Afternoon Tea Gossip

Free Lance, Volume III, Issue 105, 5 July 1902, Page 7

Afternoon Tea Gossip

By Little Miss Muffitt

Lieutenant David Stewart, an Austiahan Contmgeiiter, who has written some leinarkably smart things about the wai, is not an Australian. Like many New Zealand journalists, he drifted to Australia where scribbling is appreciated more than in New Zealand, and then went to Africa as a private in Colonel Knight's Contingent. He rose in the service, being a New Zealander and has snapshotted and penpictured many notable things in South Africa, and was a week since in Wellington. He came to New Zealand to get a breath of fresh air before returning to Drought-land. • • » Have you got ping-pong tena-synor-ltas? Sound® awful, does it not, but it is a peculiar punishment for frantic divers after the celluloid. You get an acute swelling in the limbs, and become a temporary wreck. Suitable costume and footwear is the only preventative, says the doctors. Ping-pong boots should be a size and a-haJf too large, female beautifiers of Oriental looseness, and all embarrassing habiliments built on the most expansive lines. American firms are turning out pingpong boots with crossed bats for buckles, complete in their loose hideousness. However, there is a slump in the manly game, and it is dying its expected death. * * *■ There is a parson now in Wellington who was recently a chaplain in a Southern gaol. At a social gathering on the Terrace last week he told the guests that before he left he told the prisoners he had a call to go North. One of the men, who, by the way, is "doing time" for embezzlement, s.aid, "Well, Mr. Blank, if it would be any use to you, we'd be only too glad to give you a character."

Bank of Australa/sidi employees neie jubilant at the piospect of the Coionation. The directors decided to iaise the salan.es of all ranks ten pei cent. I believe that tJie example w ill not be follow ed generally vi Wellington. Some local Js.P. are leally enlightened individual's. I happened into the Magistrate's Court the othei day, when a summons case was on. Plaintiff was dimly visible behind an enormous brassy watch-chain and babbled importantly. He took the opportunity to inform his Js.P -ship that he was a self-made man. Your excuse is satisfactory." said his amateur woiship, and even then the brassy one did not shrivel. I was astonished the other night, as I was going home from the Opera House, to see a dark figuie "shinning" up a telegraph post on a street cornier. The object having climbed about ten feet, struck a match "Babel-Brown street!" he muttered. I thought it was a delightful, if uncanny commentary on the Stygian gloom of some of our street-corners at night. » • * Rotorua, according to a Northern paper, will probably be the only safe place on this oscillating globe shortly. It has so many safety valves. It had the same number when Tarawera was tared of remaining quiescent, didn't it? Rotorua is as siafe as Auckland or St. Vincent, or White Island, or any place where Nature performs without asking man's permission. • * * An unrehear&ed effect at the Opera House on Saturday night produced an amount of hilaiitv the actors did not intend for jt. As the curtain goes down in the first act m "The Yeomen of the Guard," Elsie Maynard (Miss Amy Murphy) falls with much abandon into the arms of Colonel Fairfax (Mr. Ted Hill). Mr. Hill received the shock in an unprepared condition, and the two collapsed, and revolved like a prize Catherine wheel. The house shook with applause and laughter. When the curtain again went up, the gallant Colonel had at least four feet of soaoe between his feet, and was bravely holding his own apparently against fearful odds. He was giving the audience no more chances for cachinnatory comment, and Miss Murphy's foundation was a very solid affair. The look of agony on the face of Mi . Hill will be stored up in the memory of the Wellington play-goer for vear<s to come

Did you notice oil Thursday — which was to have been Coronation iiay — that the coal hulks at Thorndon were dressed m their best suits of bunting. Evidently the extras" concerning the King had not got round to the keepers, or \va& it that they hated to postpone their decorative schemes? Perhaps, one of the "hands" had a birthday, or something of the kind. Anyhow, the hulks were the most resplendent things m this doiieful city on that day. » • * Parisian anti-alcoholiyts recently formed a society to demonstrate the perhdiousnets of the poison. They inoculated some guinea pigs with alcohol. The animals frisked, and survived. They inoculated other tail-less rodents with water. They died. This will be glad news to avoiders of water m Wellington, who always knew of the deleterious effects of unmixed aqua pura. You may tlunk that the following resolution was passed by the Melrose Borough Council. I assure you it was not, but it might be, judging from its crystaline clearness — "That a new Institute .should be built , that this be done out of the materials of the old one, and the old Institute to be used until the new one be completed." There appears to be something of the Kenniff spirit about the advertiser who has inserted this advertisement in a Southern paper — "Wanted, a young person who can cook and dress children." * +• * There is a good-sized crowd of Canvastown (Marlborough) Maoris whose hearts are heavy. They were to have "Coionated" excessively. The little 6pread they had on hand consisted of five hundred pigeons, one hundred trout, thirty "Captain Cooks," and various quantities of "waipiro." One Maori suggested that they keep their edibles for a month or two. till "Te Kingi is crown." May I not be there when the covers are lifted. *• *■ f According to a male friend of mine, Georee Adams (Tattersall) is a benefactor to man. He has lately started a biewery in Hobart whereat he alleges he will ""brer"w r " beer and not "concoct" it. Astonishing how universal is the made assertion that the average tankard is indebted to chemistry rather tifoan the brewery. I suppose it really is difficult though to obtain malt and hops in New Zealand, a,nd the national thirst must be quenched somehow.

A Northern clergyman, following the example of Bishop Wilberforce, has touched the "unco quid" on a soft spot, and hammered a nail or two in his ministerial coffin. At a service recently, he invited the congregation, many of whom were miners, to smoke their pipes! Fourteen of the "uncos" rose in horror, and left the building, and now that, parson has ■received notice that he cannot preach any longer for them. They say that where there is smoke the<re is fir© — hereafter. * *• Did you know that most of the public bodies of Karori were composed of juveniles? I gathered this from a perusal of a Coronation advertisement in the "Times" of the 25th June. It says: — "If wet, Councillors, Committee, Cadets and teachers assemble at State school, 11.45, and other children 1 at the hall at 12.30." • • * Admiral Sir Harry Rawson, New South Wales' new Governor, suits the Cornstalks "down to the ground." He is a free and easy man who talks to a crowd with his hands in his pockets, and is minus "side" and plus hardheadedness. He walks with a limp, caused by a bullet wound. He is an enthusiastic yachtsman, bowler, and chess player. • • • I have often pitied the poor reporters and printer as I sat doing the family stocking-darning in the Ladies' Gallery of the "House" during session, and often wondered too if those poor people do not sometimes get horribly bored at wading through so much chaff for so little grain. "Hansard," in the Federal House, up to now runs into 14,000 pages, the record, it is said, for any British Parliament. Wanted, a fierce blue-pencilled sub-editor, with a mania for deletion. Even New Zealand Parliamentarians sometimes say things they might have left unsaid, and, of course, they are the model pattern, are they not? • * • Said that the Kenniffs, Australia's recently captured outlaws, _ are related to a well-known squatting family in Hawke's Bay, and that the said family is tabooed in consequence. New Zealanders are strangely unlike Australians. The Kelly family increased in popularity when Ned and his brothers were brought to justice. One of the sisters 1 is the most-sought-after milliner in all western Victoria, and the whole, from bullock drivers to barrister (and one is a noted pleader) are received into thedr respective classes with wideopen arms