Entre Nous

Free Lance, Volume III, Issue 143, 28 March 1903, Page 14

Entre Nous

THE Johnnies on the block weie simply paralysed on Monday last when the news went round that one of their number was gomg the rounds of Willis-stieet and the Quay as a sandwich man. It took them some tune to recover their breath, but w hen they reached the scene of operations they found the gilded youth was on the job all right. He had a local tradesman's boards mounted fore and aft, and with his regular costume on, a Panama swathed with China silk on his head, and a "cnitoh" in his hand, he was getting along very nicely thank you. * * * The story goes that a certain tradesman bet him £5 he was not game to tramp the streets all day as a sandwich man, and, as four other bets were offering on the siame terms, he lifted! the lot. and harnessed himself to the advertising 1 boards. In fact he remarked that he would not mind extendinr the contract at the same rate of pay Everyone about town got "the strength of the situation" in a marvellously short space of tame, and it isi not too much, to say that this particular Johnny was the observed of all observers on Monday last. * * * The Minister of Mines and a friend were discussing a quiet cup of coffee in the Fire Brigade Station last week on the occasion of the send-Off to the New Zealand Band. Suddenly, the crowd of visitors was thrust to right and left, and an elbowing citizen pushed through on his way to lunch. He had arrived late, and was evidently in a hurry to get his share of what was going. He hadn't any time to apologise, as he cannoned off the ousih — no, we mean the Minister's table — but. at any rate, those cups of coffee did a somersault, and the Minister and his friend received the best part of tiheir contents on hats and pants. They have not, vet sent in the little bill. * • • Word picture of one of the Empire's derelicts, noticed at Tauherenikau the other day — "His beard, which reached his thighs, floated in the breeze like a flar of truce, his head was ornamented with a Turkish fez, bright red, whilst his bent form, supported by a long staff of manuka, was ragged to a degree. He wore no boots and his swag tied with flax, hardly deserved the name. A feature of his dress was a medal and clasp, pinned to his breast, demotanq; thai the patriarch was a man-o'-war's man who saw service with Condor Beresford." There seems to be some need for Lord Ranfurly's Veterans' Home. * * • Tiny tale vouched for as true bv a peiegrinatme: pressman. Prime Minister of New Zealand to railway servant "Well good night Tom 1" Railway servant to Prime Minister "Well eood night good night, old boy." True p Well, the newvspaper man says so.

A lady, who rather prides herself on her aristocratic connections, was not long in New Zealand from Home before she captured a wealthy merchant, whose people have nearly a page in Burke" all to themselves. Ail went mcmlv as a marriage bell. The lady moved among the elite as to the manner born, and generally had a good time. She keeps three servants, when she cam get them, but her under-housemaid "pearl" left her the other day. She adveitised, and put on the cook to interview the applicants * - * * The cook engaged a girl recently out from Home. The same evening that the new Mary Ann was installed 1 , the mistress- went to the theatre. Returning home, the new maid opened the door. She pave one long look ab hei new mistress, and then exclaimed "Why, if it ain't Sally Gnggs!" "Sally Gnsgs'" exclaim ad the irate husband. "This is Mrs. , my wife, and your mistress." "Gam that's Sally, wot was workin' wiv me in the factory at Shoreditch. Amd got the sack fer takin' a roll o' silk And thus rudely may a tale of aristocratic descent be ruptured, and a little rift be effected between an erstwhile loving husband and a handsome wife. * * * A medical lecturer, who is around lecturing with a marvellous liver remedy as a side line, is carrying on a faiost determined crusade against tightLacang in New Zealand. It does not matter to him that the women of New Zealand lace less tight than almost an> other women. He is going to have it put down. Last week he was in Wanganui, and he got very hot on the subject. Said that red noses and headaches were induced by stay-laces. They displaced the crgans, and oroduced faintness. Anaemia was one of the ills, he added. Dyspep&ia stared the wearer of a "straight front" in the face, and the next best thing to expanding one's waist was to take his panacea. Then, a man rushed up from the front of the hall to the lecturer. "Come down to the bottom of the hall. Mister. A woman's bin and fainted'" With an "I-told-you-so" simile the dispenser of golden truths and liver mixture went. The fainted lady w r as the lecturer's wife, and she had a twenty-inch waist ' The subject of this, little tale is a prominent member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and she has lately been sitting in Dunedin with her sisters. She left for her Northern home after it was all over. Her sole luggage was a rather fat gladstone bag. Imagine her surprise, when alighting, to see a large unregenerate commercial traveller going off wath her precious kit She ~ounced upon him like a policeman om a Chinaman, and demanded rer-possession. The man, with the cailm effrontery of his class, pointed to an exactly similar hag on the platform, and said that it was the lady's and that the one he had was his own. * * * The lady insisted that he was a bold, bad thief, and almost passed a resolution about him there and then. "Oh, we'l, since you insist, Madam the- bag must be yours- 1 " said he. "Most decidedlvl" said the lady "and to prove it, I will open it." She opened it' On the top was a big silver whisky flask, flanked by a case of pipes, a pouch of tofbacco, a pack of cards, and a dice box. "Take your bac away, lady'" remarked r^e porter, in an even serious tone. But, the lady had grabbed the other ba?\ and was making for home.

