Afternoon Tea Gossip

Free Lance, Volume IV, Issue 196, 2 April 1904, Page 10

Afternoon Tea Gossip

By Little Miss Muffitt.

I WONDER if Colonel Pitt, during his round of visits to the lunatic asylums, will inquire if any opiates are given to refractory patients. "Why I ask is because four women patients in, an English hospital, who were unmanageable were given opiates to quiet them. They have made no noise since, and never will. * * * Sign outside an office in Queen-street Auckland:— "Miss , B. So., Typist. The B. Sc. must be invaluable to a typemachine thumper at tenpence a thousand words. Anyhow, it instances the present-day value of degrees. You never know but that the man who weeds your turnip patch for a shilling may be an M.A. • * • Americans have been badly frightened over the Iroquois Theatre fire. A lady in a New York theatre dress circle let a programme fall into the stalls not long ago. It fell on a woman, who immediately yelled, and fainted. Nearly the whole of the audience rushed blindly for the doors, the pohce with difficulty convincing the audience that the house was not on fire. # * # The Wellington small boy dearly loves novelty. Two convicts, in charge of an armed warder, passed by Newtown School the other morning. About one hundred small boys escorted the detachment of three ut> Mem-street. Wonder if convxcts have any feelings. It would be kinder to drive convicts in closed conveyances. Also, Mrs. Neligan s Courtesy Guild might start a branch among the schoolboys of Wellington. • * * That forceful soldier, with the complete vocabulary, General Hutton, in command of the Commonwealth Army, is leaving soon, and Brigadier-General Finn is to take charge. BrigadierGeneral Finn is one of the very few men among the higher ranks of the Army who has fought his way up from the position of private soldier. They don't believe in putting rankers' at the head of the British Army. Duke of Connaught, indeed, and Army reform ! ♦ * * Carnegie believes in supplying mental pabulum to assuage the pangs of the poor. Another strange person has arisen in England. He is presenting motor-cars to work-houses (benevolent homes). The idea of taking hungry paupers out in motor-cars is so very British. Reminds me of the countess who went "slumming" in, London. Noticine the squalor and, dirt in one Whitechapel hovel, she turned to the occupant. "If I were you I should discharge the housemaid!" she said. * * * The leader led, and by a woman! An English correspondent tells me that a British colonel recently appeared before a judge on two judgment summonses. The colonel was getting £28 a month retired pay. He pleaded that, although this was true, his wife only allowed him a shilling a day pocket money. What a deep respect the colonel's men must have felt for their commanding officer. The officer was a member of three clubs. He was ordered to pay £2 a m.onth. What sort of a time would he get from Mrs. Colonel ? ■» « * When King Edward was suffering f T om appendicitis, one of the "York" youngsters was allowed to go and see giandpa occasionally, but wasn't allowed to talk. When the King was getting better, the royal kiddy, who had been wrestling with a great problem, disobeyed orders, and spoke whisperingly. "Grandpa, I've been a good -little boy, haven't I?" "Yes," said His Majesty. "Well, wont you let me see the baby before I go ?" And the King laughed loud' despite the strict injunction to keep perfectly quiet. • « ♦ The meanest man I know is not a Scotchman. Last week a Dunedin firm sent a sixpenny reply-paid wire to him. In his reply he found that the words numbered only eleven. His clerk tells me he sent him to a neighbouring office to borrow the morning paper, and searched it for forty-five minutes for a long word. He chose "valetudinarianism." and inserted it. To save ink he clipped the word from the borrowed paper, using a bit of stamp selvage to stick it on +^o tele^ gTam form. Consequently, the clerk doesn't think he has a hope of a "rise."

I was at a musical affau 1 last Tuesday night and the orchestra played Mendelssohn's "Wedding Maich.'' A man present seemed to recognise it, and asked a girl alongside what it was. She told him it was "The Maiden's Prayer." Neat don't you think P • * * The Mayor of gilded Ballarat (Victoria) offers a simple idea for the Peace of the World. He suggests that the Chinese and British intermaiiy. Possibly, His Worship has at some time strolled down "hllee Bourke stleet," and seen the idea in opeiation — and its success ! » » « There is some talk of forming a Pul-pit-punchers's Party in the Federal House. Seems that there are twelve Senators who are either clergymen, have been clergymen^ or do or have performed clerks' duties. Politics are piobably becoming purer in Australia. They might persuade Dowie to stay and qualify by residence. *■ * * Some of the New Zealand book beggars will feel hurt when they hear that Carnegie, who has given some New Zealand towns a paltry donation of £10,000, is building a "Burns Temple" \\\ Kilmarnock, to cost half-a-million pounds. Perhaps, if New Zealanders grovelled at the feet of the multi-mil-honaire he might amuse himself bv giving them half-a-million for a similar memorial to "Bobby." * * # A Wellington man, just home from the grand tour assures me that while on board a steamer he nWed chess with a fellow he knew on board another steamer two hundred miles away. I thought of the syllogistic assertion "All men are liars. You're a man, therefore you're a liar," but I didn't tell him so, for he said that chess games per Marconigram are every-day features of sea life in the Atlantic. * • » I have just been wrestling with a copy of the Wairarapa "Matuhi Piess." a little paper printed entirely m Maori, and bound m what Sir William Russell (a propos of King Dick's last budget) called "a flam.e>-coloured cover." It is interesting to know that the paper is edited by a lady, Mrs. Pani Te Tau. A bewildering list of the proprietors (of whom there are thirteen) appears in the imprint. If you don't know how to handle Lord Charles Beresford's name in Maori, the "Matuhi Press" does. "Rore Taare Perewhita" is his lordship's little share.