Afternoon Tea Gossip

Free Lance, Volume III, Issue 142, 21 March 1903, Page 6

Afternoon Tea Gossip

By Little Miss Muffitt.

The small boy with the rifle's little record for a w eek Auckland citizen shot in the eye (not serious), cow valued at £15 shot dead up North, a canvas moonng-buoy sunk by being punctured and the yacht floating out to sea, sundry panes of glass smashed, and a series of Vats in a bad state of disrepair. The police have clues ' * * * Pierpont Morgan is still annexing pieces of the globe, shipping companies and other property, week by week and his power grows at the rate of about one president and a feudal prince per week. Soon it will be necessary to carry the card already suggested by a friend, and printed thus "The bearer ha® my permission to walk the earth. — Pierpont Morgan." If theie's one unsecluded spot, That I should like to own And fence about, 'tis that small plot Where my wild oats were sown. Women are better sailors than men, as know. I remarked this to a nieie man, the other day, and he owned up that it was so. He told me that the latest and surest cure for sea-sick-ness was looking steadily at ones-self in a looking-glass. It established an equilibrium between the brain and the stomach. He said that up to now women had not discovered why they were comparatively immune from mal-de-mer. The horrid thing' Funny dogs some of those Methodist ministers. Dunne; that recent Conference of the Church, a blackboard was used, and the giddy delegates suggested that a blackboard should be used in pulpits. Another volatile man, in a choker, said they did not want any wooden preachers, and another remarked in the words of the first punster who ever had a boot thrown at him that he ''wooden" he a preacher. Such levity is enough to make John Wesley turn in his grave. * * • I notice that the mosquitoes have been rather bad on the New Zealand rivers this year. A veracious scribe, who had been forced to wear an iron bucket m pursuit of his daily plough, says that 1 the mosquitoes 1 succeeded in puncturing the iron and the unfortunate man, frenzied with rage, seized a hammer and clinched down the emdsi of their probosces inside the impromptu helmet. The mosquitoes then flew away with the bucket, the price of which was stopped out of the sufferer's salary." * * * Someone is trying to justify Rudyard Kipling m his " flannelled fool " vapounngs, by telling a yarn about C. B- Fry, the cricketer. Said that he was oftered a commission in the Royal Aitillery during the South African war. and that he said lie would join the regiment "when the cricket season was over " It does not occur to the teller of the tale that commissions in, the Aimy are not "offered." All commissions except those in colonial corps, are earned bv the "swat" of one's brow, and cannot even be bought now. * * * The habit Kipling has of filling himself up with assorted vocabularies, and bursting like a shell, offends the Yankees, who love soft speech and perfect English. A United States judge says his writings are offensive to aesthetic and political taste, and that the "Rowers " Rudyard's latest chunk of defiance, is in the same category with advertisements for pills and soap. They are w orth a great deal more than a guinea a box, however, and, anyhow, Kipling's got to do something for a living. * * • There is nothing mean about Madame Melba. She is 1 willing to conform to the laws of the country she honours, and she paid her income tax before she went away without a murmur. However, the authorities sent a sort of a police officer to the Bluff, so thai, if Madame had been on the "bluff," as the authorities evidently expected, she would have been pounced on. She thinks that if an artiste makes money she should be taxed. Wherein she disagrees with Sandow, whose giant strength was of no avail against the majesty of the law.

