THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 224, 21 September 1928, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

THE SPRING. How do yon know it's spring, dad? How do you know It's spring? Oh. F*ed has emerged In a Panama hat. With a nice black band and elastic string, And that's bow I know it's spring. How do you know it's spring, (bad? How do you know it's* spring ? By the price of .tucker, my bonny boy. And the general Increase in everything, Ton bet that I know they spring! How do you know it's spring, dad? How do you know It's spring ? By th 6 salt that the candidate shakeß,'my boy. On the tall of that bird, the elector coy, Ah, that's how X know it's spring! How do you know it's spring, dad? How do you know it's spring? By the Hhabbine&s of my winter suits. And the hole in the toe of my winter boots, . Oh, where can I money spring? Ah, tempus Is fuglting, Jackie boy, I think as I Wind my watch How the wheels of Time keep running round, With nothing the cogs to scotch. Tee. life is like this ticker, my lad. Keep winding the worn old thing. Oh, dash it! I've overwound It now. And busted the bally spring! News conies from the south of a Scots gentleman who was concerned as to the solvency of a man who owed him five pounds. He desired acknowledgeTHE WORLD OF ment of the debt. So FINANCE. he mentioned in a letter that if the sum of" ten pounds was not forwarded within ten days proceedings, etc. The angry man wrote back: "1 owe you five pounds and not ten," and the Scot smiled a slow, canny smile. And last evening M.A.T. was /digging into an old volume of "Pwich" and came across a Keene picture. Clerk and proprietor are in the counting bouse, and the clerk says, as he scans the ledger: "Sorry, sir, but there's a saddle I can't find any trace of." "Charge it on all the bills," says the proprietor. "There is a thing, look you, in your column," said Taffy ap Williams, "called Chaotics. We haf simple words in Wales that would do." "Yes," reA LONG SPELL. marked an officer in M.A.T.'s intelligence corps, and showed him a 6lip of paper with the name of a Welsh village in Anglesea. It is Llanfairpwllgywngyllgogerychwrndyobwllllandyssiliogogogoehn and means "The Church of St. Mafy in a hollow of white hazel, near to the rapid whirlpool and to St. Tisiho Church, near to a red cave." Taffy glanced rapidly at it and made sounds like the mastication of coarse Welsh flannel. Then the angry blood surged into his forehead and he said: "It's spelled wrong! The proper way to say it is 'Llanffairpwllgwyngyllgogeryelnvyndrobwyillllandyssiliogogogoch'." The railway passes through the village, and for many years English people and other savages who saw the name printed on the platform marvelled. A porter, of course, used < to call the name out in full, but as the train was at the next station by the time he had got to "Goch," the authorities cut it down to "Llanfair," not so much for the benefit of the passengers but to save the expense of throat specialists for porters. What type of men are airmen? Calm, 6tolid sort of chaps ? Not at allj Highly nervous, hung on wires, strung up. Most of them have the social sense PICK-ME-UP. well developed, and all have the spirit of youth as the first requisite to success. Unnumbered airmen won fame and a grave-digging party while in their 'teens or earliest twenties. All suggested by "Smithy" mentioning to kiddies he felt like a kiddy himself. Airmen go up but never grow up. A young fellow who has long descended to earth mentioned air service during the war in a great British country. The authorities, knowing the type of man who soars, allowed the necessary latitude to men who might be singing to-day and being chanted over to-morrow. Little "nights Out" were precious links in their lives. Sometimes an air mess kept it up 'till the red sun peeped over the distant hills. The earth man with an early morning headache might fly to cold baths and soda water, but these air boys, with their hands to their heated brows, would go out to the 'drome, tune up the old bus of the skies, and zoom into the blue far above the fumes of stale cigars and the penetrating odours of departed medical comforts. The j aerial pick-me-up of undiluted ozone brought the flyers to earth with clean mouths and i clear heads. The good old bath, the rough towel and a breakfast—ve gods, what a break- ! fast! Have you ever noticed that we Aucklanders as well as many other far less intelligent people ' buatle most when we have the whole day to j rest in? Thus vou see THE LEAPERS. persons who may be Civil servants or civic wonders doing ninety miles an hour in their cars in order to reach a place to do nothing in. There ] is a large class of people who desire to leap ashore from ferry steamers when the boats are about in mid-harbour, and one often sees a man who has perilously perched on a pile to scramble ashore chat leisurely for fifteen minutes as soon as he is there. It is the indiscipline in man that impels him to these excesses, and you will find that, it is the trained person who does not push his portmanteau into your waistcoat, does not leap on an aged lady to snatch her seat and does not jump from pile to pile like a springbok upon the mountains. There are many retired master mariners in Auckland marine suburbs. Frequently attired in rough tweed and quiescent authority, they use ferry boats daily. Habituated during a seafaring life to springing from place to place, when they abandon the sea they abandon this practice of leaping. They gravely ascend to the deck by the stairway, and in a dignified manner take the gangway ashore. The amateur yachtsman, on the other hand, almost invariably exhibits his agility by those exercises in balancing he believes will "give him notoriety. Sometimes thoughtless women sit with the'ir heads and hats in the way of the busv leapers, and it says something for the leapers that they never complain even when they have to make stepping stones of hats. Wanganui is in the throes of what seems to be an incipient revolution. Pros and ant is deluge the public prints with protest and support. Corporate bodies THE MARINE, in solemn conclave pass resolutions deploring the tendency of people to be human beings, and a large number have joked about a serious matter. The reason for this civic perturbation is that a whisky bottle has been found in Sprigges Park! It is alleged by manv people that it was deliberately placed there to advertise a certain brand, and many impassioned persons have demanded to know what brand. No open clash of arms has taken place yet, but the portents are grave. One man, writing to the editor, says there seems quite a fuss being made over an empty bottle. "And so there should be," he says; "it's emptv!" He adds that the bottle should be filled, and bets one hundred to one that if this is done the objectors will be killed in the rush. CHAOTICS. Yes, as six devoted adherents so trulv «av the solution iu as follows: Ooiinnnysscathr Synchronisation. '•J.W .D.," whom one suspects comes frae the noorth o the Tweed, presents: Nhcfeleeacc.