Entre Nous

Free Lance, Volume VI, Issue 278, 28 October 1905, Page 12

Entre Nous

HE is reckoned to be one of the smartest "commercials ' in Wellington, and was looking for nn empty compartment in a train which was ready to, start from au up-country station. All were full. Coming to the rear carnage, he flumg open a door and cried in an authoritative manner • "AM change here; this carriage isn't going 1" There was a scuffle among the passengers, and the whole 1 oarria,*efull of people turned out grumbbng, and stowed themselves away forward. • • • The "commercial" selected a seat to his liking, and, seating himself, lighted a cigar, and possibly thought: 'It's u grand thing for me that I was bora clever. I wish they would hurry up and start." Presently, the stationmaster put his head m at the window, and said : "I s'pose you're the smart young fellow who told the, people^ that this carriage wasn't going?" .'^ e^\, said the clever young man. . We 7 ( '., said the station-master, with a grin, it isn't. A porter heard you telling the people, so he uncoupled it. He thought you were an official with orders from head-quarters !" That young man missed his passage. * * • A Dunedm amateur strong man advertised that he was going to have a tug-of-war mth a draught horse the other day. Also, hold the horse with his teeth, and so on. It sounds all right. A draught horse on a level road will often "start" five or six tons, and so, of course, even, supposing the horse pulled three tons, there isn't a living man could hold him. The usual method of strong men pulling against horses is to pull two — one each way— the man in the centre. Gordon, who came round here with a circus, was not a specially strong man, and he did 1 this with ease. There isn't a living man who could pull against a twelve-hand Maori "weed" — if the "weed" was willing. The .amateur who is as strong as a horse is the brother of a local solicitor. A lot of fellows with about fourpence half-penny and a mew suat get married, possibly feeling that as father has kept them up to now he will continue to do so. At a recent Wellington wedding, which the bridegrooms father had tried to prevent, but without success, the usual solemn service was in course of recital. The father was looking on anxiously. The parson remarked: "With all my wordly goods I thee endow," and the bridegroom repeated it. In a whisper that oourtd be heard all over the church, pa sand : "Good heavens, there go his bicycle and fishing rod!"

There are many trials for beardless youths. One little politician, who . is bright and clever, but very boyoshlooCg, was Welling for the tot time <£ bis free railway pass. The guard, a large, fatherly character, wellSown on the' Southern "road," asked him for his ticket. The new M.H.R. Suced Ins pass. . The guard, looked at him with pity in his eyes for his vmithful indiscretion. "Where did you get ' thU my little lad?" he asked. a M.H.R. can travel on that, you know. You take my advice, and give it back to the man as owns it before you get run in!" Then, someone explained. Another "beardless boy. incident occurred only last Sunday in a, WellmgtonJuburban church. The lay reader who had not previously been to tne church, and who is only nineteen next birthday, walked solemnly in, and stepped up to the reading-desk. Before he could open the book an ancient worshipper rushed up^ and touched him on the shoulder. "Here, my lad, what are you up to? Don't yon know that only the parson is allowed up here? And the lad is going to be a parson some day. • * * Said a man wath spectacles, glancing up at something fluttering from a XdowonTiafafgarDay. "My word^ that's a queer flag! What nafaum does an all-red flag represent ?" "That am t Tflag, mister That's a girl drying her hair!" True bill. "J B." is a bit belated on a muoh-wrestled-with topic : —"Talking about the tram-car business, I have got up and given my seat to women, young and old just thirty times in two months. One old lady, with silvery haar, smiled and bowed to me. I felt a happy, rewarded sort of feekng stealing about the car That's all right; but what about the twenty-nine women who turned round and said nothing and smiled not? If women are polite and) smiling they can get what they want every time but a graven image with an insignificant nose and a look of age, can hang on to the strap for ever. ♦ * * One of the chief hobbies of a lady who glides in high society in Wellington is the collection of antiques— vases, china, bronzes, etc. Many collectors from different parts of the colony call on ncr to see the show, which is not at all bad 'Twas only last week that a most distinguished-looking person called As she had previously received a letter from a travelling Army officer from India, she presumed! this wias ne, and showed him round the whole museum. "I do so dote on the antique!" she gushed, as she showed, him a bronze goddess from Pompeii, or Kaiwarra or somewhere. The distraguieh-ed-looking person said he was very glad indeed to hear she was interested in antiques, because he had' on ham a bill against her which was dated lyuu, and surely that was antique enough for anything. As she paid 10s on account, she remarked that she would call in to-morrow, and let him have the remaining £9 15s. To-morrow never comes.

