AFTERNOON TEA GOSSIP

Free Lance, Volume III, Issue 159, 18 July 1903, Page 6

AFTERNOON TEA GOSSIP

By Little Miss Muffitt.

Some of the literary criticisms one reads are exhilarating. A correspondent of the "Taitake Tribune" says that "there is no longer any demands for Jules Verne's and other blackguards' works of imagination." Next day. the editor explained "In 'Literary Notes,' published yesterday, for 'other blackguards' please read Rider Haggard's." * * ■* Hard-headed youngsters those Australians. A little Victoria girl, the other day, got in the way of a sharp axe, which cut a s-lit clean through the skull, and into the brain. Her father bandaged the wound, and took her twenty-four hours' afterwards nine miles on horseback to the doctor. She never lost consciousness, and is going to completely recover. * * * English people are still stubborn. Hundreds of parents, refusing to have their children vaccinated, have not only been summoned, but have had their household goods sold by distraint. On© parent, who protested that a child of his that had been healthy previous to vaccination, and had ultimately become delicate, applied for exemption for a later child. It was refused. * » * The sweet blue-blooded girl was musing about George, and she wasn't quite sure whether she loved him simply as a sister, or otherwise. Just then Bobby burst noisily into the room, and interrupted her sweet meditations. "Get out of here you little brat !" she shouted, and, seizing him by the arm. she shot him through the door. "Ah, no," slie sighed, as she resumed her interrupted tram of thought, "my love for George is not a sister's love. It is something sweeter, purer, higher, and holier." The Americans are still eccentric. A wealthy man, who had his appendix successfully removed last month, gave a "spread" to the doctors and nurses who "pulled him through." They drank wine out of medicine bottles the tables were tastefully decorated with lint, sticking-plaster, and surgical instrument®, the meal was cut with lancets, and surgical needles were used for forks. Ices were served in .glasses representing human sculls, the salt cellars were juvenile coffins, and, altogether, it was the fijiest exhibition of lunacy even a Yankee could show at short notice. * # * Very touching to read of the fidelity of the Wairarapa char-lady, who, requested by a certain Board to leave the property she took care of, said "she hated to leave it ; she took such an interest in cleaning it up." The chairman remarked gravely that her boys had cleaned up the palings round the building, and were starting on the weatherboards. On consideration he regretted that he could not let her go on with the cleaning process. * * * Mr. Seddon, whose name you may have heard before, is not a stand-off monarch. For instance, a schoolboy who saw in him a perfect mine of old postage stamps, some time ago wrote him asking that he should forward all his used stamps to him. Mr. Seddon has replied, in a letter that will probably become an heirloom, that if the boy had sent in his order twenty veais ago he would have had a chance. Now, thanks to Wellington juvenile philatelists, he cannot keep a stamp five minutes. ■/■ * *- Everyone knows how hard it is to get a house in Wellington if one happens to be "encumbered" with children. A lady from New Plymouth, w T ho came to live m Wellington a fortnight ago, wanted a six-roomed house. She saw an advertisement m the daily paper. The house would suit her. There was the usual stipulation "no children." She sent her children (four of them) to Karori Cemetery for the day, and interviewed the landlord. The landlord, with the kingly air that distinguishes the Wellington carpenter who lias made money, severely demanded ' Any children ?" "They are all m the cemetery," she said, her voice husky with emotion. She has a lease of the houso for three years, and, for once in the history of Wellington landlordism, a tenant scores.

I note the following local in a country paper "Cow lost £1 reward." I would suggest that she should be supplied with safety pockets. * * #• Patea had a fire the other day. While the fire was raging, some of the crow d looted the building and gathering up some bottles of liquor, had a "spree" in the street. What the man w ho lost his house and home thought of the looters is not known. * * * Literal translation of an advertisement in a Berlin daily — "Any person who can prove that Messrs. Blanenhauser's chocolate is harmful to health will receive a free gift of one pound of the chocolate." Such generosity is "grateful and comforting." + -t # An American girl has a chance of marrying into a royal family that doesn't know the minute its head may be rolling in the dust. Miss Astor, the richest girl in the world, has been, asked in marriage by the Crown Prince of Bulgaria. By the look of his photographed face, he will take some "Balkan." * # ■* Melbourne men are marvellous. What do you think of the gentleman who advertised thus • — "A gentleman, fairly young, owning inalienable trust property (of great value), seeks Christian wife with £75 to lend on marriage." I should imagine he was looking for an easy way of paying a fare to South Africa. ■f- * * Queensland shootists recently asked Lord Chermside. Bananaland's Governor, to come along and see some pigeons slaughtered. His Excellency replied very promptly that he w r ould not be there "to witness 'sport' that, in my opinion, is hideously cruel." I like Lord Chermside. * *• * Among the gifts to a newly-married Wellington pair last week was a house'broom, which was sent to the lady, accompanied with the follow ing sentiment — "This trifling gift accept from me, It's use I would commend — In sunshine, use the brushy part , In storms, the other end." * •>- * Parisian women, who belong to the elite now suffer hypodermic injection of perfume, so that they may literally exhale sweetness. One grande dame, noted for her beauty and her changeable hair, recently contracted bloodpoisoning through the fad. She is now hideous, and her thoughts will probably turn to higher things. Most women in France who lose their beauty go into convents. One of the latest results of the Premier's peregrinations in South Afnca is just to hand in the shape of a letter from a German firm at Drucksache addressed as follows — "The Australasian Nurseryman, Salesman, and Florist, New Zealand, South Africa." And the Post Office officials, with their usual perspicuity, safely delivered the missive to a seed merchant in Dunedin. Stated, in all seriousness, that ouite a number of people are leaving New Zealand because they can't get servants. You know, of course, that the Government is going into the servantgirl question this session, and that the poor people who are so annoyed that girls don't rush to help them, expect Government to send out "press-^angs" in order to compel girls to take domestic service. ■A * -i "Madame Melba will arrive in Makuri by coach this evening." Thus a wire to the host of the Makuri Arms. He set his whole staff and the ''hangerson" to work to scrub the place from floor to ceiling, borrowed furniture, brought out his best plate, and pressed a gorgeous bed into service. He arrayed himself in his best clothes, and went down to meet the coach. "Madame Melba" gmnted when she saw him, and went on with her turnips. She is a prize sow. -* * I wondei what strange 1 evolution is occurring in the minds of the anstociacy. A P. and O. steward, who aftei wards became footman to the Dowager Duchess of Somerset, is about to mairy Laclv Susanna Montlow . It is, of course, not uncommon for a male aristocrat to look for a partner in a Chicawgo bacon-smoker's family, but barring the delightful mesalliance of the duchess who recently married a coachman, it is almost unique. I hope the precedent established will be followed bv our old nobility. It needs a sweetening influence.