THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 235, 4 October 1928, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.]

UNHAND HE, VILLAIN! A tearoom and dance hall-in tho form of a pinto ship is to bo constructed on tho sea front at Milfora. See th» skull and crossboaes flfioc la the summer breese As the bold, bad buccaneers swagger by. Whilst the pirate chief In meditation "neath the sighing trees . . Bemoans the fate that left him Ugh and dry. Be sees again the galleons loaded deep with And-s^M U to B bear his cannons* tearing crashHe leads once more his merry mea to battles* wild turmoil, With Bwonl in month and six more in his sash. If memory he roars with glee to flee his lofty Close with prisoners taken In the fray— And little thought in later years it would bo on the cards His ship would be a beachside cabaret. See the skull and crossbones flying in the summer breese As the Milford lads and maidens swagger past, And the decks which ran with blood are at rest 'neath sighing trees, And 'tis waitresses who "serve before the mast." SJ.T, Dear M.A.T., —I note that Mr. Zaro Agha, of Constantinople, has attained the age of 165 years and has married his twelfth wile. I would like to take this AGE. opportunity of refuting the rumour that Mr. Agha fought at Waterloo. He offered his services but was rejected upon the ground that he was over the age limit.—B.CJL

Have you ever heard a worm sing? They do in Malaya. In fact a missionary who has been in that strange land tells the truth about it and says everybody SONG OF called him Ananias when THE WORM, he did sow You will find fruit trees of the same kind, one with the fruit ripe and the other just i blossom a yard or two away; the parrots sleep upside down; the quail rooster is smaller than the hen. He sits on the nest and she fights all interlopers. The Malayan bee makes honey but doesn't eat it. There is no winter, so the bee doesn't have to lay in winter feed. The reverend gentleman says when he caught his first fish he was astonished to hear it squeak. Although a total abstainer he said he thought he "had 'em again" when a fish he caught, on being unhooked, skipped acnss the grass and climbed a tree. These fish gambol about on the mud fiats far from the tide. Crabs climb the trees and live on coconuts. When lizards are frightened their tails drop off, but they grow new ones; there are chickens whose feathers grow the wrong side out and whose meat is black, and men who wear skirts and women who wear trousers. The missionary mentions that religion is very fervid there. Devotees ring a bell just as we do, but they smash coconuts, shout loudly pray to ugliest idols they can make.

Major Segrave, the British motor car speed king, is to try with his Golden Arrow to recapture the speed record from the Americans on Dayton* Beach, Florida. SPEED KINGS. Very likely the popular conception of this appar-1 ently determined suicide is that he is a man of grim exterior' with a jaw of iron and an eye of brass. Xot at all. A London minor speedster, writing to M.A.T., says that Segrave to look at is as mild as milk, with a kind, mobile face and no hair to speak of on his highly-intellectual head. As a matter of fact, he is a scientific experimenter who has received the warm thanks of the Home Secretary, who approves of high-speed motoring as a form of practical research if the speed is not attained by stunters in crowded places. Major Segrave, the mild-eyed student, has served his apprenticeship to speed just as a youngster learns any other profession, and his book, "Hie Lure of Speed;'' is an authoritative summing-up of the aims and ideal's of his class. He explains that by virtue of racing designers have learned how to get all the they require without in any way sacrificing the qua'lity of reliability. Here are some of the practical results of years of speed tests: The simultaneous reduction of weight and increase of power (obviously the very foundation of modern motoring); the wonderful power of acceleration in the engine of to-day; aluminium pistons; improvements in steel production, as evidenced in the longer life of valves to-day; four-wheeled brakes; and, finally, the supercharger, which Major Segrave prophesies will inevitably be adapted to ordinary touring car design.

Some fussy people awhile since opened a small but acrid controversy about men doing two jobs, thought a blacksmith who kept cows or grew potatoes, or a TWO STRINGS, clerk who was & sparetime gardener, and so on, were doing a cove outer a jorb." Apropos these objections, one sometimes notes that a carpenter can get a job if he can play a cornet, or a saddler a situation if he can blow the wild bassoon. One comes across an item showing that a London lorry driver was called upon by the Court to find arrears of maintenance due to his wife. "I've been promised a job he said, "when the football season opens, explaining that a firm would hand him over a lorry if he would join the firm's football club. You see, his wife's income absolutely depended on that second string to his occupational bow, and many a carpenter's wife therefore may depend on a cornet, so to speak. The lorry driver mentioned told the magistrate that he combined lorry driving and footballing in the sure and certain hope of becoming a professional footballer, when he would be able to relinquish the lorry and become a permanent muddied oaf. Passing through a sliort Auckland street sacred to the parking of cars subsequent to dawn suggests to the imaginative mind a _ _ midnight battle the viYEARLY MORNING, tory °a„d the feast in celebration. It is clear that the marines have l>eeii engaged in deadlv conflict, for they are sprinkled upon the battlefield, many broken and devoid of caps. What is curious to the prying civilian is that the midnight antagonists seem to have feasted solely on crayfish, for among the fallen marines the armour of these crustacea lie in red swathes. Prior to withdrawal to base camps and hospitals the sturdy combatants evidentlv divest themselves of all documentarv evidence, and the battlefield is strewn from end to end with fragments of dissolute-looking paper. Very likely some of the corps raided an apple orchard for cores in quantities are to be seen. The battleground on which these midnight Titans have fought their brief hour is oleaginous with the ooze of tanks. Straw, cigarette butts, dottels from the pipes of the survivors, a stray sock, the piece of an old hat brim a bolt and a nut (possibly from a destroyed tank), a few boards and a "bushel of nails add to the picture of dread desolation Then round the corner sweeps the sweeper and brushes into the oblivion of liis machine this i hideous evidence of a horrid night. I

CHAOTICS. The hyphenated fair cow (with brunette spots) turns out to be Oiialhsiteerfnns Hoi st e i n-F ries ia n. Pursuing the pleaßant path of basic industrv the verdant pastures suggest: Eat pppomshr eh. A THOUGHT FOR TO-DAY. The memory of a people commences, as it also finishes, with itl literature. When a people no longer knowFliow to sing, to write or to it mui to exist.—Laxnartine. '