THE PASSING SHOW-UP.

Press, Volume L, Issue 15121, 10 November 1914, Page 2

THE PASSING SHOW-UP.

(By "Kuscobin," of the Sydney "Bulletin.")

CARNIVAL WEEK. 1919

The following is an anticipatory reprint, from the "Daily Moan/ , published in Christchurch by Messrs Chadband. Stjggine and Co., Ltd., desenbthe Carnival Festivities of the preceding week:—"Carnival Week was ceJebratetl under splendid auspices, the weather being wet and drizzly, ta that the Joy Suppression League had to handle a very small number of criminals who broke the Civic Regulations by eoramittins a. smile. Christchurch could well oonjp-atu-Late fteelf on the dismalness of the Carnival, no less than thirty-seven suicides bearing witness to this i'act. Bun Struggles were held daily, either at kiccarton or Addington, the New Zooland Cup being won after a splendid buret l>y Wowser (by Cold Water out of Never Smilo Again), who ran away from the field and got home after a magnificent gorge by'a Currant Cake and" four Buns. The Ginge: Beer Trot attracted a lav£o number of competitors, Mr Snowden, a:i English Parliamentarian, having generously donated the salary of £'100 a year paid him in London, as a stake for this event. The winner (by In His Steps out of Your Pocket) was greeted with loud groans as he ballooned home by a bottle neck from Misery, a colt through whose reins there gurgles the splendid ginger beer of his sire Prohibition and his dam Sly Grog. The Methylated Handiean w: won by Keg Party (Inyercargill—Cureed Derink) by along thirst, the drinker-up being disqualified for second place by carrying ovor-woicrht. The enquiry by the stewards proved him to bo concealing a black bottle of Cough Cure in his coat-tail pocket. The stewards confiscated the Cough Cure —since then they have used no other. It was 40 per cent, overproof. The Carnival concluded with a joint sermon by the co-editors of this journal on '"The Hlesscd.now> of Being Dry.' , Everybody was. Before leaving for their respective Sly Grog Shanties, the whole populace sang the Miserere with appropriate moans."

PROHIBITION PATRIOTISM. The "Triad" makes these remarks:— "People are asking what the Prohibition Party has done for tho war funds. People have a right to ask, just as the Prohibition Party has a, right to refrain from doing anything patriotic whenever it is in the mood for that sort of abstinence. Iv point of fact, what you call temperance people- are, as a' class, particularly temperate in the matter of benevolence—apt, perhaps, to overlook the well-established fact that he prayeth best who loveth best. This being admitted, it is well to keep in mind the fact that if New Zealand Prohibitionists dtsire to abstain from every form of patriotic generosity, as they abstain from every form of alcohol (more or less), nobody has any right to 6cold thorn about it. A few Prohibitionists do give, liberally, and the hearts'of tho rest may be sound though timid. The man with a faint heart generally lias a closo pocket, and what with paying fat fees to Mr Philip Snowden and ofchor special pleaders against good cheer and the liberty of tho subject—well, your poor faint-hearted Prohibitionist 'is taxed quite onough maybe."

GARDEN FANCIES. When "Rule Britannia" was written, only Six-Bottle men wero considered worthy of admission to the elect. Except for a twinge of gout now and again, I don't know that the descendants of these Six-Bottle heroes are any the worso for their heritage. Jt is they who are leading our troops'iu Franco to-day—and though crusty port and hot toddy have gone out of fashion, .the. good fellowship they symbolised is still and happily with us. And those dour, earnest souls who would transform the - Englishman's home from a castle into a grogshop will have to reckon with the New Zealandors. objection to the change. For tho Prohibitionist attack is no longer directed against the publican nor even merely against tho public—it now seeks to violate the sanctity of a man's own sideboard. Now, when a friend comes up to look at m T Sweet Peas on a Sunday morning, the peas are ever so much sweeter if -we discuss horticulture over a glass of alo or a bottle of whisky. I'm quite certain that my anemones, wind-flowers though, they be, would resent our breathing ginger-beer upon their delicate petals. I'm equally sure that that glorious libertine, the Rose, would straightaway blossom • like tho onion if we looked at her as through a glass, frothily. To give you an illustration, last Sunday wa*s quite a happy day with mo. I sprawled on tho grass and let tho sunlight spill down on my pyjamas. M 3' week-end moans would only run to a "squaro rigger," but nectar was never sweeter to tho gods than its amber contents as they gurgled down my happy throat. The throstles ■were singing, the skylarks climbed upward in a riotous carol, the nesting blackbirds on my chimneys tweeted away to their fledglings in the idyllic certainty that fireplaces were only a suburban excuse for the display of overmantels and fancy tilowork. Then Jones called—and Smith followed. Neither gentleman is what one would describe as wildly intellectual. Jones is something high up in the haberdashery line, I believe: Smith is a conscientious" ratepayer and nurses heroic grievances about Drains. But little things liko this didn't disturb our harmony. They were all waived aside as of naught by the , magic djin, released from my "square rigger." When Smith saw I was reading Keats's "Endymion," ho confessed that he just loved poetry, and wished he had time to read it; Jones wondered whether I had read that new piece by Ella Wheeler Wilcox; his wife had cut it out of the "Ladies' Homo Journal," and was teaching it to the children. Ho added, as an after-thought, that it was a pity that poets were always so poor. As for mc, I don't know whether I was more whole-souled in praise of the now conceits in Fancy Sox or in condemnation of the local Council in not kerbing the gutter opposite Smith's Queen Anne villa. Wo were all lying, of course; but it was tho pleasantly harmless sort of fiction that men suffering from Christehurch «ome to enjoy when there's a glass or so of ale to relieve tho loneliness. But, had that "square rigger" not materialised—Had I consumed it overnight, as sometimes thriftlessly happens—Sunday would just have seemed one drab eternity I would have throttled Jones with tho most violently purple half-hose his haberdashery boasted, and Smith had died a caitiff's death under what war critics describe as a "perfect hail" of road metal. Then I would have beaten a hasty retreat to my plot of hydrangeas—plants that are botanical prohibitionists, inasmuch as they love water and dark places—and broached a tin of kerosene. So you sco the parlous times towards which Prohibition is tending. Wore it in force, that "square rigger" would have cost mc from £100 to £1000, the Prohibition fine for having it. Then both Smith and Jones would have been sleeping the long last sleep of the dear departed, and the writer, breathing murder and a very cloud of petrol, would have been stabbing the Rev. Cocker till he was left gingerbeering in his own gore. Thank heaven, nothing of the kind happened. Here I am, a peaceful citizen, writing this balderdash and wondering whether I'll go to Warner's or the Clarendon.

AN ANALOGY. I was reading my war screed this morning—l suppose it was a newspaper

once, before cable censors began to see red—and camo across a paragraph telling how some poor silly fellow up north had shot tho woman who refused his matrimonial advances. And this raised a train of thought. Love causes a terrible lot of trouble in tho world. Men murder their sweethearts, wives deceive their husbands, lovers rob their employers, children disobey their parents—crime, poverty, embezzlement, jealousy, all these come about when €ho course of true love is not like the Avon. I>rink does these thinse too—therefore the unthinking righteous say, "Let us Prohibit Drink. By the same beautiful process of reasoning, I say "Let us abolish Love. If tho one is logical, so is tho otner. If neither is so—well, we'd better keep both Venus and Bacchus. Neither illicit love nor illicit grog are going to improve things. Isn't that your idea (PUBLISHED BY ArKANGEMUNT.)