I heard oi an ongmal Newtown >oungstei yosteiday. His parents, who are pious, never go to church without a humble "thrum" aJL round. Last Sunday, they hadn't got any "thrums, so they sent the original youngster with Is Od to buy a stock. The youngster got six threepences, and went to church, put them all in the box at the door, and sat down,. The parents and the three remaining children came to church and waited at the door for the young financier. The latter espied them, and, turning round, yelled out, to the horror of the congregation "Come in. the whole lot of you I paid at the door l" # The rule of the road is a, paradox quite, To learn it won't take very long If you go to the left you are sure to go right, If you go to the right you'll go wrong. Have you ever been permitted to be present at a gathering of solemn City Fathers when correspondence is being read ? The correspondent writes, the postman delivers the letter, the clerk reads it, and the whole Council takes delivery- When the letter is duly filed a councillor, without a vestige of humour solemnly moves that the letter be received. I used to think that these letters were sent back to the postoffice and re-delivered, but now I know that taking delivery, opening, and reading a letter is not "receivine it. There are pitfaUsi everywhere for a youthful student of politics and things. * * * I had hitherto believed that the average W.C T.U. member was averse (on paper) to "hp salutes of love," arid gambling. Apparently it is not so. An Australian organ of the union punts the following —"I'm so certain that I'm ught," she said, "that I'll bet you a kiss." "Against what?" he asked. "Against another kiss of course she answered. He was thoughtful for a moment. "That settles it," he said at last ' I've found a game that permits both parties to win. Let's double the stakes." ?. * * The new electoral roll for the Bay of Plenty contains a Judge and Jury and they come together on the roll in that order and are both to be found m Waihi. Mr. Judge is a carpenter and Mr. Jury a miner, but, nevertheless, Waihi can boast that it has within itself all the principal requisites of a Supreme Court. The Returning Officer for Waihi at the forthcoming licensing election will be called upon to decide whether he should serve out one ballot paper or twelve to the Jury • anyhow, even if the Judge and Jury are not of the same mind, we may rest assured that the Jury, at any rate, will vote as one man. * * * ' My husband loves me dearly," Said a wife, with a knowing look , "How do I know p Well, because He eats anything I cook." * * * It is hard lines that a woman, cannot travel m a New Zealand tram without being robbed, isn't it ? Recently, a lady, in a statei bordering on dementia, rushed out of the car, burst forth into, a description of her purse that had been stolen, said she would have the law of somebody or other, paced the platform in tremendous agitation and then collapsed. A quiet man wandered into carnage she had left, picked ut> her hand-bag, which contained her purse, and handed it back. No reputations mined, or arrests made, which wasn t the lady's* fault. * * • Mr. Jooste, the spokesman for the Boer farmers, who were in New Zealand the other day, seems to have been a courtier of the first water. He remarked the other day that he would be desolate, or words to that effect, if he did not get a few New Zealand visitors to his farm every year now, to- drink coffee with. That is, of course, when he gets his home re-built. It went m the early days of the war, to boil the billy for Tommy. * * * Wonderful the prescience of judges. A man was recently examined, and made a statement. He said that certain words were "engraven on the tablet® of his mind." The engraving was evidently a bit sketchy. The judge got his shaft in by saying he knew that witness was going to deny a previous statement. Telepathic judges are not as common as the ordinary variety. Anyhow, those who have the thought-read-ing gift should be paid over-time. » » • All the thirsty ones of a mid-island town stood outside the local hostelry the other day, and gazed at the bar window. A ticket told them, "Free Beer To-mor-row." They were there as soon as the first whiff of last night's cigar ends floated through the front door. "Where' 9 the free beer, boss?" queried they. "Oh, it's on to-morrow!" said the Boniface. The notice still remains, but the thirsty ones have "tumbled."

The march of the Amazons ! Greytow n girls challenge Greytown men. to a game of cricket. The new woman has to recognise her physical inability by insisting that the* male cricketers shall wear skirts, and bat lefi>handed. When aire the positions to be reversed? * * * A friend vouches for the truth of an episode eventuating m her little town. A man was summoned in the Magistrate's Court for a debt of a few pounds. He had no money, and no property to distrain on. Would His Worship be good enough to adjourn the case, as he had a "sure thing" on for th© races, and would pay the money into court. Adjournment granted. The debtor's friend, the J.P.. also backed the "sure thing," which ambled in last and loneliest. * •*• * May good digestion wait on appetite! Maori appetite especially. Just because a poor, old, coloured gentleman died three months ago, th© Papawai Maoris have been steadily eating mountains 1 of food. A few items polished off by surviving friends during one week of the sad ceremony — Two tons sugar, two tins flour forty sheep, two bullocks five tons potatoes. One hundred yards of oilcloth were used for covering the tables, and twenty dozen knives and forks carried the edibles, to their capacious resting places.