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Free Lance, Volume III, Issue 128, 13 December 1902, Page 6

By Little Miss Muffitt.

The Federal Lunacy Department would have to extend their premises if Melba held sway much longer. Upon my word, the sickening stuff written about the diva should make her long to get away from newspaper bores and sycophantic adorers. After "drinking in, the wondrous melody," and "swelling with emotion," and a few other things of the same sort of idiotic rant, an alleged c ritic over the "othei side" gushes after this style — "Yet other worlds, where willing captives dwell, Thus all forsaken surely might rebel, And we, alas' must be bereft of thee Thus all must part." • # * And, here is still another extract from the writings of the same gem-ass "The esctacy of the moment was tinged with a feeling of sorrow at the thought that to the majority there would remain in tlhe after years only the lingering memory of that melting melody." • • * Diving into my "Saturday Review" the other day, I found it saying that "Brains may be a positive disadvantage to a man who desires to succeed in rxxhtics." ' Now I know why so many New Zealand politicians are not Ministers of the Grown. Western Australia is the first British State to sell Government liquor. One of the goldfields in the land of sin, sweat, sorrow, and wild blacks has a new hotel. It is a State experiment, and the main behind the bar has no temptation to keep open after hours, or sell threepenny pewters to infants. A new portfolio — that of Minister of Hotels — is likely to be created. • * * Gilbert Jessop, the phenomenally hard-hitting cricketer of the English team that visited Australia last season, recently married Miss M. A. Osbbrne, an Australian girl, in, London Mr. Jesson when he is not cutting "foura" and keeping the field perspiring, is a peaceful professor in Cheltenham College. He isi the son of the late celebrated surgeon and coroner, Dr. H. Jessop. The "old man" of cricket, Dr. W. G. Grace, saw Gilbert "off the hooks." • ♦ • Jajnes 1 Major, the Australian blackfellow, who tied his wife to an iron bar, strapped her limbs, ai d then beat her almost to death, got a week's imprisonment the other day for it. If he had only stolen a horse? Williams and Montgomery, the burglars, who hit a policeman on the head some years ago, the said policeman recovering, were hanged. Australia wasnts a judicial scrubbing-brush, applied with Samdow elbow power. » • ♦ The King: fishes. It is his favourite pastime. Would it be correct to call His Majesty a kingfisher? I asked a friend. . She parried me with another question "What is a kingfisher?" "Well, a kookaburra," I replied. "And a kookaburra?" she asked, in her local ignorance. "A laughing jackass," I had. to admit. No, on second consideration, I don't think I'll call His Majesty a kingfisher. It might be considered "lese majeste," mightn't it p • • • Marvellous how perfectly incompetent persons burst forth into alleced poetry when something that stirs their morbid fancies happens. Marvellous, too. that papers give the vapourings of the periodical wailers space. The Elingamite wreck is the latest peg on which to hang some of the most fearsome literary atrocities. I have a pile of Elingamite verse here. I will close my eves, and jab it with a pin. Here is the verse the pin nicked up : — In hunger and privation's power, A raft encased in waters lower ; And souls do fight the angry wave, A ship is now at hand to save. The weak ones, now, bedewed with care And kindness, beams with happy fare. A message now to land is given, The fervent words a prayer to heavem. The person who perpetrated this will, probably, hand it down as a family heirloom, and the future generation will speak of having had a genius in the family who might have been a second Shakespeare.

Bread is going up at such a rate, that it is probable very" little of it will "go down" shortly. ' Might try tlie In&h dodge of living on potatoes, but potatoes, too, are at museum prices. Prosperity and high wrices are simply overwhelming. If I was not related to Mark Tapley I should go out of the optamast-c business. • * * Quaintest advertisement of the week, from South — "I, Robert Allan, who am one of the less intelligent and avaricious of the genus 'Cockatoo' Who belongs to the. Farmers' Union will give the writer of the letter signed 'Navvy' fifty pounds if he will grant me a personal interview on the farm named Drumclog." Big price to pay for the privilege of getting nurt isn't it? * * * Military glitter is expensive, not only in New Zealand. South Austialian officers of the "standing army" _ have jubt received notice that there is no pay available for them. As most of them have joined the glitter business to get in out of the way of work, the finger of fate points sternly towards avenues of em.pl oymemt other than those represented bv the command, "Fawm fou— afos'" • * * I wonder where all the good New Zealand timber is going to? Just for curiosity, goi and have a peep at some of tihe houses springing up like mushrooms in Wellington. You will find the soantling, in many cases, is shaken, knotty, worm-eaten, or green Builders will tell you they must take "what is sent." Some of the houses now being built in Wellington will be at queer angles in ten years' time. The queerest thin" about them at present, is the price. * • * Earnest girls, who take Sunday afternoon classes for the edification and instruction of the vegetable-vending Mongolian, are doing a good work. They teach the guileful Chinaman English, and it is useful in tirade. But, it will be also useful to know what a "Clistian" John remarked m a Chrißtchurch Court the other day. Asked if he was a Christdani, John remarked that he was — while he reimained in New Zealand • • • The Rotorua Maori, and his brothei elsewhere, are as different as the poles The Rotorua man battens shamelessly on the gilded tourist who haunt® the water bubbles of the shaky resort, but his brethren elsewhere, generally scorn to beg. They are going to increase the scope of the Rotorua Maoris' operations by teaching carving. I see in this proposal the possibility thaib every aristocratic house in England will contain Maori treasures a thousand years old, dug up, and sold at enormous prices. * • * Mrs. Florence Gilmour has struck a novel idea for helping the Stratford Brass Band fund. She is making an autograph quilt. The quilt will be composed of pieces of silk containing a worked facsimile of tihe signatures of subscribers to this particular item. The Hon. C. Hill-Trevor is arranging for Lord and Lady Ranfurly to forward their autographs and Premier Seddon, Sir Joseph Weird, and other prominent men have also oeen communicated with. If I draw the quilt in the ensuing raffle I shall not wear it. It would be r^mk sacrilege. ♦ • • Touching "Our George," and his marvellous electioneering feat, the Auckland "Observer" says truly . — "He is one of the very few members of the House who have retained any of the oldtime style in oratory. Most others do not orate ; they merely gabble to pet in as many words on a given subject as the time-limit will allow. But, to hear George speak on any subject in which he has real interest, or to notice the cleverness with which he can steer clear of difficult points of order, are among the rare treats to be met with in the dismal dreariness of which Parliamentary debates now consist." • ♦ • An awfully backward girl, of Canadian parentage, was found m a State school nearby Wellington, the other day. She had lived m the North-west Province before her father came to New Zealand, and she was in the third standard, notwithstanding that she towered head and shoulders above the school-teacher. The teacher tried her on the only geography she would be likely to know. "You are familiar with Ottawa^ I presume?" said the teacher. "Familiar wuth 'im," retorted that maiden fair. "Father 'ud swat the hide offen me if I was familiar with anyone." She has gone down one standard now.