Afternoon Tea Gossip

Free Lance, Volume V, Issue 221, 24 September 1904, Page 10

Afternoon Tea Gossip

By Little Miss Muffitt.

WE smile when we hear that So-and-so is staying away from work merely because he has got the influenza. But, five peivoiu. in New Zealand lost their reason last year through the disease, and seven the year before. Influenza isn't a bit funny. Curiously, the new hangman for New South Wales is a teetotaler. "Newsletter" thinks it strange that he should earn his living by giving others a drop too much. * * * In a photograph showing a meet of the Pakuraoiga (Auckland) Hunt Club, I notice one lady mounted man-wise, wearing a divided skirt. She looks what my small brother would call a "guy," and if she knew about it she'd either give up ridin^ or buy a sidesaddle. # Mr. Haselden, S.M., who heaid a debt case against a theatrical company at Chnstchurch, said he had a great deal of sympathy with companies that didn't meet with a good reception, and therefore couldn't pay their way. While in Wellington the sportine S M. was a constant patron of vaudeville. * ♦ * Suicide Whittaker Wrights palace in Surrey was put up for auction the other day. It wasn't sold. The wall aiound it "had cost £37,000. Wright wanted a good high wall round his house and lound his actions. Still, walls have ears. When the bidding reached £149,000, the auctioneer gave it up m disgust. It's worth about two millions. * * * Because a British countess who is a leader of fashion, wears a moustache she can't help her immediate circle of lady followers being in the hands of pi ofessional haii-iaisers, undeigoina; a forcing process. To have a slight down on the upper lip is considered quite the thing among brunette beauties. Most brunettes and blondes have down on their lips at some time. — but it is only lent bv gentlemen friends. A piopos of the suggestion to give Government-oommandeered sly-giog to the hospitals at Christ-church, the other day thirty-nine gallons' of brandy weie pouied into the gutteis because the consignee wouldn't pay the duty. The police had a warm quarter of an hour holding back the rush of topers. I'm wondering if all the Customs men are prohibitionists, and, if not, whethei one could get a "tot" at any of then homes now? * * * I am bound to accept it as true, because a parson who has just been doing "Gay Paree" tells me it is. Bald men in the French capital now hire their waste spaces to advertisers, and parade the giddy boulevardes bareheaded announcing matinees at cafes chantant, and all that sort of thing. Also, the value of pills, and so on. One man was recently arrested for being an advertisement hoai ding without having the official seal of the Republic on his scalp. Thank you, parson' * * * Australian High Court Judge Ba'iton has solemnly and sincerely declared, conscientiously believing the same to be true, that a pig is not a cow, and a goat is not a steei . It takes the highest tribunal in the land to settle these vexed questions A New Zealand judge the other day had to give his opinion as to what a "full-mouthed" sheep was. I should have much liked to see His 1 Honor in the drafting yards seizing the nimble jumbuok by the leg, and examining its grass-cutters. * • * An English lady, who has been a 1 esident of this happy country for about a month, complains that her washerwoman didn't tui n up the other day, and says "she might have written saying she couldn't come." When thn English lady knows us better she will find that the marchioness of the soapsuds had probably taken advantage of a fine morning to wear about £20 worth of silk attire in "doing the block," and had instructed her nrivate secretary to send her cards "with regret," and that the secretary had l forgotten. For the first time in her life the English lady is cooking an English gentleman's meals, too She'll get used to it.

I'm wondeimg whether it will pay Russia bettei to give Japan the hunched millions she demands and her fleet, or throw the handled millions away in being beaten, by the Japs. The lattlei, I expect. When is a man intoxicated ? It has been advanced by a learned legal luminary that if he can stand in the centie of a room without suppoit he is not drunk. "Support" is good, especially if it 16 the Scotch kind. The Maon gentleman m the Waikato who put the muzzle of a gun in his mouth, and pulled the tnggei, requnes a new set of teeth. Otheiwibe, he's pietty well. If he'd got a boy with a pea-rifle to do the shooting he'd be in the cemetery he longed foi e'ei tins I notice that the owners of sci übbvlookmg hillsides m the suburbs (same kind of land as the Town Belt) have planted shrubs and haidy plants which are thriving like docks. The City Council has a lot of gorse, ti-tiee, and other flowering "shrubs" on similar land They might take a hint. He who fights and runs away From awful battle scenes, May live to write them up some day. For all the magazines. * * * A Wanaiapa lawyer asked a peison before the court the other day if he could lead. He stiffened with pride, and said he could, "and write too " The lawvei asked him to read an account owing bv him to plaintiff. "Since me wife threw boiling water in me eves," he leplied, "I haven't been able to rpad." And the wife, who was m the- court, was restiamed with difficulty from eettine; that husband into "hot water" again. * ♦ • An Enehsh papei , in criticising Mi Izett's "Maori Lore," advises the New Zealand Government to cancel the issue If I might be peimitted to advise the Bi ltish people, I would suggest that a wholesale pruning of British history books is even more necossaiv than the cancellation of "Maoi i Lore " We want to forget what extremely sad scamps oui revered Biitish sovereigns have been. I'd start on Henry VIII with a big black pamt-binsh * * * Since people have been warned that dynamiting safe-breakers are about, they have, of couise, been anxiously lying awake at night listening foi detonations. A local storekeeper, who foolishly keens his cash in a safe, was awakened the other night by a loud explosion. He collected his wavering courage, and hooked on to the family revolver, which hasn't been oiled fc years, and sallied down into the shop. He heard a lemarkable fizzing. It was probably the dynamite dying away. r * *■ He called out to the burglais to stand and deliver, but they didn't. Concluding, of course, that his intrepid action had frightened the burglais away, he investigated. Some pieces of a ginger-beer bottle weie scattered about, and several others were fizzing, and a oork was found imbedded in a pound of "Defiance." His fluttering heart ceased to flutter, and he went back to bed.