Afternoon Tea Gossip

Free Lance, Volume III, Issue 121, 25 October 1902, Page 6

Afternoon Tea Gossip

By Little Miss Muffitt.

I notice that what is said to be a phenomena! fire took place in a New South Wales swamp the other day. The swamp caught fire, and burnt for days. New Zealand people are acquainted with swamps that burn all the summer, although no one seems to know how tihey become ignited. • • « It really happened on the tram. "Fares, please!" the conductor said, and the fare replied "Card, please — take three." "But," said the o-uard, "the two children have with you will <*o half-fare." "Take full fares, guard," replied the passenger, cheerfully, "they will be grown-up before they get to Thorndon !" • * * Mr. Tom Mann, who endeavoured to stir Wellington people up to a sense of their shortcomings, arrived in Sydney by the same train as Sandow, the strong main. Sandow was given a public reception in the Town Hall. Tom was unhonoured except by a few Trades Hallites, who took him away and gave him a glass of milk and a bun. Now, if only Tom could raise a half-ton with one hand! • ♦ * The favourite disguise of the sly-grog case hunting policeman is at present khaki. In the role of returned troopers, the men in blue get in their clever work, and the thin-skinned, genuine khaki men are writing to the papers about it. I fear that the authorities are sending genuine troopers on these errands — troopers who have .ioined the force upon their return home. Their simple ingenuous style is just the thine to run a bottle of grog to earth with I doubt however, if the police really have any legal right to knock around in khaki. Anyhow. it is worth looking up in the "Uniforms Act."

Admiral Sir Harry Rawson, vice-regal figurehead of New South Wales has never refused an, invitation yet, and is naturalh' getting worn to a shadow. Miss R&wson is aJso an uncomplaining sufferer, and both are probably lon<nng foi a tame when they can get on a nice ship m loose costuir.es, far from tihe maddine: crowd of admners and banquetfcers. The favourite names for Maori children, at Rotorua, since the Duke and Duchess of York visited that uncanny spot, are "Duke" and "Duchess," and it is commuted that, as the season has been very prolific there are now a couple of score of brown juveniles reioicing in royal nomenclature. A parson recently absolutely refused to christen a chocolate-coloured scrap of new fnrlhood "Duke George," although the owner desired it. ♦ ♦ * Interesting to know that on a holiday Manly (the Day's Bay of Sydney) requires fifty extra police to quell the spirits of the crowds. Interesting also to note that on a recent holiday in that salubrious suburb even the extra police could not subdue the ladies and gentlemen who wanted free drinks. The said ladies and gentlemen took charge of the hotel, and had a really excellent time. We have not advanced quite so far in New Zealand up to now. * * * Nearly everyone who lives witihin a radius of one hundred miles of Melbourne knew Madame Melba once. Acoording to a Melbourne friend of mine all these neople are unctuously recalling the fact that "Nellie Mitchell used to visit us," or "Nellie went to the same school as me." Melba, queen as she is, has no royal memory, for she is unable to "place" more than eighty out of a hundred persons who c laim to have been her very dearest friends in the days before her every note was equal to a little shower of sovereigns. • * * It is not often a roof-haunting cat, whose vespers cause so many maledictions, gets anything but abuse. One Grey mouth cat, however, who has just joined .-.<-> great majority, is the subject of a touching obituary notice in a Greymouth paper. "Matilda" stowed away from Sydney twelve years a^o, and has lived on the Greymouth Wharf ever since. The obituary notice is as follows — "In memory of 'Matilda," native of Sydney, aged twelve years, who died on the Greymouth Wharf, October 10th 1902." In the words of the darkie orator, "Who frew dat brick?"

Dr. Roger Tracy, an authority on physiology, says that if men live right they should average over 120 years of life. To do this you must not worry, or, eat, or drink too much. Nothing out of the common must happen to you, and, above all, do not work too hard. I wonder what Mr. Pharazyn thinks of the latter condition ? * * # The Bishops' Conference, in Adelaide, has been productive of one reform anyhow. The "bishop sleeve" is all the rage m the Holy City now. and for ladies who don't take soup is really chic. By the way, would it not be really sweet if all the men you know were to go in for bishops' aprons amd tight gaiters? There v/ould be a slump m the matrimonial market, however, for every man has not a limb like a bishop. * » • Talking of bishops, Dr. Moorhouse, formerly Melbourne's Bishop had a peculiar way of writing sermons. He was sometimes slightly caustic, but, having written has pulpit thunders, he would go into his gjarden and there cremate the soothing weed. ' Returning to his study, he would strike out everything that he felt would hurt the feelings of his flock. This is why his lordship was not an anti-tobacconist. Some editors evidently do not smoke. ■» • • Mrs. G. B. Lewis, the veteran actress, who had a jubilee at Melbourne Royal the other day had a terrific house. The fact is Melba booked a box, and all Melbourne turned out to see her in it. The queen of song, however, failed to put in an appearance, and a lady who arrived laite in a gorgeous barouche was hissed. The people thought it might be Melba you see, and they were annoyed with her for being who she was. However, the effect was the same. It filled the house, which, after all, was what was wanted. * ♦ * Immense excitement prevailed on the railway between Palzaersftan and Wellington recently, when it became known that a Chinaman had a box on board containing bones of defunct relatives. The "Tiard was determined tihat the culprit should be brought to justice, and he seized the Chinaman and his box, and, in the presence of a crowd on the railway platform nervously uncorded the "remains 1 ." He dragged out a suit of blue dungarees and a shovel, then some other articles of clothing, and then more wearing apparel of garden hue, and, finally — no bones. The guard's informant has not been run down yet.

The English magazine which anticipated the coronation, and wrote a scathing article about an, event that did not happen on the due date, in a late issue says that it has put things right by discharging tihe lady who wrote it! What a lovely editor that magazine has! This reminds one of the paper that wrote a long cdroumstantial account of an execution, the intended subject of which was reprieved. The paper could not ston publication, so it headed the article "What the Condemned Man Escaped." • * * Just a poean in a paper, That full soon is all forgot , Just a poem that still sooner You'd forget as lief as not. Yet thatl poem has its mission, Yet that poem has its goal; Somewhere it will find a reader And beatify his soul. It will strike a chord and thrill it As 'twas never thrilled before : And thati chord will sing and vibrate O'er and o'er for evermore. Just a poem in a That will never be forgot Bv one lone- and single reader. For he is the author o't. • * « Probably, you have often felt the throbs of journalistic genius seeking for vent, and -ou have sat down and written something that ought to about revolutionise mankind. You send it to your pet editor. After a week he is no longer a pet and -^ou know in your heart of hearts he is an ignorant jackanapes. America copes with this sort of thino 1 at last. You can send copy to a Yankee Institute now, and it will be burnished up to publication point for a few dollars. All you have to find is pen, ink, and paper — and dollars. • • • Dr. J. Levigne, a medical officer of the Sunnyside (Christchurch) Asylum, is strongly advocating the disuse of the words "lunatic" and "lunacy" in connection with the unfortunate inmates of such institutions. And, when one comes to think of it, why should a person who may have frequent sane intervals and who feels very keenly, be subjected to this contumelious appellation ? People now-a-davs do not believe that tihe moon has the effect on the mind that it was formerly supposed to exercise, and the words are certainly relics of a barbaric past.