Afternoon Tea Gossip

Free Lance, Volume V, Issue 229, 19 November 1904, Page 10

Afternoon Tea Gossip

By Little Miss Muffitt.

A LADY help at Thorndon tells me that she can't stand being treated like one of the family any more, and she takes* a ballet as> "good general" next week for a change. She has the advantage over the husband, who will still be treated as one of the family. • * • The Federal Parliament spends £137,54b a year in running lt&ell. Theie are hve other Australian Parliament© which ran the countiy for that much less before the federal business started. What they lose in cash they gain in dignity, or something. • * * By the publication, in a Sydney paper, of the photograph of a beautiful girl used in the picture merely to illustrate a new hat, the said beautiful girl has been recognised by an Enquiry Bureau as the defaulting wife oi a peer's younger son. She struck hard tunes in Australia, hence her occupation. # . Tasmania's new Governor, Sir Gerald Strickland, looks almost eighteen, but he is really neaily thirty. It is supposed that the Pnnoe of Wales gives potential Australian Governors the tip not to assume too much frill now-a-days, and the result is that most of the Australian Governors are nearly as approachable as Lord Plunket. « • * I notice that Lord Ranfurly's popular secretary, Major Alexander, has been birthday-honoured with a C.M.G.nship. This is probably out of compassion for the poor Major, who had to be dragged all over New Zealand with his ex-Ex-cellency. I note also that an ironmaster has been baionetted. What has E. M. Smith done to be in the ruck, * and not even a knighthood? • * • Those who, like myself, cannot remember the year 1830, and how grandma used to dress, ought to have been at the Melbourne Cup meeting. They would have observed giddy young things of forty or fifty summers dressed in the series of floppy polonaises and Salvation Army bonnets in which girls of eighteen used to think they looked all right when good Queen Victoria took the oath « • • Mr. W. H. Barber, while mounted on a bicycle, fell from a gieat height, and escaped without injury. You're thinking about the member for Newtown. I mean "Diavolo," the "looping the looper," who, when half way round the loop in Sydney, dropped 1 off, bike and all, and fell through the net underneath. Most Diavolos get killed, and Mr. W. H. Barber is about the fourth of that name. • • * Ex-Governor Beauchamp, the coldest, the most exclusive, and the youngest of all Australian Governors, is coming out of his conservative shell. In England' he has been advocating that women should have a right to vote on County Councils. He's only been married a year, and I piesume he is being led to see the eiror of his past ways. There was born a young Beauchamp last week, if you remember. • * * I suppose you have noticed the clockbells in the Post Office tower aie not a^ discordant as formerly. I don't know whether they have been tuned, but they certainly are more musical. A propos of bells, which most Welhngtomans think a nuisance, devil-killing beJls in China have been ringing night and day for a thousand years. Every time a bell rings a devil dies. Seventeen hundred million devils have perished up to now. • » • I suppose a "School for Journalists" for ladies is all nght, seeing thait T. P. O'Connor says so. A Miss Cartwright has started such a school in London. The school is under the directorship of a leal live baroness, a marquise, and others. Nobody without a faculty for scribbling, I should think, would risk much cash in tuition. If they want to spend money in learning the art, or contracting the disease, of writing, they should writ© for several years, and keep the MS., after which they should scatter the lot broadcast. If one per cent, is accepted, the writer may be considered to have learnt her art, and no school on earth will help to swell the per centage.

A i ecent snapshot of Piesident Roosevelt addressnig the electors showt, that it takes a two and a-half gaUon jugful ot water to assuage the thirst of the rough-rider. * * * Dowie is reported to have leseued tluee ladies who were thiown out of a capsized boat into Lake Michigan. It is about time the prophet did something useful. « ♦ * The rathei able defence of a down-at-heels person, who Fa* gazing fixedly in the windows of a Willi.SHS.ti eet pawnbroker, and who was told to "move on" by the police, was Well a man can look into his old clothes cupboard if he likes, can't he?" * * * A propos of "Milk, oh," and the convictions recorded against a few Wellington vendors of the pioduct, a Pasteur Institute professor says the only way to attain long life is to drink soui milk' Milk vendors will please accept thus intimation. No cards. * • * Those ten sailors of the. Baltic fleet who were shot to keep the othei s from deserting. You didn't happen to hear of those five hundred Russian sailoi s who immediately volunteeied to be targets for their own mates, in order to avoid contact with Jappy, did you? * * * Thus the cable man in a great Sydney daily — "It is Russia's failuie to thoroughly lecognise that she has played with edged tools once too often that creates such a condition of explosiveness that the least spark may le&ult in a blaze." Must have been • Cup" time. * • * "Lovely Woman," the hteraiy atiocity written by the author of the "Unspeakable Soot," solely as a commercial undertaking, involved the said 1 author in several libel suits. The meanest man — next to the author — I have heard of is a Welhngtoman, who sent a cony of the book to a former fiancee, and wrote on the cover "Them's my sentiments." * # • Scene, local office of oversea shipping company: time, day piior to arrival ot Home steamei , business bi isk generally , perspiring clerks working at high pressure Telephone rings for the hundied and twentieth time. Lady's voice "Is that Messrs. So and So. I want a good general seivant. Have you any domestics arriving in the s.s. ?'" And the clerk removed hus face from the machine to breathe a prayer he did not learn at his mother's knee. * * ♦ Padeiewski, although a married man. got deluged with love letters tied up with ribbon while m Melbourne One lady wrote twenty-five verses showing that she was willing to trip hand in hand with him down wattle-strewn asphalt paths 1 to the tune of rippling, rose-water fountains., through an eternal, ever-blooming, luscious spiing. The lamb-like frisker asked the great Pole to kindly set it to music, and despatch by return post — she wanted to sing it at the Good Templars' social tomorrow night. Stamps were enclosed. And! Paderewski, with his celebrated "Bah I" passed it to his? chief tearer-up for destruction.

The now him of Paik and Bask", , banisters and solicitous, and patent and tiade-maik agents, i's bound to command 1 a \ery largo blrnie of public pationage Both princmals ha\e a colonial reputation Mr. A J Paik, of Dunedin, has had seventeen >eais' expenence of patent and has published a book on the subject Mi G. W. Barley was foi fifteen \e«us Government patent officer in Auckland wheie also he was deputy registiai of the Supieme Couit. The new him aie very fortunate in securing Mr. H. P Richmond as manager of their head office at Wellington. Mi . Richmond is a nephew of thei late Judge Richmond, and a young man of great talent. He is a B.A. and LL.B. of the New Zealand University, has done good work in journalism, and dunns: the three years he was with Skeri ett and Wyhe, and the last twelve month* he has been with Mr. Tudor Atkinson, has piovf 1 h m-olf a clevei youn<r lawyer The now fvm =tirts w ith the brightest fjro^pects. * * * Mr. H Nelson, of Nelson, Moate, and Co , Ltd , has just resumed fi om his trip Home. On his way back to the colony he made a stay at Ceylon, taking the opportunity to visit and inspect the tea-growiner districts in the inteiests of his firm and their extensive tea business He also opened a branch office at Colombo foi the purpose of buying and shipping tea to Ins company in this colony.