Afternoon Tea Gossip

Free Lance, Volume VI, Issue 281, 18 November 1905, Page 10

Afternoon Tea Gossip

By Little Miss Muffitt

QUEEN Victoria had a leputat.o i for sending along ' Queen s weather" when Her late Majesty was enjoying a birthday, or a crowning anniversary, or anything. King Edward the Peacemaker cannot placate the elements. Look at tvs late&t birthday'- # Writes a man: — "Arguing with a woman is a great deal like going into a shower-bath with an umbrella — what good will it do you?" • * - Emperor William is eighteen colonels of the German Army. No, he was* never a soldier, except of the stay-at-home and 1 brandish-the-ironmongery kind. • ♦ • This from a contemporary : — "Pope Phis X. rises at 5 of the morning, and recites the little hours in his brewery." I've beeni puzzling about it, and a "St. Pat's" master tells me the writer probably meant "breviary." • » • About the hardest blow ever give a to a bowler — with am English reputation — fell on him with a thud at the Wellington green the other day. "Learnt bowls in England, didn't you ?"' asked a man who had just smashed up a Tiead." "Yaas!" "Through a correspondence school, perhaps?" was the quiet query. • * • Providence is often kind. .A Southern rider, on a restive horse, wa*~ carried in front of a railway train. Th« train upset the horse, and pushed man and beast fifty yards with the cowcatcher. The horse was not in the least injured, and, although the ma^i ■was shaken, he "retained his seat"! It happened at Waianiwa, in Southland. • • • A traction engine was puffing quickly towards town on a suburban road the other day, and at a corner a lady frantically waved her umbrella for it to stop. It stopped, and the lady climbed up into the "cab" of the smelling old thing. "What is the fare to town" she demanded, drawing her parse. The driver smothered a very troublesome chuckle, as he gently told her that "this 'ere is a 'special' car, mum!" • • * A new horror is added to an a! ready over-strained existence by tb/ coming of the motor boot. You put yiour boots on, press the button, and away you go at twelve miles an hour 'Tis stated that a pair of motor boots without a man in them ran away in i London hotel, bolted 1 through a plateglass window, and were brought to halt by imbedding themselves three feet deep in the wall of a building. • • • A Southern pa^er pictures one of oui most revered military men, leaning over a Union Jack, firing with a school cadet's carbine. It calls him the "inspector" of school cadets! GiTacrious. The officer is Colonel Loveday, Volunteer Decoration Officer Commanding the Defence Force Cadets in the 0610n.y of New Zealand. "Inspector?" Sounds as if he were a "tramway man, or a back-yards' examiner, or something. • • A sample news par. from an American paper ■ "Charles J. Seimler. of Cressville City, Ohio, was walking down Tenth-street, when he picked uo a free-stone peach on the sidewalk Havime eaten it, he observed ourion c marks on the stone. With the aid of a magnifyin^-glass he found' the markto be a will, macfe out in his favour by an uncle who hadf died in S«~oi)a"cl thine© hundred years previously. Cha^e* is wow the owner of six miles of f=treot> in Glasgow." • • • There is a German gentleman holdimg a high commercial position in Wellinccton, who served in the German Army. He has trouble with his leers still, and explains that, as a recruit, he was made to march up and down to the order of a sergeant." The se^ennt. out of cbeei* brutality walked dblvt"! a^d kicked him viciou^lv on the calves of the le<?s whenever he felt inpHjie^ TTe h«»s s"fFered' ever since. This '<5 ff — in fka lii>« of the himself, •"■x^ pp Tii<! i retm+iti^ri for in^°ofritv.

Japan has got civilised 1 with a veu geanoe ! There is a dearth of girl servants in Tokio. We used to talk 01 importing these willing little weaieis of the kimona. • • * Mr. "Tom" McKenzie will go back to the House all right. Several ladies "gave him floral tributes" at Palmerston North the other day. The most awful time our own dear Mr. Aitken has is when ladies hand him flowers and he doesn't know where to put fchem. • • * A boy that will get on broke a window at the Thorndon end, by accidentally letting a rook fal'J through it on Tuesdtav last. He ran. The owner caught him. "You broke my window!"' lie hissed. "Yes, sir, I did':, but don't you see I'm running home for the money to pay for it?" His fa their is an eminent lawyer. * * Owners of gee-gees and moo-cows in Cromwell have a bad time in front of them, according to the local paper. In its last issue appears the following literary gem: — "We have been asked to warn owners of catltle and horses that steps will be taken this week to <etop them wandering about as they w 11 Tbe summoned without further notice." » * * A bit of sensation from a recent Australian story : — "He gripped the hairy wrist in a clamp as of siteel, and . . the sheath-knife dropped' like a piece of iron fresh from the forger's fire." If a forge /hand let his work fall about like that he would probably get "the 6ack." Also, people dion't carry clamps about to grip hairy wrists with. • • • According to a Napier paper, a Christ church physical culture' pupil, who bad lung trouble, was cured, of it. To quote the paper "In two years he gained 471b in weight, and has cured his chest expansion' from half-an-inch to five and a-half inches." I thought th"t oheist expansion was a pretty decent thine: to have about one. Evidently it is a disease to 1 be "cured." • • • A propos of Mr. Wilbelm> Hohenzolle/rn : — When a whistle toots in London, ox it thunders over Greece, Or a rooster orows in Paris, or a. donbey brays at Nice, Or it rains at Copenhagen , or a bomb burst at Macao, All Europe rises to inquire : What is William up to now? * * Mrs. Harrison Lee, the emineint NoLicense lecturer, preached in a Waikato Church the other Sunday. The neople so far forerot themselves as to applaud. I like those people. I think tihat applause is not sinful. There should be nothing qrloomv- in religion. Remember tha England's greatest oreacher. the late Dr.~ Parker, userf to force applause from 1 hi«s congregation Mrs. Lee has this gift also.

King Edward VII. was crowned at the second second of the second minutp of the second hour of the* second day in the second week of the second month of th© second half of the seoon'd! year ol tihe twentieth century. The man who found this out is still at large. * * • English papers contain allegations of scandalous sweating in Salvation home^ and colonies — men toiling at laborious tasks fourteen hours a day for 5s a week — and then called' upon to oontr - bute to "self-denial" funds out of that ' No doubt, General Booth has another side to that story. • • • New South Wales has introduced a tip-top system of sending squads of city school-boys into the country for a few weeks in the summer, just to let tfhem know somethins of the real life of the colonies. The average city peraom in Australia knows about as mucih of Australia as the average Londoner knows of it.