THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 227, 25 September 1928, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

Many places in New Zealand eagerly claim the honour of being the windiest. The fact that at Ruatorea a whare was rolled one hundred yards with three BLOW, BLOW! men inside may cause Ruatorians to claim euperiority. Railwaymen will support M.A.T. when he says that on the old Manawatu line a heavy railway hut was lifted bodily across the line by Mr. Boreas and deposited in perfect order right side up. It may be fiction that the two men sleeping in the hut were not awakened. At Karori, near Wellington, a man, two horses and a heavily-loaded dray were blown off the road into a gully. It is a common thing for bicyclists to bo literally pinned against the cliff face trying to ride round King's Drive. People who venture in a Wellington zephyr on to the Tinakori Hills have often had to lie in a hollow for hours to prevent being blown on to the South Island, but M.A.T. considers it untrue that an Island Bay man found his old house newly painted one morning, the coat of paint having blown off a new house across the way. Yes, of course men are far more conservative than women. During the coming summer women will wear a few ounces of clothes and men several pounds. In CLOTHES AND Sydney medical people and THE MAN. others intend to devise some comfortable gear for men which will help them to keep cool. They won't succeed. They have talked the same way for a century or more. Men won't let men dress sensibly. Only a big man can set a new fashion for men, but if the GovernorGeneral appeared in a sensible one-garment affair made of white linen ending in open sandals the people would snigger. How incurable men are of the disease of overclothing may be understood from a little incident. A popular master of a. secondary school turned up one boiling day in a "palm beach" suit, a perfectly sensible sartorial outfit. But the boys openly sniggered, winked at each other, and went on comfortably sweating in their own heavy gear. In short, the master couldn't bear the adverse public opinion. He never wore that suit again. Next day he appeared in the coin iional half-stone of nice comfy wool. The l>oys smiled knowingly. It will never be fashionable for men to be as comfortable as women. It is not done. Mention of Arthur and Ken Duncan, the well-known New Zealand golf players, takes the mind back qnite a long hop to the day when Xew Zealand disLANG SYNE. patched her first troopship, the Waiwera, a game old ship that despite old age puts her nose in here still and seems not to suffer much from senility. Ken would have liked to go soldiering with the little lot that went foreign in 1899, but at any rate he wanted to go to Africa and became purser. He has kept up association with the "First" ever since and is always to be found at the yearly reunion of October 21—Trafalgar Day. * Ken at these affairs is a mine of reminiscence, and is otherwise useful "shouting" all hands passes to the Trentham races. By the way, the chief engineer of the first troopship was lan Macpherson, long since gone to the Shades, but who had the distinction of being immortalised as "MeAndrew," the engineer of Kipling's poem. Old Mac had during his wanderings sailed with Kipling on a Mediterranean cruise, and Rudyard took notice of him. The Macpherson was for some years chief engineer of the gone and almost forgotten training ship Amokura. It is a pleasant memory that when M.A.T. made a cruise in the said Amokura old Mac for auld lang syne wanted to give his bunk up to him. A man-o'-war hammock, however, swung in a breezy passage and bumped by the heads of the taller members of the crew, sufficed for M.A.T., and "MeAndrew," gazing each evening into the hammock, asked tenderlv: "Wull ah tuck ye in, laddie?" There comes a pleasant word or two from Frank Lynch, the Aussie sculptor, saying that he is on his feet and is on the way up the steep slopes of Parnassus. ~~~ Lynch hoped to cane a MARBLE GOOD, name for himself in New Zealand some few years ago, and did a notable thing or two, including the memorial statue of the Digger at Devonport. He found we are not ardently addicted to art, so he packed his mallet and chisel and gat him hence. By the way, Lynch once told M.A.T. that he hoped to express in sculture tho story of mankind by producing a statue of the highest type of modern intellectual man —a nude holding under the right arm the skull of his primitive forbear. M.A.T rather suspects that Frank searched long and without avail for the ideal man combining beauty it u Orm Wlth the highest int€ll 'gence, and gave London society, up to recently addicted to dances imitative of the athletic enjoyment of coons, is getting tired of terpsichorean acroTHF XTT _. -. eft _ and is now indulTHE TILE TROT, g.ng in "The Tile Trot." t , j. . , The new dance portrays the dainty of the predatory eat, that soft-footed amorist of the ST * unous teachers of solemn movements ben£an the passing of the discreet waltz and other graceful dances not based on animal mov" ments. There is no reason, if the Tile Trot becomes popular, why the Cow Amble the ?? i n K G^° P ' l h * Gamc C< ** Strut and the not find f — in oua r f S^r-n^T 1 ! g an addict V Current history is full of stories of THE MTTK- AT»t>t/'t» me ° Who akn drink a THE MILK ADDICT, quart of beer, and con- . , , tinue drinking successive outwho SZ*™?*?* a but who c\er heard of a man drinkin- succej.iv. quarts of milk? Can you imagine a milk addict prowling round a milk cart nurommg a can full o f the precioU9 fcjftjjj. in the scrub and making a day of it, or 3 keg parties sitting round a can or two spendS* a notous night? Why j 8 it that arizen" cllZ % ct,p , or A two of t€a finds th *t SSI couldnt stand another, but on .uitable 'XTSnTwnVTr 1 aPParent tlie tenth pint of beer merelv a prelude to his quench-slaking expedition? TheJc are endless few tf »1 **7* n V-*n -Myites for beer but fe rh f .,7 ti ; ° of milk. .« f£ I £r r Stones arc old and fraved at the edge. That one, for instance of the man who bet his damp companions he conH down * f l T kctfu, - bucketful was wt on the counter, and the noble challen-er deposed h» five shillings and retired He was away some time. "Bill ain't eomin' back » Bnt Bin PpOrts r n i " He ' s ren « , ? 5 * d °n "> But Bill came back, lifted the bucket and emptied it. "Where did vou go when vou •£fc nt T OUt * Bill? " apked the »<Wing Ha£ if J* m^ 1 - I" 08 * to the other P«fc to !£ if I could drink a bucket o' beer, and I could a pint all round jest fer a at CHAOTICS. Solution of yesterday's simple one: Aacrbntndo Contraband. You often feel this one: NaaiogragtY.