Afternoon Tea Gossip

Free Lance, Volume IV, Issue 168, 19 September 1903, Page 6

Afternoon Tea Gossip

By Little Miss Muffitt.

Mr. "Eddie" Geach does not believe Cari Herts » dead. He received^a letter under Carl's hand dated July -". The great oomurer was alleged to have passed over in June. * * * Six ffi?^ and a cook"— eleven sons and one daughter. * * * A correspondent to ». c ? u " try XS indignantly denies in print the allescar to that his son kicked a hole m the SX-office. The breach was made by the boat of another little boy he says. I? at some time those naughty boys should push the post-office over! Since the lady who read a New Zealand potted-meat label wrote to the N?w Zealand Tourist Decent asking about a missing brother, ouite a lot of people a,re buying New Zealand toed W^s in the hope of finding lost relatives. Horna, isn t it' Anti-vaccmators will grieve to hear that consumption may be cured by .inoculation to produce a counteracting disease, on the same principle as a patient is made to contract vaccine to counteract smallpox. Mr. George Fowlds should gather up his thunderbolts right now. * * * A Manawatu gentleman lias got . himself into hot water by saying that the meat supplied to the people ot his township is not fit to throw to the dogs The butchers made him tendei an apology. "Gentlemen," he said, '1 regret having said that your meat was not fit to throw to the dogs, it is! * * Johannesburg "Star" has probably a -'God's own countryman" on its stait. It says . —"There (New Zealand) babies when they get out of their cradles, tuck their pillows under their arms, and streak out on an uneven track for the two legs of a table, which their inborn instinct tells them are goalposts." Everybody who has been in marvellous Melbourne knows Cole's Book Arcade. Those who tlunk it is a crying shame to pay 2os a week for a shop in Adelaide-road will find some consolation in the fact that Mr. E. W. Cole (who started life without a penny, and nothing to wear) pays £4400 a year rent. The owner should smile. People positively love creepy sensations. The assertion that the dread Waimangu catastrophe Mould act as a check to o lr er-curious tourists is not verified. Tourists travelling in search of sensation are now ambitious to stand on the very spot overlooking the crater from which the unfortunate victims were swe^t to their doom. * +■ "Ye are a widdy p " asked the police prosecutor of a witness in an up-coun-try court one day recently, speaking with a rich intonation that breathed shamrocks. The witness agreed. "Ye live wid yerself ?" "Yes." And then in confirmatory query "Ye live alone ? " Assurance was forthcoming again, and Sergeant Shamrocks was satisfied. ■* *■•»(• "Bill" lamented poetically in the Lance a fortnight ago about the "pram" nuisance. The common, woman-driven go-cart, however, is going out, and aheady the motor babycarriage is superseding the ancient idea. "Nursie" sits up behind, and "Jets her go." We might get the "prams" in Wellington, but the nurses — never' * * * The teetotal people of Hamilton are abreast of the age. They have discovered that the best way to undermine the influence of the Hebe behind the bar, is to provide a counteir-attrae-tion. Accordingly, they have organised entertainments, in which young girls dress up as representatives of all nations, and warble against the drink and there is a presiding damsel who nnses as the "Goddess of Prohibition '" This ought to knock out the barmaids in one act.

Theie was an old dame named OBrien, Who sang Sunday-sohool hymns to a lion, Of that lady there's some In the lion's turn-turn But the rest is an angel in Zion. * * * The young man who wants to die for love ought to be allowed to without regret. By the way, I find that a Northern' youth, whose heart, had gone astray, fired a revolver at himself the other day. The local paper says "It is feared he wall recover." Ten to one she will marry him if he does. 'Twas ever thus. * * * Disraeli, England's one-time Hebrew Prime Minister, was a gay \outh. According to an authority, he wore "slatecoloured coat, lined with satin, purple trousers with, a gold band down the outer seam, a scarlet wai&tcoat, long lace ruffles falling down to the tips of the fingers, and white gloves with brilliant rings outside them " "Dizzy," eh? * * * Touching the rather common practice among women of lavishing their affections on dogs, "Dads Wayback" says — "A mother an' father o' a dozen nippers don't go nussin' an' hu^gin' dorgs , no' ther chances is they's erive all their whack o' lovin 1 ways ter twolegged animiles wot is now 7 goin' abound saym' wot a pair o' old fools ther old 'uns is." Studious New Zealanders absolutely thirst for solutions to great problems. Thus a correspondent to an Auckland paper — "Would you kindly answer the following to settle an argument • T was born in August, 1883 , what ace would Ibe this August, 1903 ?' " The editor is foing to forward the ciuery to Mr. Yon Dadelszen so that there may be no error. I learn that a proposal is on foot to erect a monument to the memory of Bacon in New Zealand. You see, be was responsible for the frozen meat idea. He tried the effect of cold on the flesh of a fowl by stuffing it with snow. Dodging about m the 1 snow brought on bronchitis, from which he died. It doesn't matter much if he wrote "Shakespeare" now. * * * The bonos of a rhinoceros w ere found in the London "Daily Chronicle" office lately. The "Chronicle" brought the versatile and veracious de Rougemont out. It is surmised by the London press that the great Frenchman brought the bones to London, having ctasovered them in a flying wombat's nest, together with an egg of the great auk, and a season ticket for King Dingbat's cannibal feasts. * * # I was walking down the Quay on Thursday morning, behind a gentleman wearing a Norfolk jacket. His wellupholstered wife was with him. He asked her if she had noticed that woman just passed? "Oh, that woman with the grey zibelme dress and lace fichu, with high-heeled boots, and a black hat w ith the huge feather, carrying a- ridiculous little bag? No, I cannot say that I noticed her." * * * Not at all uncommon for ladies of bluest blood to link their fortunes matrimonially with a commoner. We get cables about such unions frequently. The latest is that an English lady, who is socially "top of the heap," has been successfully w r ooed and won bv the grocer who called at the country seiat for orders Anyhow , a. grocer (Sir "Tea" Lipton) is a personal friend of the King. Store-keeping will become an aristocratic pursuit yet. * * ■+ Have you ever seriously considered the acreage of smiles diffused by the average w oman in a year p It is computed that, on an aveiage, a woman's mouth stretches half-an-inch temporarily each time she smiles. Allowing her only thirty-six smiles a day, her smile capacity for twenty-four hours would amount to half-a-yard, or, in the course of a year her face would have been wrethed in 182 yards of sunny smiles Of course, these are not always kept for home use.