Afternoon Tea Gossip

Free Lance, Volume VI, Issue 282, 25 November 1905, Page 10

Afternoon Tea Gossip

By Little MU« Muffitt

MISS Alice Roosevelt, who went to China the other day, and had a big time, was caricatured in two Chinese papers. The editors have been sent to gaol for five years. 1 am going to tell the director of this pax. factory to be careful. • • • "Great meeting of Tommy Taylor's !"' said ia man in a restaurant the other dlay "Yes," said' th© other man. "He's a candidate for Parliament, isn t he ?" Surely someone must have told that man. • • • A wild Australian weekly speaks thus of Onehunga— the hub of New Zealand, and the home of Mrs. Yates— "The little Maori village that this laidy has advertised." A Maori is almost as great a rarity in Onehumga as n Castlereagh-street, Sydney. One might just sis well talk of Balmain as "the blaekfellows' camp," or Manly as "an, aboriginal settlement." • • • How many dear young mothers with anew baby, or, at least, a baby that ;s not too new to have a little hair, will tell you that he has his father's eyes, or has father's nose, or his father's some other feature ? Only the other day a three-year-old, trotted in to ma, who was entertaining, with something in his hand. "I do believe," she said, "Jaoky has got his father's hair!" So lie had. His father wore a wig. • • • At one. of those library lectures that are becoming so popular in Wellington, a lecturer, talking about the mystery of the vital spark, told his audience that a man would die* of lack of air m five minutes. An angry little man 1 the back of the room rose to his soles, andi claimed attention: "You are mistaken, sir," he wailed, "I 'aye bin bald now for five and twenty years. Die from lack of 'air, indleed!! Hah! • • • Since the days of Adam Monday has been washing day. It is the day above all others that the Wellington City Council choose to cut the water oft from the high levels. Just as the busy housewife is ready to attack the week's wash, she turns the tap — and has to wait most of the morning. If only some of tie councillors who don L employ any other washerwomen but their wives lived on the high, levels, 't might stir them up to some kind of endeavour. • • • "Look pleasant, please!" This is what a. photographer at Carterton railway station said to a sitter. The interesting subject let out. a roar, and charged the camera, but the operator wasn't there. He was watching his machine from behind cover. The sitter remorselessly broke the camera. To show you how swift is justice in New Zealand, this objectionable sitter was taken away and snot at once. Probably he is eaten by now. He was a Gear Meat Company's champion bullock. • * • A story is being told l thiarf> before Mr. W. Hohenzollern started on a recent yachting trip somebody 'handed Emperor Willie a Bible with the text underlined': "Blessed are the> peaceful." It is unfortunate for the yarn that there isn't such a text in the Bible. The psalmist evidently had President Roosevelt in mind when be wrote "Blessed are the peacemakers," proving, of course, that one could fight oneself if one prevented other people from doing so, wherein T. Roosevelt and' W. Hohen — , etc., differ. • • • I read with interest that Mr. Worth (the greatest of all dressmakers), of Paris, "speaks English peirfeatily." Seeing that it is Willies native language, that his eminent pa wasi born and rear ed in England, where Willie was born and reared for a long time, he ought to handle the language pretty well. The French, who laugh at English fashions, go to an Englisihmani for their fashions. Mr. Worth charges twentyfive guineas for a mere consultation. If the great man says: "Hum! You wouHm't look bad in a drab, accordeonpleated flour-bag, with a train and orange blossoms, and' a crinoline!" the client is enraptured. Next week all London is wearing flour-bags.

If there should be any doubt of the religious feeling of thos community, it may be set aside by dining in a local boarding-house. In bold chapters, whix* catch the diner's eye, appear the words. "We trust God. All others cash!" . • • Quaint "lost" ad. from a country paper:— "Lost, Charles -, aged 14, 4ft lm. height, black hair, brown eyes, was wearing a silver watch and cnain last seen of him. Kindly return waton and chain to ," etc. Evidently, the finder may keep the boy for his trouble. # . They are so explicit in those Government advertisements. They advertised for a manager of the Wereroa Boys' Tlraiminig farm the other day. They wanted a "single main, twenityeight years of age unmarried. l would suggest that, should theire ever be another vacancy for whidi they desire a married man., it should be stipulated~that he must have a wafe. • ♦ • The originality of New Zealanders is strikingly manifest in the ' list of "some electoral rolls. One free and independent gets a wealth of description in the single word male. Then, there is an "oxen-conductor,^ a "home missionary," a "farmeress," ' "facial denudator," a "lady of the house," and a "mother," while a hawker describes himself as "a peripatetic merchant." • * • A propos of wigs, both Miss Rose Musgrove and Mr. Julius Knight now wear wags — the result of typhoid. Miss Musigrove lost her hat and wiig and all per wind in Melbourne the other day, and it says a good deal for that charming sense, of humour that she saw the absurdity of the whole thing, and laughed heartily. It takes a great actress to get even with a catastrophe like that. • • • There is a very loud-voiced society man one meets at nearly everything "smart" in Wellington, and hfe roars out his little stories as if he was commanding an army corps in a Wellington southerly. He was telling one ot tho«e little stories to a chum in, a certain drawing-room the other night, and the chum said : "Sh — h — h ; not -o loud, old man. It's a tough yarn, and the girl over there might hea,r!" "But," roared the story-teller, "that's the girl who toild me the yarn!" • • • A local man, who was at a very smart, society wedding while in Sydney, was filled with a huge pride. He told all his friends there of the vast impression he had made on a splendid, black-haired, regal girl, who "had kept her eye on me the whole time !" When his friends told him that, she was a lady detective, specially engaged! to see that the wedding presents stayed where they were, he wilted ignominiously. Still he has recovered sufficiently to tell me the story himself. • • • I note that Dr. Gibb, the apostle . f Biblical instruction, is said to hart made unkind! remarks because he didn't have a table on which to place his notes at the mass meeting the other night, and that the "press" took its notes — very full ones, too — on the top of a harmonium, of all places. Dr. Gibb really does go the proper way about making the press see "eye to eye ' with him, doesn't he? But he really is a dear man, now isn't he? Don t you think he is absolutely charming with that winning smile and the oiot>t>ed hands? • • • Mr. Chas. Green, a Wairarapa fruitgrower, sends this to me: — I know a maid, she is a peach, With her I mad]e a date ; She is the apple of mine eye, But here I sadly state She does not care a fig for me ; Alas, my cruel fate. The dainty maid has cherry lips, And lemon-coloured hair ; She wears a bright burnt-orange gown, But, ah, to my despair, She will not answer yes to me So we may be a "pear." Like the potato, ' Mr. Green is blighted.