. "Them were the davs," which A "DRY" VOTE, lasted till 10' p.m. at 3d a pint. The first war on this Ltopia came to a head on March 21, 1894. You could record not more than two votes on the various issuers, but it required a threejliftlw majority to carry no license. The main voting issue* on this, the first so-called prohibition poll ir. New Zealand, were: Continuance, Reduction. No License. Of the 248.104 electors en the roll, only 122.234 -were recorded. The final decision was carried at "bv districts" as follows: Declared void 33, Reduction 14, No Alteration 12. No License 1, No proposal eariied 2; total. 62. Cluthi [carried the one vote for No License. Who, ioh who, is the member now of this, the first [declared public vote Jor prohibition in New | Zealand? Another relevant factor is the question: Are pubs larger or does every woman vote? In 1804 there was one hostelry 434 voters, but to-day it is one to men and women voters, according to the latest figures. In "them'' days there were 1579 jovial houses of "call," but nowadays only 1224 are left. Perhaps you do not pet the point. I have turned T.T. and the working week is shorter.—B.

If this is a chestnut, stop me. The tale was told by an old-timer. He and a number of cronies were gathered round a convivial pint (or two) the other REPARTEE. evening, and I was there

with them but not of them, listening-in. A little time was devoted to the Hon. Bob Semple and his salutary methods of dealing with the problem of traffic dangers. It was generally agreed, as it seems usually to be, that the Hon. Bob in this Department has done a job of work that deserves to go down high in the list of the real jobs of work that have been done in this country. But traffic problems, I gathered, were not things of to-day only. They had traffic problems in the old days—not' here, but in the world's big populous centres, though the element of speed had not arrived to give them the modern acute angle. I was reminded of a fact that I had long forgotten—that the old London cabbie was a wonder in traffic, a source of infinite wonder and often of infinite entertainment to the rest of the world. And I so. for some time, the talk was of the old 'cabbies. Tim, who is hitting the eighties, told the prize tale of the evening. In the traffic jams, he said, it was common for the cabbies to "josh" one another. The wit was free and the repartee often juicv. Well, there they were in a traffic jam. Beside them was a cabbie who obviously didn't like Tim's cabbie. He started by being merely- sarcastic: then he got abusive. All Tim's cabbie did was to hold his whip over the side of the cab by the lash, leaving the handle dangling. Every now and again, as the other's flow of eloquence waxed, he gave the lash a jerk, causing the handle to dance in the air. That mute reply was the only one he made, but it drove the other nearly frantic. The jam over, Tim asked for the reason of that effective pantomime. "Oh, Im," said the cabbie contemptuously; «"ia father was 'una"' Bxysr. s '

"Touchstone" write®: A CVech journalist, who visited Zealand this year, wae aeked about the origin and meaning of the word , Sudeten, and replied that LOAN WORDS, it was a German corruption of a Crech word meaning metals, the Sudeten Mountains being metal-bearing. As for the pronunciation of the capital, Prague, he said that when speaking English he preferred the English style of giving the vowel sound of "a" in pray (Prayg). His reason was that lie Germans broaden the "a," making Praag. The Czechs spell their capital Praha, and pronounce it as it is spelt. It is curious how one language borrows from another. Dr. Mary S. Sarjeantson, the author of a history of foreign words in English, has been at pains to trace and classifv loan words from all parts of the world. Italian, for example, has furnished brigand—which appeared in English in 1400—ballot (1549), mountebank (1577), parapet (1590), frigate (lo8o), cornfce (1563), motto (1589), and so on through a long list. To Spanish we owe, among other term®, mosquito (1583 —"a kinde ™ \„* ' the Spanyards called them Musketas"), escapade (1653), esplanade (1681), stevedore (1788). The introduction of Portuguese words—"almost entirelv the r»«i>V of friendly or hostile commercial relations" ! brought us flamingo (1565). molasses <15821 tank (1616), pagoda (1634). When we use the words sable, polka, mammoth or astrakhan, we ehould remember that they are borrowings from the Slavonic. Recent loans have included intelligentsia (1920). and the word robot, which is Czech, froip the stem of the verb robotiti, to work; this became familiar from the translation of Karel Capek's play. "Rossum's Universal Robots," produced in England in 1923. Arabic gave us admiral (omir. or commander of the sea) as early as 1423. Syrup dates from 1398. cipher from 1399. alcohol from 1543, and a coniparativelv recent loan is loofah (1887). Australian words are of interest. The first recorded is kangaroo, used bv Cook during 1770. Four more words from the eighteenth eentury are dingo (1789), corroboree and waratah (1793) and wombat I (1798 V. Boomerang also comes t* mind. i