Afternoon Tea Gossip

Free Lance, Volume VI, Issue 274, 30 September 1905, Page 10

Afternoon Tea Gossip

By Little Miss Muffitt

ONE often wonders why Ameracans should build "sky-scrapers." When one considers the extraordinary rush fox dollars in America, it is not hard to conclude that they build those tall buildings to steal the silver lining of the clouds. • • • If "all's well that ends well," I should think a girl with a pair of mew 35s boots on, and a four-guinea hat, ought to be well. Sam© with a. dog that has a oold nose and a wagging tail. Also, a beer barrel, whose last punt is as good as its first. • * * It rather amuses one to read frequently that such and 1 such an ancient "loyal Maori" did, etc., etc. The loyalty consisted' in fighting against his own blood. Equally loyal were the "Boer National Scouts." The Boers call it by another name. • • * I heard' a rather quaint conversation a propos of the boxing contest at the Opera House last week. One girl asked if Hock Keys was a Chinaman, and the otfher explained that before he took to fighting for a living he was a hockey champion, and took the title as a "noun die guerre." • ♦ » The laziest "general" I have heard about was the girl who couldn't find a pudding cloth. She used! the end of her apron — which she didn't take off. Her mistress found her standing close up to the boiler waiting until the pudding was cooked. Nobody took pudrding, and the cook "took .her hook." • • * Delightful sample of typographical peculiarities from an account of a country wedding': — "She tore the ortho dox wreath of orange blossoms, and harried a beautiful flower bouquet." Sound® fearfully destructive for a bride. The said bridle has probably sent the groom round to interview the printer before this. • • • Pohipi te Hau had a pedigree seven feet long — at least it took a seven-feet length of paper to write it on. This little document was discussed in the EJaiapoi Native Court the other day, although Pohipi has long since been with the genitlemen and) ladies named in the document. The court looked as if it understood the genealogical maze. • • • Thus Auckland "Herald," in referring to the Savage Club closing korero . "Mr. Yon Haast, the founder of the club, himself an Austrian nobLeamaai," etc. Mr. Yon Haast must wear his patent of nobility next year, and try to forget that he was born in New Zealand, and is a New Zealander, in order to live up to the gorgeousaiess thrust upon him by the Northern paper. • • • Give, oh, give me back my heart! Which one? A propos, a man (American, of course) has discovered that he has two heart®, one on each side. A doctor offered him £2000 to let 'him chop one beater out, but he refused. He has offered to sell his whole system — after death — to anybody who will pay for it now. A girl wouldn't know which of his hearts she had won, would she? Said a lady speaker at a Christchurch public meeting: — "TJndler the present law a Maori or a naturalised Chinaman is eligible to offer himself for election , whilst the most re-finedl and cultured woman is debarred." The trouble is that only one refined' amd cultured woman in 10,000 wants to become an M.H.R. If some of the women put it nicely, the men would 1 be only too happy to stay at home and nurse, the babies. • • • A leather cutting remark was made at a recent golden wedding celebration not a dozen versts from Wellington. The old 1 lady, who, possibly, was mieaitally looking backward over the storm and stress and' joy of the years that had been, was visibly affected, and her eyes were bright with teardrops. "Mrs. is crying," said a guest. "Perhaps 1 you would cry too if you had been married' to -a man for fifty years," snapped the other, who, in the past fifty years, had not been married.

Mr. J. P. Luke waib observed in front of the "Times" offioe on Fuday morning, September 22nd, with tears m has eyeb. Mi". Luke is a Corni&hman. • • * From London "Td>-Bits" • "No person in New ,Zaland can hold monethan b4O acres of first-class land." Will Mr. Rutherford lundly excuse my smile, and Mr. Buchanan pardon my levity? • * * Mr. Jusitace Edwards was presenitod by the bar at Gisborne with a pair of w lute gloves the other day — -no criminal cas-es. His Honor said -he had been kept m white gloves for quite a while b> Blenheim., which seems to indicate that Blenheim is the most smle e s spot m New Zealand. "G-erti ude" has been good enough to send me a photograph of Miss Mam:e Bab, the American girl who will be the onllv female human being on the Peary North Pole expedition ship "Roosevelt." Formerly I feared for the hearts of the sailors. Having seen the photo, I hiave no fear. More Merrie England! A London step-father threw his wife's three-and-a-half-year-old- chiid "like a ball" from one room to another. When he wanted to leave the house, he put the child in a bowl of water, "because he didn't know where else to put her." H© was warned not to do it again, and discharged ! • • • There is .not one- law for the rich, and another for the poor, in England. 1 read tlhat a retired Army officer, who, as secretary to a society, defaulted' to the tuine of many hundreds, was sentenced to twa days' gaol. In the sarnie paper a butler was sent to penal servitude for five years for stealing from his master a sum far smaller than the officer stole. WhyP » * • Another meanest man. He lives south, and has a, wife and 1 eight children. Comine noirth, he found! that a woman to whom he had been, engaged seventeeni years ago, was living in the Wellington province. H© called on her, and demanded back the presents he had given her in the dear dead days. The woman's husband gave him a present of a boot — with a foot in it. • • • A local school-teacher, with a political bent, told his pupils the other day of the mark Alfred the Great bad madte on the laws of England. He wanted to know from the smart boy of the class what practical part in politics Alfred would have taiken had' he lived to this day? The boy replied l that he would have been too old for politico, "and would most likely get a job in the Legislative Council, like me uncle!"

