THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 230, 28 September 1928, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) WINGS. The Southern Cross, on hearing Dr. Kidson's advice to the airmen to complete their arrangements hastily, was heard to comment in the following way: Tauten these struts, The sun will soon be peeping. Hurrv, vou nnitts. This is no time for sleeping . Pump in the juice— 'Tis blue sky we'll be sighting Work like the deuce. . Get keyed for further fighting. Look to my wings. The storm's reported falling. Leave feeds and things. And get back to your calling. Give Smith a crack. Make Charlie come a-running, L<>l's see if Mac Or Litchy's lost their cunning. For Richmond 'drome Mv fuselage is calling, Co nit —let's get home Before the glass starts stalling: . X» Tho Americanisation of New Zealand proceeds at a footpace and the blossom of hope that it would become a distant suburb of New York has not fructiSMILES AND fied. Americans either reTEARS. gard us from the point of view of the valetudinarian or the point of view of the drummer, and one prefers the hearty slaps on the back the drummers give us. Here's one man who says "God save us from New Zealand hotels," and is rather dismal about them in half a column. You can almost see M A T. floating a halfmillion company to buy a hotel fit for him to live in. Then, again, here speaks the hearty one. He savs that no halo that God could give us would be too good, that we are the most hospitable people in the world, that the scenerv beats everything Sam has, that the inter-island ferry services are "crackajack" and Sam has nothing to touch them, and that the country is run on the modern lines. And this about the hotels: "The hotels are good and have all sorts of novelties and innovations that one would never expect to find." M.A.T. had arranged to build a five-hundred-roomed Statler for him with a bathroom for every bed •hamber, but as he is so pleased with our existing hotels the order will be countermanded. That excellent and habitual raconteur, Mr. Justice Frazer, has told the public how the scholars of Dunedin schools once went on strike because the official flagelTWO STRIKES, lants would not grant their demands. The authorities did nothing, and reason soon resumed its sway. Reminds one of a strike put up l>v children of a larger growth. "Hansard" men and newspaper scribes, being discontented with some action of Mr. Speaker in the Western Australian House of Representatives, folded their pads with one accord and walked out. The newspapers contained none of the proceedings of Parliament, and the House, recognising that one might talk till he is blue without effect if the precious words were not available to the public, also took their hats and closed Parliament. The small matter in dispute was adjusted with extraordinary celerity and the children of a larger growth resumed their pads and filled "Hansard" and the papers again. Nowadays if such a thing occurred the precious words would not be lost, for the official broadcaster would mitigate the catastrophe by putting all the debates "on the air," a dreadful possibility we hope to escape.

Geographical juggling with electorates makes it impossible for a poor little candidate to know "w'ere 'e are," and the fact that some candidates have wasted LOST perfectly good machine CANDIDATES. speeches on people who can't vote for them is something dreadful. Makes one think of the poor soldier in Kipling's "M.1.": "And I don't know whose dam' column I'm in, nor where we're trekkin' nor why." All the same, from tho moral and public point of view, the idea is tip-top. Why shouldn't a Tory candidate for Wainuoiopukapuka address the Liberal constituency of Purapura? Seeing that the whole object of every candidate is not to obtain place, power and emolument, but to serve all the people all the time, it doesn't really matter where one of them drops his pearls of wisdom. In cases where unhappy old gentlemen who have lived in peace and quiet for eighty years are suddenly dragged out to fire off party speeches, it will be rather cruel, but in the case of vigorous youths of sixty or so the idea is commendable. The invigorating formula "I havo no hesitation in saying" is equally valuable wherever it is unloaded.

Fights between free labourers and strikers in Adelaide revive memory in an old "Croweater" of the hard, hot days of 1890, when Adelaide was an armed CROWEATER camp. The city of gaiety STRIKE, and churches was held by the police. Mounted constables in half-sections with drawn swords and revolvers in holsters patrolled the streets. All the shops were- closed and the streets were relatively bare of citizens. Dust storms blew perpetually, there were nasty clashes at street corners and some burials. But what "Croweater" remembers most clearly is that at the time the old Ormuz got in to Port Adelaide with a very large load of new chums, innocent, fresh-faced "Homies" who have long since become tanned and hard-faced. An astute striker organised a large number of his mates into a band of luggage porters. As soon as the passengers landed with their '"'new-chum bundles" these "porters" descended on the heap, courteously offering to cart them to hotels, railway stations and anywhere else. The innocent new chums accepted this service gladly, and subsequently waited anxiously for delivery. Those who are still alive are waiting still. "Croweater" himself was fortunate. He commanded a man to take his bundle to a certain hotel, and when he got there he found it quite safe, with the porter in the offing. He offered the porter monetary solace, which was indignantly refused, for the porter was the proprietor of the hotel and a Minister of the Crown in the South Australian Parliament.

A school inspector was in the infants' department of a local school a day or two since. A teacher was giving the little ones a lesson in Nature study. LOYALTY. In illustration she showed a flower painted by a Japanese artist and explained to the little people the beauty and skill of the picture. A little girl with that family pride everybody ought to feel chirped up: "My sister paint 3 flowers better than that." The sister, by the way. is in the same school in a higher "class. There is ineradicable human nature in this. Something of "my country right or wrong" about it. * ° CHAOTICS. However did you guess it? Yea, vou are quite right! Auoennhg Onehunga. This is not a place name: Rottantaatunniissb. A THOUGHT FOR TO-DAY. Let us honour the great empire of silence once more The boundless treasury which we do not jingle in our pockets, or count up and present before men! It is perhaps, of all things, the usefulest for each of us to do in these loud times.—Carlyle.