"Illustrious brother of the sum and moon 1 Look upon the slave who rolls at thy feet, who kisses the earth before thee, and demands of thy chanty permission to speak and live. We have read the mansuscript with delight. By the bones of our ancestors we swear that never before have we encountered such a masterpiece. Should we print it His Majesty the Emperor would) order us to take it as a criterion, and never again print anything which was not equal to it. As that would) not be possible before 10,000 yeans, all tremblingly we return thy manuscript and beg thee 10,000 pardons. See — my head is at thy feet, and) I am the slave of thy servant." This is not the Free Lance declining a spring "pome," but a Jap editor letting a contributor down lightly. • * * We all know various people Whom we like, or more or less, For divers pleasant attributes, Say grace or helpfulness ; But the one we like the best of all To meet or have about, Is he who listens to our "blow," And doesn't breathe' a doubt. • ♦ • She was just an ordinary, sweet, loving, trustful girl, and' her adoring lover had just got the ring that would' bind her to him until the wedding day, unless sometthing happened. With the artless little way trustful girls have, she got him to tell her where he purchased) that sweet ring. He told her it came from Bluestone and Brasser (the eminent jewellers). Young Circlet, who worked for B. and 8., happens to be her cousin, and, im her confidence, th© sweet girl flashed tne ring at him, and asked him about it, and, the price, and 1 little things like that. • • • Mr. Circlet said the ring certainly did come from B. and B.s — three years ago. This was before the girl's fiancee knew she existed. She sought her lover, and asked him who the "hornd cat" was he used to be engaged to, and got hysterical, and took the rang off and dashed it down in the drawmg-room, and jilted him on the spot, and picked the ring up afterwards, and has it now, and is behaving just like a girl. She will "take him back" if you wait a bit. • * * After ' Phosphoaus Jack" had dteparted for domes unknown, he was seen again in Kent Terrace. Three or four bold, indulgent spirits, returning home from the theatre, were wandering along the Terrace when they sniffed) a smell ot brimstone, and a weird figure drifted round the corner, his overcoat flying open, and disclosing the awful phosphorescent waistcoat. With an eldrich screech the bold young men bolted, and, having got about fifty yardfe, felt that it wasn't very dignified to run from a "ghost." They returned armed with road metal, and surrounded "Jack, and bade him "up with his hands." The gentleman, presuming he was the victim of several escaped lunatics, "Daded up," and it was only when the bold young persons with the road-metal saw that hie was merely a quiet citizen, in evening dress and a white waistcoat, that tlhey cleaared out before the lamp shook with laughter. A shining music case was the chief reason for the awful scare. Poor young chaps! A little nerve tonic wouldn't do them any harm.

