THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 226, 24 September 1929, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

As we have seen, television has come to New Zealand. And here is an old-timer who says there is nothing new under the sun and that an Auckland licensed TELEVISION. victualler introduced television at least twenty years ago. At the time this well-beloved character was having alterations made to the interior of his premises. He rang up the carpenter in charge of the job. "Phwin yez come down to me plaace bring a bit of timbei wid yez," he called. "What size of a bit?" asked the carpenter. "Oh, about so long," said the televisionary, separating his hands to a distance of about four feet.

There is a classic story of a concert in the Wild West. On the platform was a large notice "Don't shoot the man at the piano. He's doing his best." SPEECH! According to Mr. Justice McGregor, who has lately said that oratory in the Dominion is deplorably low, a large-size oratorical bore will have to "be shot to dissuade the large number of oratorical bores from talking publicly. There is no doubt, however, in the minds of nontalkers that the unassuaged passion for public speech in- New Zealand is mere educational progress. One knows, for instance, of innumerable cases in which men who sedulously reach for the upper circles of oratory deliberately train themselves by uncurbed speech on school committees, tea fights, weddings, road boards and municipal bodies. The art of saying nothing in several columns leads to the House of Representatives at last. How immensely important meaningless oratory is was lately shown when members of Parliament demanded newspapers that would print verbatim all the speeches made by members. Very likely the country is too young for Burkes or Demosthenes or Lloyd Georges, but there are thousands of good triers among us. What could be better practice than the one so common in Maoriland of getting a whole school full of innocent children in a place from which they cannot escape (being guarded by teachers) and practising on them with three or four columns of speech unintelligible to any of them? The point is that the kiddies are bound to want to orate themselves some day and must be taught to bore while still young. It is enthralling to think that the innocent kiddie who is reading "Goldio Locks and the Three Bears" to-day will to-morrow be pouring out his soul into "Hansard."

"Get me a ticket on number seven!" breezed the occasional sportsman at a local racecourse as his friend, armed with optimism and a handful of bankLUCKY NUMBER, notes, hurtled towards the

j totalisator. "Right-oh!" ', exclaimed the optimist, and was lost in the crowd. The faithful optimist came back and handed up the ticket. The owner pocketed it and watched the race. Number seven, which, as it was backed, would have paid anything up to forty shillings, came home gazing at the tail of the penultimate horse. The disgusted backer, who had got the name "out of the horse's mouth," withdrew his ticket and was about to tear it in half when he noted that there had been a mistake. The number he held was nine! "What horse is number nine ?" he asked a man who was stuffing banknotes into a red morocco pocket book. "Curbyhocks!" said the man. "My horse!" said the man whose luck was out, racing up to the totalisator and drawing nearly a score of the best.

Heroic painters lately lashed various lengths of ladders together, reared them against a towering wall and undertook their artistic work far above the madding crowd with as much nonchalance as an artist in the sanctuary of his studio. Nothing uncommon in that, but what was uncommon was that in a short space of time one hundred and ten men, women and children hastening to work passed under that fatal ladder, showing that old superstitions are locally dead. Not a single person of that hurrying throng shied

at the ladders or debouched into the road. But the superstition as to ladders still survives among certain classes. Some time ago in a southern town painters had to redecorate a church steeple. A long ladder would not reach the requisite height, so the painter securely lashed on a twelve-foot length. The inspector declared he must satisfy himself that the gear was safe. The heaviest painter was ten stone. The inspector himself was fifteen. He would go to the top and try the lashing. He Avent. He reached the twentieth rung. He backed cheerfully down and stood on the ground. "She's all right, boys!" he said. "Carry on!"

Even the great are dreadfully human. Here's a story from Home mentioning that Conan Doylo is suing another celebrity for a debt. Nothing curious MY DEAR WATSON, about that, of course,

but what is quaint is this from the creator of Sherlock Holmes: "Smoking a largo cigar, was he, was he? It is easy to smoke cigars if one has thousands of pounds." What the world naturally wants to know from Conan Doyle is not how large the cigar was, but what kind of a cigar." Was it a Cabagio de Cuba, a Villar y Villar, a Trichiniopoly cheerot or a Flor de' Westfield? You will remember, my dear Watson, as Sherlock said, that I have a slight. knowledge of cigars, having written a small monograph on seventy-five distinct species of cigar ash. Remember, too, what an expert Sherlock Holmes was oil cigarettes. In one story Holmes walks across a carpet and smokes eighty or ninety cigarettes so as to make a pavement for tracks. The lady murderess in the story (who is concealed in a bookcase) comes out of her hiding place, makes tracks in the cigarette ash and would have been traced to her doom if she had not forestalled it by taking poison. Before she dies she confesses all in a couple of thousand words.

Ihousands of people at Home are upset over Hardiman's statue of Earl Haig, the great British field-marshal. Thev remember

__.„ llm that Haig didn't look like MAN AND HORSE, a brigand at all, that , ~ . blood lust did not shine from his mild eye and that he couldn't possibly have ridden a horse that looks very much like a fanciful Shire stallion with Carbine leo-s. Present scribe saw Haig as a voung man staff omcer to General John French (afterwards Lord lpres). He probably did not lose the appearance of gentleness during the ensuin" quarter of a century. He had a gentle face, a gentle manner and a gentle voice. In 1899 he dicta t ride a colossal draught stallion with racehorse fetlocks, although he adored horses. ine heroic beast on which Major Ha> was mounted in that year was a fourteen-hand Boer shooting pony, a noted ambler. The man whose metal image glaring ferociously may cumber London was heart-broken at the terrible life horses led in that damnably cruel campaign. He wrote shortly before his death to present writer recalling the,ghastly tragedy ot a troop horse's life, and mentioning New Zealand horses-as exceeding almost all others in the field.

THOUGHTS FOR TO-DAY. • Don't have your wish bone where your backbone ought to be.-^Anon. * * • The whole science of life—avoid sowing the seeds of regret.—Ruskin. . .