Tale of two Conferences. The Methodists held their annual talk at Dunedin recently. So did the pressmen. Important wire for important preissman. Pressman not) at home Application to another pressman. "Mr. C- is at the Conference " auoth he. Boy hied himself away. Later, a message came to the newspaper office. Boy tried everybody a>t the Wesleyan Conference but could not find Mr. C . The humour of the thing is in the possibility of a pressman who w ould voluntarily attend a> Wesleyan Conference.

There was a lively scene at a local boarding-house the other day. It culminated in the summary eviction of a new-chum boarder by the male head of tihe household. Seems that the young man had just arrived from Sydney with a stand-up collar and "notions." At dinner, in the evening, when the serv-lng-maid brought on his share of the fish, he poked at it suspiciously with his fork, and theJi secured the attention of a full table as he sniffingly asked "What is this leathery stuft ?" "That is a filet of sole sir," replied the girl^ with demureness. "Take it away," said that superior young main, "take it away, and see if you can't get me a nice tender piece of the upper, with the buttons removed." It was just then that the landlord sailed in, and grabbed him by the coat collar and the slack of the pants. That terrible marplot, the youngest brother, cropped up at a small social party in Newtown one night last week, and made the "hit" of the evening. The eldest sister had reproved him for some reference he was making at the table to an invited guest who "hadn't arrived. "I heard him call you 'duckie,' " retorted the small brother. "Well, what of it ?" demanded the sister defiantly. "Oh, nothin' much'" answered tihe small brother. "I was only thinkin' maybe it's because of the way you walk, but it isn't very nice of him!" * # * A globe-trotting New Zealander turned up in a Sydney Police Court the other day, to say that a publican had assaulted him. He asked the court to wait a bit while he sent a messenger for his doctor, who would tell them that he couldn't appear in court. As he was appearing, no one took much notice. The globe-trotter was alleged to ha,ve said that he "trotted" the globe because someone from New Zealand was after him to kill him. He had asked policemen, many times to lock him up as a lunatic, but they simply would not. He would not commit suicide, because quite a lot of New Zealand relatives only wished he would. Then,, the solicitor for the defendant publican arose to say lie v, ould squeeze the complainant's neck if he didn't shut up. and the defendant said emphatically that he did not hit the globe-trotter with a lemonade bottle. Case dismissed. ♦ * * There was a new court crier in a Northern court the other day, and a Chinese case on. Hisi Worship, having finished with Jim Jam, Sing Fu, and Lee Wing, said to the crier, "Call for All Song." The crier looked helplessly round. "Would some jintleman koindlv fa.your His 'Armor wid a song!" he said. Even the stern judge higgled.