When colds andinfluenza rage, They add to life a dismal page, They make us all look twice our age — And scatter death around. ' Tis then we find a friend so sure, In William Woods' Great Peppermint Cure, Which, always certain, always pure, Will save us many a pound.

Arthur H. Adams, the new associate -editor of the "Times," skipped mto the Lance office the other day, and smiled. Before he left he had smilea twelve times, and laughed a couple of dozen large, healthy, lull-toned laughs, alternating with three or four unctuous chuckles. This is to relieve the anxiety of friends who believed, from a recent Lanoe par, that a deep amd abiding gloom had settled on the soul of the poet, author, and journalist. He is the brother of — but there ! he has. asked us to "dis" that standing par. * * * Mr. Adams, barring a frock-coat and bell-topper, indispensable to the London man, is still very much colonial, and he hasn't lost sympathy with colonial ideas and colonial ways. Colonial "stuff" doesn't take with British editors, unless the writer has never been to the colonies, in wnich case he is accepted as an authority. London seethes with scribblers — men who tackle anything for a crust, from the writing of a "Barling Willie" obituary "pome" to- a solid article in the heavy reviews. There is a "Pen and Pencil" Club in London, whereat the viable Feet-street hacks do foregather to swop experiences, oncl to spend the results of the last, leading article or "penny horrible." * * * One day a "hack" drifted into the <>lub and declared that he had earned £5 that day. Arthur was interested. "What for?" he asked. "Blood!" gurgled the writer, "Forty thousand words of berlud!" He had sat down and fired a penny horrible at the typewriter. The week after all the boys ot London were reading of "Hairy Harry, the Hawk-eyed Horror" — or something. Arthur speaks of the portentous respectability of the London man. Everybody who goes to the city carries the "Financial News," to impress the wayfarer with the large amount of stock he has been able to purchase with his 20s salary. He ap<pears to be reading stock quotations by the half-penny "Daily Terror" — >an illustrated daily is on the inside, and he is readling about Lady Mary Thingumbob's latest divorce, or eloatine over the picture of the pea-nut seller who married tho Countess of Whatisnmme. » • * The solemnity of British feeding impressed Arthur. One restaurant he knows contains a huge grill or grating surrounded bv cook'?, and bearing immense, drip- "- ?ory, raw steaks. The

heavy city main approaches the grill, and eolemnly views the slaughter, then. he indicates about two pounds of beef, and says he will have that. The deferential cook takes the chosen chunk reverentially, and hies ihini to the fire. It is <a sacrament. Mr. Adams presumes the city men work in the afternoon — after the light "lunch" — and 1 doesn't know how they manage it. Once, at "The Cheese," a tavern soaked in< associations of Johnson, some Americans asked' for "nine lemonades." The aa-chbishophke person who was heiad-waiter said never a word, and staggered 1 apoplecticallv to

his room. A mam after copy wrote up the awful incident for a Harmsworth paper, and the head-waiter solemnly called round, ajid protested against the frightful insolence. The writer was arraigned before the managerial tribune, and it was decided that he hadi too much imagination. He was made a subeditor. Poor crippled devil ! ♦ * • Harmsworth's reckon to use a man up in three months. They dion't want anything except the first freshness of a writer's brains. They pay him liberally — for three months — then "out you go!" A propos, Sir Alfred! of that ilk once strolled into ome of his numerous

offices, and fund a man at work wham he didn't remember. Said he: "TJm, what are you doing?" "Writing leadiers, sir." "Urn, bow long hare tou been heire?" Two years, sir." "Two years! Good heavens! Some mistake I'm sure. By the way, what's your name?" "Oh, I'm your brother, Sir Alfred!" • ♦ * A man moving in "society" at Home with views we consider reasonable is looked upon as a "orank." At a society function, Mr. Adfams was asked to tell about New Zealand. He spoke of the progressive ideas of the country, and favoured resumption 0/ land', old age pensions, arbitration, and all the rest of it. "Then you are a Radical, Mr. Adams?" quoth a countess. "No; merely a liberal," said he. "What an awful place this — cr — New Zealand must be. In England, you know, it is only cheesemongers and — ©r — that sort of people who hold those views, you know!" • • * Arthur went with a party to the Mediterranean to recuperate. He was "all to bits," nerves gone, and all the rest of it. Two millionaires were in the party. One was a great, glowing imperialist, with a suspdcioim of Union Jack all over him. The mian had cotton mills in every country of Europe where labour was cheap, and had shut down his Yorkshire and Lancashire mills ! Mr. Adams often, ran up to Oxford, where one can have the very best time in all England' — with the right set. He was struck with the pathetic deference shown by the peasantry to the "gentry." Once a bucolic, whom he had never seen, humbly pulled! his forelock. His wife "went at the knees" — "curtsied." • • * Mr. Adams asked him the whyfore of this humility. The man gaped, and twisted his hat in his bands. Arthur impressed him with the absurdity of bis cringing, and turned away. As he did so the man showed Ins appreciation of the seirmon by pulling his forelock some more. The woman again "went at the knees." Perhaps, you don't know Mr. Adams wrote the "Strenuous Life'" before Sutro built "The Walls of Jericho" — of which the plot is similar. The "Walls" pourtrays a London, Jew's idea of colonial life and colonial people — and "The Strenuous Life" is a colonial mian's idea of the same thing. Pleas© excuse us. We want a bit of the Lance for other things.