A Prohibitionist orator was addtressing a meeting at Palmerston North the other night, and something went wrong with his head. It wasn't liquor ; but there are kinds of intoxication, other than that produced by the flowing bowl, and it was one of these that afflicted him. He was talking about America, and he said : "It is a wonderful country — they put lave sausages in at one end of a factory, and turn out dead pigs at the other." ■* * • The audience were just waiting for a chance, and they took it. They laughed till the tears ran down their cheeks, and all the while the No-License orator was vainly gesticulating on the platform. The noise ceased in a series of spasms, and then somebody told the orator of his funny mistake. He gravely turned to the audience and said : "It seems I mixed! things a bit. What I meant to say was that they put dead hogs in at one end and tunned out lire sausages at th© other." But the audience couldn't laugh any more. * * For several days succeeding the Trafalgar Centenary celebrations some- of the teachers of Wellington impressed vividly on the school-children, great events, and gave informiationi aboutglorious patriots whose deeds live for ever in the annals of the countries which gave them birth. For instance, to test the knowledge of tihe youngsters in regard to these patriots, one teacher asked her class to write out the mimes of celebrated people who had saved their counitries in grave, crises. Seventeen out of nineteen of the pupils headed their lists with "Dick Seddiotii." In reply to a question : "Who was Joan of Arc?" one boy wrote : "Joan of Ark was the wife of Noah of Ark, and let tihe dove loose to swim about to find! tucker for the starving childiren, of Ishmiael." * • • Mr. Wilson, a doctor on the, Antarctic ship Discovery, said that the inclination for alcoholic drinks grew less as one got into the cold, and l went on getting less alcohohcally dry the nearer one got to the Pole. Now, as, a large proportion of Arctic and) Antarctic ships dbn't come back, it would be a very excellent idea for the Government to send out a ship to the Pole about once a year with the twelve months' crop of prohibited persons on board. If they didn't come back — well they would be heroes, and if they did come back, well, they would be sober. In "Patmos," a new book by a New Zealander, aimed at the liquor traffic, a Prohibitionist meeting is sketched. The rowdy element prevails, and' the "trade" people are so very rude and very vociferous that the "Tommy Taylor" of the story cannot say what he wants to say. The book shows the marvellous foresight of "Tommy," by making him lean forward to the eager reporters — to whom alone he is audible — and' fire his speech into fheir willing ears. The public are represented asi being] very angry at the speaker taking this method of doing something they were there to prevent. It isn't the public being angry that seems unusual, or the speakre firintr his speech at the reporters onJy that seems quaint. It is the fact of the reporters eagerly mopping up work at the command of a man who could' have written to the papers that "gets us down."

The ways of some Prohibitionists are past finding out. A bold soul, who doesn't like beer himself, and consequently dislikes anyone who drinks it or has anything to do with it, made a number of remarks in a Waikato town the other day. A few of them were to the effect that there were no women on God's fair earth who were so abamdoned, morally, intellectually, and spiritually, as women connected with the pub-lic-house business. ♦ * * Your mind's eye sees at once a long, long row of buxom, beaming landladies and bright, intelligent, kmdhearted hotel women, does it not? Several hotel ladies went to look for this person, who fired slander from the platform, but he had tripped to another town, where a mere man rose, and accused him o± slandering the women. He denied having done so. But, as the fates would have it, one of the ladies of the previous town was on the spot, and waited tor him With her own fair hands she swept a large slice of street up with the gentleman, and extracted a promise from him that he would never do it any more and then left him, tear-stained and muddy, longing with a large longing for enough manliness to keet> him from sobbing all the way to his board-ing-house. * * * As you know, the West Coast is not vet rejoicing in liquor prohibition, and, from a statement made on one ot the Coast papers, it is evident that the denizens of the "West" are not anticipating the wiping out of the omrsed derrick this election-tame at least, bays the paper: "The new road is to be made md formed only as far as the police station. This will be a boon to almost every inhabitant of the district. There is now a splendid 1 road all the way from the hotel to the station. The other day a police sergeant strolled into the house oi a Christchurch man, and remarked, as he stretched his broad hand towards has victim : "I arrest yez in th© King's name? Oh yez do, do yez!" responded the arrested one, "and might I enquire what farr" "BuWary !" sobbed the sergeant. 'Comeanaveadirink!" purred the burglar "By the way, that remands me o± a song me mother useter song to me when I knelt at her 'allowed knee 1 can stand any amount of that !' " With these words the accused person danced gaily to the tune. It was the sergeant who in court reproduced' the song and dance of the accused as evidlence that "he's the toughest rag 01 lver did see, your WcrsTiip, bedad"' He was a milkman, and he was before the Bankruptcy Court. He was a tired-looking "milky," and he had evidently had a large struggle with rate. Asked as to what cause was responsible for his bankruptcy, he wailed: "The dirink, sir !" "But," questioned the magistrate, "I understood you were a staunch Prohibitionist?" "So I am, sir. You misunderstood me. I put the drink in the milk, and the people wouldn't buy it. Hence my unfortunate position. Three-farthings in the £. • * * Some parsons are strict Sabbatarians. They wouldn't take a car on a Sunday, but would prefer to ride a borrowed hack. One really decent chap, who wears the "cloth/ and who wall allow no work to be done on the Sawbath, turned up to preach to ihe berrethering the other Sunday with one boot shining like a new sovereign, and l the other plastered with mud. Somebody had the temerity to question him on the subject of the odd-looking footwear. "I was, my dear brother," he said, "cleaning those boots at 11.58 on Saturday night, and had only finished one when the midnight hour chimed the message far and near that it was the Sawbath. Hence these feet." We are aisswed that in substance and in fact the story is true. • * * New Zealand butter is very good — that is to say, the New Zealand butter that goes Home. It is a pity we cannot keep some of it for New Zealand consumptDoai. However, a propos of the cow product, English buyers are so keen on getting it that they have armed the agents with motor cars and glib tongues, and several are automobiling round Taranaki buying butter. There is a story being told how that one fat commercial from Leeds heard that a farmer twenty-four miles from Hawera had some particularly fin© butter to sell, and how another bagman from Devonshire heard about it ten minutes later — after the fat fellow had got a start. How he stoked up with amazing swiftness, .and! dashed after him, and fought mile by mile until he beat him, and got to the farmer's buttery five minutes ahead. He dashed into the buttery, and roared • "Here, you've some butter for sale. I'll give you (price mentioned) for it!" "Jimmy/, slowly called 1 the farmer, "bring out that pound and a-half of butter in the dairy- Here's a gentleman from England wants to buy it!" True? Why, of course!