Gruesome story about a corpse, a halfsovereign., and an. undertaker's man. The man was called in to prepare an ancient miner for funeral rites, and found a half-sovereign clasped in his hand. He could not understand it, of course. Asked the "boss." The boss said it was an old superstition among the Welsh, and the money was put there by the friends of deceased as payment to the grim ferryman who took the deceased over the dark ferry. "I'm. afraid the noor chap will harre to swim," remarked the man, jingling the halfsovereign.

In the small hours one morning this weeik an alairm was raised in a city hotel that the house was on fire. There i\as a hurrying and a scurrying from the upstairs rooms to the fire esoapes. Hebes, half-dressed and night-dressed, and lady lodgers in scanty attire, went stumbling along the passages into the arms of valorous males ready to do plucky deeds in order to help them out of the building. One thoughtful fellow noted that he didn't see anything of the landlady amongst the fugitives. So he rushed with all his might against the door of heir room, forced in the lock, and found her at the open window, forcibly upbraiding the asphalters out on the street in front, whose boiler fires under her windows were smoking out her house at that unearthly hour of the morning. That was all that was the matter. • « • Evidently the patriotic bomb, hurled against the Germans a while ago was not a particularly genuine explosive. Dunedin was as patriotic as any town could be. It hurled defiance at the Germans, closed down on German sausage, shaved with broken bottles rather than use a German razor, and all the rest of it. There are several very fine bands in Dunedin, the members of which are Britishers 1 , and there is one pretty poor band there too — a. German one — and it is cheap. The British bands are not particularly thriving. Their members are unable to subsist on boiled cabbage and brown sugar. The German bandsmen are able to rake in engagements ait a great rate, and escape conscription. The British bands are thinking of disbanding. Pocket or patriotism ? * • • Trust colonials for being there or thereabouts when there is Loot to be had. Anyhow, a great deal of loot from Pekin amd other Chinese towns to Australia somehow and some dirty little figures, said to be 4000 years old, w ere sold bv a sioldder for a few shillinea a week or two since. There were about 150 ounces of these queer-looking little manikins. The curious buyer, operate ing with a pea-knife, found them to be made of pure gold ! At their metal value, the images' are worth £600. ♦ * • Labour is so scarce in the "Bush" district that, at a recent meeting of a Road Board thereaway a councillor suggested that the Council should ''o out in a body and effect certain repairs to the roads. Done' Solemnly said that for six solid ' ours six solid councillors "spalled" metal, picked, shovelled, and blistered on that road, and did the iob. During their absence, the clerk had received' eight applications for work, but told them that the billets were full. The councillors, of course, put their "time" in, and are 8s in. pocket each.

It takes a good deaL to satisfy visitors to this country. A tourist, landing at Lybtelton, went up to Chrlstchurch . He had a lot of luggage. The railway people ehaiged him 8s excess. On making enquiries afterwards he found that if he brought four more people with lus party, and paid first-class fares for them it would have cost him only 4s, and the whole of the luggage would have been earned free. In other words, the Railway Department ohairged 8s for carrying the luggage alone, but would haive cheerfully earned four persons', first-class, and the luggage as well, for 4s. The trouble is that one man oannot split himself into four for purposes of travel. ♦ * * The youthful parson who has recentrly come to Wellington, preached his first sermon last Sunday. Unfortunately, the people at the rear of the church could not hear the words of wisdom. That estimable churchwarden, who know s a, great deal more about sausages than syntax, drew him aside after service. '"You ought to try and raise your voice a bit. Mr. Lastly " said he. "Our church is most unfortunate in its agnostic effects " • • • It 19 well-known that many men, from defect of vision, or other causes can never become nfle shots. Most volunteer corps have such men. In, an up-country corps there are six men who have hitherto been unable to hit anything but the hill behind the butts. They were doing their "class-firing" the other day. The officer in charge of the squad, when he s>aw their scores, found that they had hitherto been "pulling his, leg," for, out of the half-dozen three had made the "possible," and the other three broke down only at the last range-. The officer then took a rifle, and nred a shot in th.3 air. The disc came up, and marked a "bull" ' He wasted another cartridge. An "inner" was registered > That marker marks no more, and he will have to turn an honest penny some other way. Also, there are vacancies for six recruits in the corps. * • ♦ The boy stood on the burning deck Because he was afraid, He couldn't swim to save his neck, And that's why he delayed. » * * Brown's Island, off Auckland, was nearly getting a sanatorium built on it the other day. A bland stranger from afar, looking round at the heat-stricken denizens of the asphalt city, said that if £40,000 was any good he would at once build a magnificent pile costing that amount. Everybody knew that the anstocratic millionaire had put the plans in the hands of the architects and that the island had been leased to him, and the workmen were all ready to start. Them, the stranger had some difficulty about a draft for a million pounds, or less. What was he to do? Would his kind friends advance the trifling sum of £300 for a day or two? Would that little sum be enough for the magnanimous stranger? It would. The distinguished one has not been seen bv the architect , who has a beautiful plan the lesson- of the island is awaiting the deposit, and the gentleman who advanced the trifling sum is wondennc how a man of aristocratic tendencies comes to have such ai short memory. Ine sanatorium is not vet.

