THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 132, 7 June 1939, Page 10

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MEN ABOUT TOWN.)

"X" MARKS THE SPOT

Talking of bird lovers, I have juat returned from a walk around the suburbs. It struck me as remarkable how painstakingly these bird and garden lovers string pieces of rag and paper and put them on sticks, also tie on old tin cans to show the birds where thev have planted their choicest seed. All the" world loves a lover!—H.O.B. It was during the Show Week that a mother and four children evidently from the country boarded a tram at Xewmarket bound for Epsom. The pert STAND UP. young miss in front ma relied right up the tram, hut, finding every scat occupied, she turned round, and. addressing her mother in tlie voice they use when sending the dogs after the cows, she said: "'Where the —— do we sit ?"'— Mac.

My neighbour is that rara avis, the father of a family of five. On cold morninas he joins me for the good of our health in the walking of the first MORNING CHAT, section to town, and I hear how the world of the younger generation wags. Autre temps, autres moeurs; but the difference between one and three years ago sometimes comes as a shock. One morning this week Jimmv, aged IS. was being bright at breakfast. This, his father explains, invariably occurs when he wants to forestall questions from his sisters as to his whereabouts the evening before. "I saw Mary yesterday," is the conversational tit-bit he hands to Sue. '"She is being presented at Government House. There are 20 yards, of stuff in her dress." "What sort of stuff?" says Sue. '•]> should sav it would be net," chips in Bunty. "Xo—l think she said it had flowers on it," cays Jimmy. "So it wouldn't be net." "Yes, that's it," Jennifer (aged 4), surprisingly affirms. ''When we were out for a drive on Sunday I saw a girl in a lovely flowered dress at the front door of a house at Orakei."—Gunner.

I wouldn't tell this story if it were not true. It was told me by a friend who had a friend with army connections; I think it was a sergeant-major. This MISUNDERSTOOD, sergeant-major was a stickler for truth, as witness his telling a raw recruit, in spite of his strong feeling against personalities, that he, the said recruit, was a flat-footed son of a something or other. At any rate, the sergeantmajor got it straight from the mess orderly who overheard the colonel telling it at dinner, or, if you prefer it, tiffin. It appears that a certain subaltern had a fortnight's leave which he was spending in Egypt. He was having such an enjoyable time that he left his departure to the last glorious minute. Intending to return by air, he was about to step on the gangway when a beautiful young lady spoke to him. With tears in her she told our sub. she had to return immediately, and the. 'plane was booked up. Would he, could he, let her have his berth and postpone his leaving to the next airways departure? He was rushed off his feet, and, almost before lie knew it had happened, a fluttering handkerchief was waving him farewell. Thus it happened he overstayed his leave. When he recovered his senses he went to the cable office and scut the following message: "To Col. Diehard, Blank Regiment. England: Delayed stop have had to give berth to a girl stop Smith." He received the following reply: "Conarat illation* stop your next confinement will be in barracks stop Col. Diehard.'"—E.L.R. It is likely man was never intended to lie in bed in the early winter mornings between half a dozen double blankets, a few sheets, and a counterpane, with, WINTER. . of course, a hot water bottle at his feet. I mention this because I notice that a chap who got snowed up on a mountain sought shelter under a log, and, accepting his word for it, he did not feel the cold, simply because he convinced himself that he was warm, and dozed off to sleep, waking up in the morning as fresh as the proverbial daisy. From this I conclude that if you think you are warm, you are warm. In Tibet, I'believe, yogis, lamas and other pious persons wander out in the snow with "nodding* on," lie down and sleep the sleep of innocent babes. Xext morning they wake up ready to go through the usual routine of doing nothing. Red Indians are something like that. There was the case' of the Englishman who met Sitting Bull in the Reservation. The weather was bitterly cold—at least the Englishman thought so—but. Sitting Bull was almost in the "altogether." "Why don't you cover yourself?" asked the shivering Englishman. "Oh, it isn't done," replied Mr. Bull. To come nearer home, Maori children either swim in nearly boiling water for hours or bathe in icefed creeks, and nary a shiver do they do. One of the lads in the office conves in each morning and relates how he has enjoyed his morning roll on the lawn. Like the yogi, he says if you think you are warm, you are warm. I shall take his wind for it —and cling to the blankets. —Johnnv.

Despite its antique appearance, Peeble's car not only performed well, but actually gave the horse laugh (or should I say car laugh?) to quite a lot of the fearSCHQOL PALS, fully expensive cars ahead of us. Leaving Auckland at 9.13 a.m., we were at Hamilton at noon, despite one puncture—an average of somewhere round about*34 miles p.h.—not at all a bad performance for a six-pound car. With six of us to share the cost of the six gallons of petrol (for the round trip), we were, in clover—till Feeble discovered the sideshows at the show. Starting is ff with the purchase of a "Liar's License'' (to give to Alf). costing a humble ''brown." at a penny-in-the-slot machine, he gradually became more expensive, finishing in the '•Headless Woman from Patagonia's" tent. "Where's Patagonia. Mac?" be asked. T told him. He had another look at the headless one. "I suppose she's got to pay a poll tax. though, same as us?" he commented. I managed to persuade him to keep away from the '•Strip-Tease Lady" hv shouting him a bag of floss candy, although Alf had managed somehow to elude my vigilance. One can't be too strict nowadays." Having finished the floss, he became restless again. In vain I showed him the top-dressers, electric fences and hay bale's. He merely glanced at them. "Look," I said, '•there's the latest in swathe cutters!" In vain. Tearing past huge cheese, mechanical milkers, side rakers and prizewinning sides of bacon, be plunged recklessly into a Turkish (looking) phrenologist's tent, and. after getting his breath back, tore in to see a "bullet-proof lady, following this u;> with a visit to a German strong girl. "Come on," I said, coaxingly. "You've had enough. You'll be sick again after all this." He searched his pockets—then borrowed a penny for a slot machine. I saw by the look* on his face he was enjoying it. I speculated a pemiv just to find out what it was that had hypnotised him. It was one of those risque films. "Paris Xight Life." "Come on," I said, but he'd disappeared in the crowd, "Just an old schoolmate of mine," he told me later. "Haven't eeen her for fifty-five Years."—MaeClure.

A THOUGHT FOR TO DAY. Lord Row tun asked Lord Beacoivsfield, "What is tire most remarkable, the mo*t eelf-sustained and powerful sentence yon know*;" He replied: ••Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."