Afternoon Tea and gossip

Free Lance, Volume VI, Issue 263, 15 July 1905, Page 10

Afternoon Tea and gossip

By Little Miss Muffitt

AN old offender, who faced Dr. McAxthur for the seventh time, on a charge of dramkeness, the other day, was sent to gaol for seven days. On his cell wall was written "Jug not that ye be not jugged. In the State of Missouri it is a punishable offence to "shout" for anyone in a drink saloon. But, in the Far West it is an offence punishable by the neglected one's gum to refuse to pay for "the crowd." * * * What tremendous cable items we read! I learn that the ten-year-old son of a peer has. just been sent to school. I sancerely hope he will get sts many spankings as the common or garden schoolboy. ♦ • * If I were the Corporation I wouldn't import any more oars a while. Id wait and see if the crinolines with which London, and Paris are threatened are coming here. There us no modern vehicle that would take an 1830 crinoline. Not that I remember 1830, 01 course. After all, it isn't quite fair to 'poke borax" at the J.P., who is evidently m some oases a learned man, going to the length of quoting Latin. A Haiwke'a Bay J.P. recently asserted 1 , after hearing evidence against an accused person, that a "primo faictum" case had been madte out, and remanded the prisoner to the Supreme Court. * * * A Japanese paper, in complaining bitterly against the exclusion of Japanese from Australia, says the men who compose Australian Parliaments are so ignorant as to be unable to speak the language correctly. It is therefore necessary to employ gentlemen of high education called "Hansard" to translate their remarks into readable form. * * • Lady Florence Dixie, who astonished poor old Emgland years ago by riding astride to hounds, writes m support ot the "simple life" thus: — "Nature bids us rise w~ith the lark, and go to lest when night steals across her form." As the lark only rises with the dawn, this would give us about eighteen, hours m bed during the winter months. Newspaper writers wouldn't mind, of course, but the proprietors! » * * They have had cold and frosty weather in the Wairarapa lately, and a Wellington man, noted for his cheeriness, went up the line the other day on business. When he got to his destination, he jumped' out, slapping his hands together. "This is invigorating, isn't it?" he remarked to a man with a stockwhip. ''No, sir! You must ha' got out at the wrong station. This is Woodsidel" • « * God bless the New Zealand inspectors! One of them found a man in Pahiatua the otter day who had too muich milk for his own family, and therefore gave half to a friend. He served him with a notice to register as a diairy-keeper, or threatened him with the law. The man now throws the surplus oow product away. Silly laws and inspectors hankering after "cases" are choking: all the kindness out of New Zealanders. » • • A local chauffeur, believing he could shave a passing pedestrian by a hair's breadth the other day, didn't manaee it. He bumped 1 the pedestrian, and heaped him up on the footpath. A littJe girl and her mother were passing, and the little one, with the curiosity of youth, remarked: "Oh, mum, let me see the man who was knocked over by the oar !" Replied the mother • "Oh, never mind darling, there will be another further down the street." • * • The marriaee of Lady Mary Lygon reminds me that Mr. Seddon once presented her with a book which was afterwards discovered by a book hunter in a second-hand shop in London, and purchased for 2d. It is now that hunter's most honoured relic, and dearer to him than life itself. The presumption was that Lady Mary always carried the book with her as a priceless relic, and was robbed' by a pickpocket. She feared to advertise for it, in case Mr. Seddon should hear about the loss, and send her another.

General Booth was given free railway and steamer passes all through Australia. The colonies won't give General Booth free passes after he ha® been sending his shiploads of the "almost damned" of England out for a year or When a girl tells her lovev that none of "the others" have ever given her so nice an engagement ring., and when he replies, that it is the one he always uses, it is silly of her to cry. Girl® get into an old-fashioned habit of believing themselves the only jewellery receptacle hei oares about. Mr. Wright, the Bible-mr schools evangel, says that 90 per oent. of the people of New Zealand 1 "follow some kind of religion." About half of these, however, don't overtake it, and these are the people who should! be taught, so that they, and not the teachers, might instruct the children. * * * I learn, from an unreliable source, that a Mormon gentleman has been billed while motoring m Salt Lake City. The authorities have therefore prohibited automobiles, seeing that his death left twelve ladies without a husband, and 1 the whole of the children in the Twelfth-street School orphans. Although those goad people wiho distribute tracts are not so plentafu.l as they used to be, there are still a few who lighten the sinner's: path. Last Sunday, in Cuba-street, a miournfullooking lady stopr>«d a middle-aged, jolly-looking mar andi handed him a tract. He glanced at it, and handed it back. "Thank you, all the same," hie said, "but I'm married!" The title of the tract was : "Abide with me." • * * A local lawyer looked straight at me with a pair of those honest, bluie eyes that help a lie so beautifully, and told me of a client who had stolen a horse. He went to the (lawyer. "I couldn't help stealing him," said the man, "hie wias such a beauty!" "You'll go to gaol assure as anything!" the lawyer told him. "But if you had offered to biuy the horse, and had forgotten to pay tine bill, you'd be looked upon in the courts as an honest man." And there is true philosophy in that lawyer's assertion.

First comes the chills, with other ills, To set us all a-sneezing. We pay our bills and make our wills, With coughing and with wheezing. » Around our beds, with shaking heads, The doctors keep us poor, Till all our dread at last is sped By Woods' Great Peppermint Cure.