Afternoon Tea Gossip

Free Lance, Volume V, Issue 214, 6 August 1904, Page 10

Afternoon Tea Gossip

By Little Miss Muffitt.

A SPIRITED discussion is animating the pages of the Chnstchurch papers on the ill-manners and bad dancing of young men m baJJrooms. Ladies say their nice di esses get torn, and themselves dishevelled, and it's a shame, so theie. A man arises in. his inky wrath to remark "Just think for yourself if men weie to wear two oi thiee yaids of Lizzie-fnll-ing traikng, how would they get on i* And to ask, why women who attend dances don't weai short frocks? *. * * Ain't some of those tall hats lovely. Perfect "poems," in fact. One I saw on the Quay was tall enough to make a short story. * * * Taranaki (where Mr. E. M Smith hails from) is very appropriately the district where natural gas is found Picnicking people who want to boil the billy" just light one of the numeious gas lets that hiss out of the earth, hang the pot on a stick, and the thing is done * During the reading lesson in a Wellington school, the word "pause was encountered, and the pupils were asked to give the definition of it. There was no reply for some time, but at length one httle fellow presented a pair of ?ery dirty hands, exclaiming, "Teacher, these is them !" * * There was an old person of Halifax, Who said: "I believe in no balkfax, This woi Id's but a dream , Things ain't what they seem. When he suddenly sat on some ballitax. * * Hobart "Clipper" says the local "prohibs" are negotiating for the loan ot our Frank Isitt for a scathing tour of the httle land of slumber. Them are more beei houses to the acre in lassy than anywhere in the Commonwealth or New Zealand, and the community is the soberest in the world. Why, I really can't say, but it is so. * * Some Northern schools exist having School Committees, but no scholars 01 teachers. Seems that people who might be teachers if inducement offered are fighting shy of the poverty most backcountry school billets would entail. 1 know of a highly-qualified ex-school teacher who tells me he is happier than he has ever been. He is working on a road contract in the Wairarapa, fiozen out of the service. * * * It is the manly wav of men To love and lose (And love and wed again). * * * An old man with a huge swag uas "padding the hoof" along the Kent Terrace tramline the other day, peifec.ly oblivious of the rushing car that might have made mincemeat of him. Jhe magnetic break pulled the car— t!-e bells of which were ringing violently— up within a foot of the old fellow. Curious thing that people used to ti avelhng in the country afways walk in the middle of the load when in towns. * * * More fun. Haw era youths got a Maori's hoise and cart, unharnessed the horse, ran the shafts of the cart thiough a wire fence, and then harnessed up the horse again— horse one w de oart the other The Maou thoueht a tohunga had been at v. oik. W 1 at did he do? Unharness? No, he cut all the wiies with a file, and drove on. Funny thing is that the fence belonged to the ringleadei of the "jokers * * * There was a young rascal of Nix Who hoard' that eggs sat on made chix To a c hop off he shot, And safe down on a lot — His paients paid nineteen and six. * * * The meek and lowly Chinamen who are evidently considered by the Randlords of Johannesburg; to be about the most spineless workmen obtainable, have stoned a manager, merely because two of their number weie blown to atoms. If the first batch of Chinamen have already struck work for so simple —to the millionaires — a reason, what is likely to happen when five or six thousand Chinamen get on the RandUnfortunately, it is only the managers who get stoned— not the millionaires

Item from a Taihape journal — The piopiietor of the overgiown toulhouse' wants a tenant for one oi hi^ ioost-% " This seems to indicate that the Taihape papeis are not exactly swinging on tlie same gate. X de Vcnny-McGaingle is the name of a Not them dentist Sounds Fionch, doesn't it P Talking about names one Wellington baker is named Kilchift It would be funny, only that a duff is boiled, not baked. » » * A "poet," whose inkenes aie w oilknown, to me, is often offended because careful editois lefuse to peimit him to poetically libel private folks He admits that he writes doggeiel, but complains that editors generally make puppirel of it. * * • I attended a church concert at Kilbirnie the othei evening, and a yon good conceit it nas But, I noticed a lather geneial smile when the opening item on the programme was a pianoforte performance of "Home, Sweet Home, ' with vai intions _ -J- VTwo Chosen items from one day's news — "'Levi Ziegler Leater, London, lecentlv dead left over three million pounds." "Moses Cohen, found drowned m Faim Cove, Sydney had tramped the streets vainly seeking wOl k Poverty drove him to smoide." i. + Wanoa Maons have bee<n holding a "tangi" on a dead chief for the past thiee months, and are going yen "strong" yet. Seems to me 1 that one Maori death is no valid reason why the authorities should let the rest of the tube tangi themselves holus bolus into etei nity. * # * Moie "fun" at Danneviike. Some youths diove tacks into a saddle so that the points would stick into the horse's back w hen the rider mounted Hoise bolted, and the ndei was thrown on to a budge where he lav until picked up bv pa=sei sbv How very fond colonial youths are of "fun." ■X * * A propos of a he universally published, which told the world that a certain clersrvman rewarded proficient Sundayschool kiddies with cork-tipped cigarettes, the saad clergyman was deluged with shocked letters, mostly containing tracts. He has sued the onginators of the lie — a London daily — and ha* been awarded £300 damages