Mrs. Brown, M.H., L.C.C. ' What's it all about P Wha,t scholastic honours has Mrs. Brown been annexing? The fact is, Edinburgh University is adding a "Housewifery" seat and a "Cooking" seat to itself, and it is now possible to earn, a diploma as "Mistress of Housewifery" As the colonies are' bound to copy the educational establishments of the Old Country, you may be sure that the new idea is bound to find a place in New Zealand. We may yet live to see tihe abolition of dyspepsia specifics. » * • "As wise as a judge'" Imagine, a learned wig-wearer solemnly asking a witness what "slinging off" meant. Such an event occurred m a Southern city court last week. The lawyer, pitying His. Honor's ignorance replied that "slmging off" meant "barracking." Even then the judge affected to misunderstand plain English. The lawyer further informed His Honor that "slinging off" meant "against," and "barracking" meant, "sticking up for." That lawyer ought to get a> place as a consolidator of statutes, or a revisor of legal verbosity in precedents. He would simplify things. • * • A distinguished visitor from Home, who will one day be a peer if he survives his eldest brother, had some little legal matters to go into. He called at the office of one of our best-known lawyers. The wire-haired office boy kept him standing there for the statutory ten minutes. "You'll have to wait till the boss is disengaged," he said, viciously copying a letter in the copying press. "Take a ohair." "Do you know who I am p " queried the aristocrat. "No, I don't." "I'm the Hon. Mr. Freestonha'y'' replied the gentleman. "Oh, well, take two chairs'" replied that terrible infant. Wanted, a boy.

There is a class of person who comes into your office and takes charge. He reads the documents on your table, smokes dark tobacco, especially if you are a dyspeptic non-smoker, tells you about his maiden aunt's decease thirty years agot, aaid is generally a fearful nuisance. A young typewriting lady, in a law office in town, was recently deep m the intricacies of a legal document. Tthisi kind of man read it as she wrote. Withdrawing the foolscap, the young lady inserted a clean sheet, and rapidly wrote a resume of the characteristics of thei "peeping Tom." She described him as a lazy loafer, who borrowed shillings, and drank an undue amount of beer. As the last letter of the word beer struck the paper, there was a vacancy in tihe atmosphere hitherto occupied by a prying man. • • • Dunedin is suffering from rats. The rate are also suffering from Dunedin. A peculiar epidemic is killing the rodents, but it is not "carrying them off." The dour Dunedinites nave been warned to stand by for a rat assassination campaign,. The frequent evidence that the intellectual rodents carry whole boxes of material away, and store them in the lining of houses, ready for a conflagration, is sufficient death warrant to any of the animals, diseased or healthy. * * * There are scores of rabbits in Southland with only three legs. The fact is bunny when caught in, a toothed trap, pulls vigorously, and drags 1 'his little leg off some/times so that the trapper finds only a fraction of a rabbit when he goes his rounds. Here is a case for the S.P.C.A., and it is infinitely more cruel to dismember the pests than to shoot or poison them. A rabbit will invariably recover after having his leg pulled off. A dog caught in a trap will oftentimes bite his leg off, and escape.