Afternoon Tea Gossip

Free Lance, Volume V, Issue 220, 17 September 1904, Page 10

Afternoon Tea Gossip

By Little Miss Muffitt.

A MEMBER of the Wanganui Education Board declares that school-teaching is but a stopgap for girls until they get married. Which is, of course, pzactically tiue. But, he has the amazing audacity to assert that, this being leap year, the number of women school-teachers who have left the service to marry is much larger than ever before. * * * Signor Jerome Internosia, Italian Consul at Montreal, has been com ting an American' millionaire's daughter, amd she won't have him. He has sent in the following bill to papa — "465 hours spent in courting your daughter, at 8s per hour, £186." How he must have loved her! * * * Next year America and Geimany will be plunged in gory war. From 1907, for ten years theieafter, all the great nations of the earth will fight bitterly. Then, arbitration will succeed the sword, and there will be peace. lam sure of these facts, because a New Plymouth spiritualist says so. * ♦ • A Wellington cyclist, if he is unlucky, can pick up a nail every few yards, as all the waste articles of this description -from buildings seem to be cast where bikes and horses cam. most readily traverse them. But a Christchurch bikist recently got a puncture m his bike tyre fiom an unusual source. He ran over a hedgehog in the dark. * * * Being a girl, I cannot see any joke in this. A literary man tells me that, during his bi-weekly shaye 1 the other morning, he found his razor horribly dull. He told his devoted wife about it, and remarked that it was terribly blunt, and he couldn't make out why. "Blunt?" she remarked. "Why, I sharpened all your pencils with it yesterday, and it cut beautifully." Is this funny? * » • The savour of South African exswaddies is not sweet in Australia. Mrs. Stuart, wife of an ex-command-ant of the South Australian forces, reoently died from shook on finding that burglars had broken into her house during her absence, and stolen many valuables. • The papers thereaway say that these repeated burglaries are due in a great measure to ex-soldiers. Old habit, I suppose. * * * If you are sick of the humdrum colonial life, you ought to go to London. Jobs are so plentiful. Fancy having this thrown at one in a single glorious piece. It is from a London daily — "Wanted, a clerk, twenty to thu ty, able to correspond in French and Geiman, and good at accounts; salary £45 a year. Apply ." In the same paper this occurs: — "Wanted, a strong horse to do the work of a country minister." * * # The warship truly is a grand But perishable trinket . It takes five years to build it, and A half an hour to sink it * • • I hear from Wanganui that a very poor washerwoman there was arraigned before the awful "beaks" for not sending her child to school. She was fined 10s. As she earned about 5s a week, and had to struggle along somehow on that, she couldn't pay the fine — in default, imprisonment. There is something pretty rotten in the law when a local paper has to call on the townspeople to subscribe 10s m ordei that a struggling widow shall not go to gaol. Increasing the birth-rate, indeed ' A crowd of very anxious Woodvillians waited on the railway platform of that hamlet the other day, and watched the incoming train with much interest. They seemed very disappointed when the train slowed up. They were evidently expecting someone. Said a man who was wearing the bell-topper and frock-coat brought to the colony bv his giandfather, to the guard- "Ain't thf* Governor come?" "Yes, of course he's in the horse-truck at the far end." The horrified wearei of the hat was about to strike the disloyal guard when "The Governor," with arched neck and glossy coat, stepped on to the platform and neighed a loud welcome to Woodville.

Westport has debased itself, and humiliated the country once more hy accepting a library donation from Carnegie, the gentleman who wuote "Triumphant Demociacy," and who, in 1892, looked out his woikers, and, when the military got to work on them, six of them got shot dead, and twelve weie wounded. » * * Theie's a Southern editoi who would make a detective — of a sort. A man offered to take a reporter round the 6ly-groggeiies. The proud editoi published the name of the man and the news. Likewise, the date on which the "smelling out" ceremony would eventuate. And now he wondtars why the promised guide won't guide One never knows one's luck! Owing to the stamp on a post-card coming off m his pocket, an Australian merchant discovered that his friend was carrying on a clandestine correspondence with his wife. Messages were written in a minute hand under the postage stamps on illustrated post-cards. He got a divoice. A postage stamp would have covered a multitude of things in this case. * * * Papa on the Terrace had bought a new gun. Papa's daughter had a young man — and a young bi other. The two lovers were wasting very little gas indeed one recent night. The little brother knew it. He went to papa. "Pa, Mr. Jinks is in the sitting-room with Corelia. He wants to see your new gun '" Papa, who is a great sport, wa,s veiy pleased 1 at the interest of Jinks He took the gun, and went into the sitting-room. To this day he doesn't know why Jinks dived out of thf French window, and 1 never returned * * * Quaint and true story about a lawyer. A man asked him a question in the street about some small matter of _ a right-of-way in dispute between himself and a neighbour Said lawyer billed) him for 6s Bd. The man was a poultry farmer, and sold the lawyer four dressed fowls for the table, for which he charged him 6s Bd. They were small fowls. The lawyer, who kept a few prize fowls, wondered where four of them had gone, and, after an examination of somei legs in the dustbox, reckons he and his family have eaten them * * • Champion wanted of the week- — "Required, for a Hawke's Bay station, a single-handed kitchenmaid, who assists housemaid short time morning only; slight knowledge of cooking Protestant , aged 16 ; no spectacles — Address, etc." It may be intensely desirable that the girl who prepares the ca/bbagre should be a Protestant, but the objection to spectacles is much harder to understand. _ If I had to cnoo^ie between a slug in the cabbaere dinner and spectacles 1 on thie kitchenmaid's nose in the kitchen, mv vote, if T had a hundred, would unhesitatingly be foi the latter.