Afternoon Tea Gossip

Free Lance, Volume III, Issue 119, 11 October 1902, Page 6

Afternoon Tea Gossip

By Little Miss Muffitt.

Rev. John Ferguson, pastor of Sydney St. Stephen's Presbyterian Church, is getting himself disliked. The fact is, the genial New Zealander from Inyercargill is takin^ away the congregations of other churches in the city of the harbour, and the other "narrow way ' guides do not like it. Soon, they will pick holes in John's coat, and find that his doctrine is not sound, or that he smokes, or something dreadful like that. Mr. Barnes, in advance for the Musgrove Comic Opera Company, is a 'cute man. In Auckland, observing some waiting carriages, with be-nbboned whips, and an air of wedding about them, he pasted bills, "A Chinese Honeymoon," on the back of them. When the newly-married people and their staff rattled away, the "ironic cheers were many, and, not until the portals of the church were reached, did fche blushful bride to be and the nervous bridegroom understand the reason of the enthusiasm. • • * An uncharitable creature tells me an allegedly true tale about one of Wellington's most charming widows. Before her esteemed husband left us the sales were on, and the lady unfortunately was debarred from the yearly revel during the flickering of his vital spark. She tearfully questioned the doctor as to his prospects of recovery, but the stern medico gave her no hope. This is where the uncharitable creature fete her shaft in. She was "helping" uring the last hours of the gentleman's life, and says* that as soon as the to-be-bereaved lady knew for certain that she was to be a widow, she went out of the sick-room to her friend, and said • "0, Mamie, I'll be able to get that loyelv black silk after all'" I don't believe it — do you ?

The awful discovery, over the "other side," that horseflesh was being sold for human consumption, lias led journalistic persons to ask if there is any connection between the fact that twelve horses were sold for £1 12s 6d the lot in New Zealand the 1 other day, and the low tariff for sausages in Sydney * * * There are £20,000,000 spent in gambling in New Zealand and Australia in a year. Some of this is expended in penny "two-up," on the beach, near Wellington, and the police catch the culprits with the aid of binoculars. Awful amount of money to be spent in "two^-up" — and horse-racing, is it not? * ■* *■ Talk about coincidences' In the New South Wales town of Boondigunyah recently the biggest store in the place belonging to a firm called Pearson and Co. was entirely "gutted" bv fire, and all that remained of the firm's sign was "arson." At the inquest, the jury found that some person or persons unknown had wilfully set fire to the premises. Quaint, is it not? * • ♦ Contingent tales are not dead yet. One young officer, who returned from Africa by the Rimutaka. on Wednesday, suffered very severely from "fever and ague " or the "shivers." as the Tommies call it He was invalided to Bulawayo and cabled to his father in Dunedin "Invalided, remittent fever." Back came a money-order cable for five pounds' Not until he got to Welline;did he know the reason. The telegraph people had made it "Invalided, remit a fiver." Sandow hates people to think he is not as strong as he says he is. Newspaper reporters, so I understand, do not believe anything, and a Sydney man had an idea that Sandow's dumb-bells and things were paanted canvas, filled with sawdust. He said so to Sandow, and was surprised to find that one little "bell " alleged to be lOOlbs was quite difficult to move. Still, he imagined that the "bell" had been juggled thither for his 1 special deception until Sandow grabbed bell and reporter and jerked them about tossing the penman up to the ceiling like a feather, and using him in a manner for quite a while. "I — I — don't believe it's a 'fake* after all!" exclaimed the tired pressman when the great man set him on his feet again. And Sandow, inflating his lungs, blew the reporter clean through the door, and out into the cold night.

A Wellingtonian in Copenhagen writes me that the daily papers there have ceased publication for three months in order to give the staffs a holiday. The oapesr that refused to come to h>ht with unerring accuracy in New Zealand would have a holiday that knew no end. The milk of human kindness is more frequent in Copenhagen than in Wellington, for instance. * #■ -♦ One of the applicants for the position of matron to the Blenheim hosital was a widow, with twelve children. She remarked, in a twelve-page letter on her qualifications, that they had had every disease known to doctors, that five others had died of various fevers, and that her "old man" was sick all his life. She had nursed all these, and if she was not a good woman for the billet who was? She wound up by saying that she was a "woman of common scents." * * * Mr. Peter Mackie, the pale-faced, clean-shaven Aucklander, who has recently come to Wellington to work, is an Auckland "Herald" man, and, among other things, he is a capable amateur actor, and used to play a tolerable game of football and cricket. I hear that Mr. Mackie once blew down the barrel of a loaded revolver for some reason or other, and that the machine blew back, and took the end of his nose off. In speaking to the keen-looking lithographer the other day, I did not notice any alarming; absence of nose. I am pained to hear, from a very-much-illustrated article in the Detroit "News Tribune," that Mr. Seddon won the Premiership of this country by fighting a West Coast miner named O'Doolan. Circumstantial pictures of the Dictator of New Zealand, "stripped to the buff," administering the quietus to Mr. O'D., are given, and later the great man is seen receiving the homage of the Prince and Princess of Wales in a tophat. It is presumed, from a perusal of the fifteen columns dealing with Mr. Seddon's life, that immediately on the defeat of O'Doolan the people of New Zealand dragged him forcibly away, and made him Premier. This is not the only interesting insight the Detroit paper gives into Mr. Seddon's career, for it remarks that his influence on the West Coast was so great that "these rough, lawless miners instituted societies for study, and, at the present time, are the ablest and most polished orators in the New Zealand Congress." I wonder how it haopens that the Americans get hold of information about New Zealand not obtainable here?

I notice that Mr. James Freyberg has been, writing to the papers saying that he has never lost anything through the post, and that this is evidence of the care exercised by the post office authorities. I daresay they are careful, but unless an addressee is a mind reader, or is switched on to the Old Country by Marconigraph. I cannot see how he is to know if anything has been lost. Of course, the authorities are careful, and it is wonderful what frightful things in the way of handwriting reach one, but there is no person, unless he has the telepathic gift who can follow the transit of mails posted in London or elsewhere. * * * "Tay Pay" O'Connor chats in a recent M.A.P. about Maoris who anglicised their names to get into Contingents. The "jaynial" remarks that the dark-blooded Hones and Wiremus stood in the back rank, and looked as white as possible. Mr. O'Connor does not know of course, that most of the "Maoris" in the Contingents had no claim at all to any Maori namp seeing that, with about one exception, the halfcastes were English on their father's side. * » » Old "Bill" Jenkins, the ancient mariner who recently put in to the last haven at Otaki was a consistent man. He said before he died that "he did not want any funeral business, nsalm-sing-ing, or prayers round his grave. If his old pals 'ud only jest gather round the hole and sing 'Auld Lang Syne' he'd take it as a compliment." And, out of affection for the old whaler his "old pals" did foregather, and lustily voiced that ancient lay, after the regular service had closed. * # • Commend me to a colonial for cool cheek. One of the interviewed Coronation Contdngenters told a London newspaper man that London was behind the times in the matter of traffic and said that the only thing (and a very poor thing, in his opinion) that adequately coped with the traffic was the "twopenny tube." Why didn't they, he asked, get some nice 1 electric cars like Sydney, where the modern man-killer runs twenty miles an hour in the streets:! If I was a bloodthirty individual. I would dearly love to see a car going at twenty miles an hour over London Bridge. As a matter of fact, London dare not crowd her streets with electric cars. A propos, one of our own Contingenters. asked a,t Home what he thought of London, replied, f Tou ought to see Wellington.