Still another story of a boy who wouldn't "salute the flag" on Trafalgar Day. Said the master to the boy: "You are no patriot!" "I know that," replied the boy. "What are you, then?" asked the schoolmaster, in heated accents, poising his whalebone : "I'm Pat Ryan, sir!" • * * New Zealand will grow anything. This is apparent from the letter received by a Southern branch of the Agraoultuiral Department: — "iMLy wife haid a Tame cat that dyd. For the enrichment of the soil I had the Oarkds deposited under the roots of a Gooseberry Bush (The Frute being up to then, of the smooth variety). But the next Seson's Frute, after the Oat was berred, the Gooseberrys was all Hairy — and! more and more Remarkable the Gaterpileirs of the Same Bush was All of said Hairy description." • * * Mark Twain's place ae> a humourist is to be taken by a Sixth Standard pupil of the Hastings High School. In an essay on the election of men to Parliament this youth wrote : —"One man gets up on the platform to make a suitable speech. He finishes his speech, and is carried along to he nearest hotel, where men drink his health for the next three years." But, will there be any hotels at the conclusion of the next Parliament? • ♦ • Here speaks a lady (per Australian advertisement) who does not belong to the Stinking-fish Party : —"Young lady wishes to correspond with a fellow-Aus-tralian having brains and energy, who knows his country and believes in it. Couldn't some bilious beggar cable Home to England that nobody out this end has got any brains or energy, or Australasia is going to the dogs, or something ? • • * A clever sort of fellow was the hawker who was charged at a country court last week with hawking pills without a license. The pill person's defence was that, as the pills were wholly composed of vegetables, he was a vegetable hawker, and! vegetable hawkers didn't have to take out licenses. The astute J.P. remarked that if the hawker's logic was sound fish included pearls, and cocoanut-matting might be classed as fruit. Likewise is it wrong under this logic to make a publican pay a license fee for selling beer which, after all, is merely hopsi — perhaps. Anyhow, the hawker got fined. One point strikes us. If the pills were merely vegetables, why don't people eat vegetables before^ they become pills, and call it medicine. There would be fewer awful livers about.

A propos of a rascal sent to gaol the other day, who never diidl laray work as long as has wife was working. A man was charged in a Hawke's Bay court with having no visible means of support. He hotly repudiated the accusation, and dramatically calledi on, his wife to stand up, so as the court cauldi see her!

A Southern man was so overjoyed at the notion of being newly-married that he spent the best part of the honeymoon allowance on beer for the public, and then became so boisterous in his glee that he fought in turn all the male members of the bridal party. When the magistrates, remembering kindly that he had already been in the good old social sense "sentenced for life," let him off with a caution, he put sixpence in the poor-box and went off happily to settle with the publican.

The "New Zealand 1 Times" really is rather funny at times. Printing a cable stating that the great, white Willie Stead had said that the autocratic Czar is really "a captive Samson," the "Times" goes on to say that if the Duma be established, his majesty will, however, be "a Samson trkunabout," as he possesses more capacity than any of his Ministers. "We have been wondering if the 'triumabout" is a relative of the whirligig, or the roundabout, or the pollywog, or the gilguy.