Afternoon Tea Gossip

Free Lance, Volume IV, Issue 195, 26 March 1904, Page 10

Afternoon Tea Gossip

By Little Miss Muffitt.

AWOODVILLE blacksmith is reported to have dropped into a legacy running into four "figures." The report doesn't say if the figures represent money or a widow and her three children, although the inference is that the windfall is [ucie. * # * Manawatu has a real live baronet dentist. Sir Charles Burdett, dental suigeon, is acting as locum tenens for an absent New Plymouth gum-digger. Owing to the fact that a lady friend would not permit her recently-installed housemaid to take a morning off twice a week, in order to visit her masseuse and beauty speciahst, the lady friend has been foolish enough to let her go. * * • The presence of tarred pieces of jarrah in streets far removed from the street-blocking operations, leads me to the conclusion that some suburban fires are lighted with promptness and despatch while the tramway works are in operation. * * * The beautifully appropriate and explanatory headlines used by the daily papers in connection with the RussoJapanese affair makes that business appear almost warlike. One fight is useful for the purpose of about twenty-five headlines on different days. * » * When Mr. Seddon was banquetted at Balclutha the other day, there were no alcohol. c liquors on the table. The king had commanded that there should be none. Although there was nothing to stop the inclusion of the seductive fizz, the orders were literally carried out. Odd paragraph in a Manawatu paper — ''In consequence of the shortage in the supply of cossacks this season, local merchants have decided to raise the price." At first, I thought that perhaps the local merchants were helping Russia with cheap troops. Afterwards I guessed that paper meant "cornsacks." • • * A smart London club to which members of both sexes are admitted, placards a request that ladies will not smoke in the presence of gentlemen, but in the room set apart for them solely. Which reminds me that I know a lady in Wellington who is a large consumer of tobacco. She uses it to kill plant insects with. • * * In a Willis-street shop there is a Perth (Westrahan) paper nearly fifty years old. It notes that "Mr. So and So. esquire, butcher, has some land to sell " Evidently Mr. So and So, esquiie, was an advertiser. Another paragraph offers £25 reward, "dead or alive " for a black murderer. There was sport for young riflers in those days — an] m these if you only knew it. • * • Melbourne "Table Talk" cartoons "The Departure of Elijah." That good man is pictured in a bashed bell-topper airily floating: away from Melbourne with an umbrella as motive power. Melbourne is seen in the background, and the rest of the picture is full of gentlemen with forked tongues chasing him with common worldly bills. "Settlement will oblige" is a prominent feature of the bills • ♦ ♦ I often wonder what the large number of Sunday hoi day boys find to do with their shot guns. In any of the suburbs you will see dozens of boys carryiner firearms on Sunday but if you watch for their return you will notice they are not carying anything else. The disposition of the gun carriers to waste a cartridge on a wayside sparrow makes it dangerous for young ladies who are studying nature in the ti-tree to wear feathers in their hats. • * * The "enfant terrible" again. A Wellington parson, in visiting one of his toney parishioners on the Terrace the other day, found several youne shavers of the family playing "two-up" on the footpath. He asked, in mild surprise, if they didn't know it was wrong to gamble. Thereupon, the youngest nipper "It ain't wrong, for we learnt this piece in school to-day: — "The bonny spring has come at last With fern and flower and bramble. And on the common decked in green The frisky kids do gambol."

As you know, a new sausage-skin factory is to be set going at Petone shortly; by an American, hrm. It would certainly enhance its chances of success if a New Zealand Minister of the Crown could be persuaded to open it. * * * Waimangu, the champion Rotorua geyser, rested but one day in Februaiy. Consequently, the crowd of sightseeis who specially journeyed to see the upheaval was the laigest for the month. Waimangu has a sense of humour. * * • Methodist cleric, the Rev. Mr. Haddon, puts the position of the Maon clearly . — "Some people say the Maoris are a bad race, others a conquered lace. They are neither. They transferred their rights in the land to the British Throne in 1840." * * * Law and order. An up-oountiy man stole a boat, despite the efforts of the boy in charge to detain it. The boy brought his big brothers, who gave chase, swam out into the river, dragged the man ashore, beat him badly, and threw him into the water. He swam ashore. Local paper says itseivedlnm right. * * • What do you think? A new departure in card etiquette has been maugulated. It comes from France. When a man — or woman — has obtained a divorce, he sends round cards announcing the happy fact to his friends, who are expected to send their congratulations by return post. I suppose the next will be parties to celebrate the release of the liberated ones. * * # Queer thing about those Belgian rails that are being used by the tramway contractors is that, although it was believed that British rails would be used, the canny and loyal Scotch contractor found that the price at which they were to be supplied wouldn't pay so well as if they bought them in Belgium. They merely scooped the difference without handling the steel. * » * I noticed a 'bus driver crying bitterly the other day. His grief was "touching. Curiously, all the drivers had red eyes, and carried handkerchiefs. Some friend dead I presumed, and asked one of them about it. Seems that a traction engine had fallen over a bank at the Tmakon-road, and down into the Botanical Gardens. Hence their grief. They will weep equally if all the traction engines, motor bikes, motor cars, and steam rollers fall into the sea and get lost. * * * Curious advertisement in a Fijian paper — "Wanted, by young man, tall, no physical defects, and good-tempered, in Government emnloy, a wife who can bake bread, speak Fijian, and live in the country, not under twenty nor over twenty-five, no trifler need apply. Earliest applications receive fhst attention." The man who can't score a girl off his own bat without advertising is generally, in my opinion, anxious to assert that he's a faddy \ ersonage, with no recommendation but effrontery.