THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 171, 22 July 1939, Page 8

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MEN ABOUT TOWN.) It was just a simple sum in mental arithmetic. The teacher put it to the class. Supposing (they always &av supposing) _ a river was 275 yards wide NOT A FOOL, and a boy swam across three times, what distance would he swim? '"He wouldn't do it," answered a bright boy. "Wouldn't do it? What do you mean? "Why wouldn't he?" asked the teacher. "Because when he finished he wouldn't have any clothes —they would be on the other side!" replied the boy.—Johnny. The oflice positively reeked of coconut oil, ■but the youth responsible for it was quite unconcerned. The rest of the staff had tried hints, and when that GLAMOUR. failed they passed very rude and personal remarks —but nothing happened. One morning a new odour greeted them. "Good heavens!" said the boss. "What have you got on now?" "Brilliantine," brightly spoke the lad. "If you put a little over coconut oil it adds glamour to the hair." This was too much for the boss. "Glamour,"' he spluttered, "what do you think this is—an office or a Hollywood casting bureau ?"—Cheerio. A young lady, speaking over the air the other day, had no difficulty in pronouncing the French words "petit point,"' but she came a cropper in her own ACCENT. language when she praised "this exquisite and intricate work." She created and accented two false syllables—"quiz" and "trie." Tn each word the first syllable ought to be accented —"ex" and "in." Xo variation is pardonable. The member of Parliament who put "plie"' into "applicable" was committing an offence almost as bad. It is regrettable that any word in tlie language that presents a little difficulty in pronunciation is almost sure to be mispronounced by untrained persons. Out of this come mispronunciations like hos-pit-able. des-pie-able, ca-pit-alist. con-tu-macy (with the accent on the middle syllable) and disciplinary with the accent anywhere but 011 the first syllable, where it ought to fall. — Touchstone. Wc read in Wednesday's "Star" of a man who found his hose pipe frozen up, and which behaved rudely to its owner by spitting lumps of ice at him. A similar BLOCKS OF ICF. experience happened to me on Wednesday morning which was, however, lamentably ludicrous". "Entre nous," I take my "night cap" (doctor's orders, honest to goodness) in bed. having a small table drawn up beside me. Wrapped in a. thick shawl over pyjamas, smoking a last pipe in bed, my heater going atop the last, half-hour, is my one bit of comfort. At last I drain the glass, fix everything comfy, switch off. and I nearly said, sleep—well, toss about till morning. At my age people don't sleep, ju>t doze. <m and off. This morning, children, my window was coated with ice, and as I rolled out of bed shivering like a jelly I was surprised to see jagged lumps of ice on mv carpet. I called out to my near relative, who ran in. in her pyjamas. ""What's doing, old image?"' she demanded. "Look, my dear, lumps of ke 011 my carpet. She stooped and picked up a- lump as large as a piece of wood, and said: "\ on old loonev, you've broken your whiskv glass in the ' " — A. A. P. Ihe Prime Minister, it do seem, would i have the Farmers' Union and the president thereof placed (as the Americans do term it) on a spot: for he do not PEPYS AND rest where the farmers FARMERS, left it the question of the j guaranteed price, but do for a clear statement of what the farmer do want in this regard. But he shall not have it, for it be one tiling for the president of the Farmers" Union to talk of such matters generally, but altogether another thing for him to come forward and sav we will have ( this or that. T'or it do be a most queer tiling , that very little there is that is definite in ' all this l'.irmers' I nion talk of the guaranteed price, and much there is that sounds like all the talk one once did hear of what was called a compensated price, but concerning which none did venture an explanation, so" that it is a very pretty fancy to think what would have come to pass had those who thus talked vaguely of vague -things been told that tliey inrrht do a* they proposed and let us have thi< compensated price. If the farmer do not want the guaranteed price because it suits him not. and cannot have the compensated prico because it do mean just nothingness, then what will he have? Xaught. it would seem, but tlie old order of the rule of the market and the jump# and dances thereof, from which the guarantee did resene him; but this I think i the Farmers' Union will not say he shall have for the fear of the consequence if it be taken at its word and disaster should come of it. 1-rom which it do seem that the Farmers' Union lias much time to waste in idle words, and talk for the love thereof, not heeding the import of the things they do say. The which. Biggs do tell me. he would expect, for. says he. you can always tell farmers in the street: for if you see two men who stand with their hands in their pockets and do naught but talk, nor seem to have any thought for hnsines. you will know they .are • farmers. Wherein I know not whether he be right or wrong, but it is a strange thought.—B.O'X.

Lest there be others wlvo. like mvself. always thought that Columbus discovered America, let mo pass on tho true version—Olaf i ryggveson's—as he exI ERIC THE RED. plained the position to me and Watery Eyes, the cop. It was actually an ancestor of his, he insisted, one Lei: Ericsen, the son of Eric the He<l. to whom that honour belonged, and the manner of it was this: Eric the Red, father to Lief, had played up bad in his native Norway. Much aggrieved was Haakon Jarl, who reigned the rein, and much more aggrieved was the Froste-Tliing assembled even then in 1 rondjem. Against Erie the Red were such charges as would disgrace anyone—conversion, murder in the first degree, "etc. The Faroer Sagas and the younger Eddas hint even at worse. '"The evil that men do," etc. —and so it was wkh Eric—and so it was. also, that the jails had come to—well, banish him, anvwav. Finis in the telling thereof we must start a dear picture of the red one quoting Wolsey as he clambers aboard his long-boat that chilly Wodin's Day (April 1, 085 A.D.). Banished, outlawed —and the Ion;' " inter night due any time now! Aceompanvi ing Eric were this trusted Viking cobbers, ! dangerous blue-eved killers—ease of birds of j a feather (more, etc.). Back there in the suburbs Mrs. Eric was hushing little Lief to j sleep. From now on, with the-old man <r o ne j things were going to be tough with her"and' . the kids. "Sing us the 'Norwegian Cradle Song' as you used to. mum," little Lief asks her, but in her eye is a vacant stare—Ericlias forgotten his matches! Now lie will go* berserk! Somewhere out there, with the thermometer at forty below, Eric and his not-so-merry men are rowing, for all tliev're worth. ! Days pass. More days—then—no, it was only a cloud. Oh. yeah? Look again. Bv Jove*' (or rather Odin). It is. Of course it is. Iceland! Eric, minus quadrant and compasses, gazed hard and long. So far so <*ood' I Eric leaps ashore. Iceland? A perfect name |— the whole country's full of it—in chunks. 1 | Then Eric remembered he'd forgotten his matches. Over an ice flow comes a hu<*e ' polar bear. Food, raiment—and drink ail ' waiting for them! Whoopee! As Eric and' his now merry men spat the hones out and ! prepared the new bed-rug that bear provided I i they forgot Haakon, Norway, everything ' This place seemed made for them.—MacClure. J;