Mundane Musings

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 291, 29 February 1928, Page 4

Mundane Musings

Are Love-Letters Out of Date ? Most elderly women will tell you the art of love-letter writing is practically dead —that, like the dodo, it exists no longer. Are they right? Most modern girls will say, “What rot! Why, we’re just as keen as you ever were, only we’re not so soppy. I agree with them. Love-letters only take a different form. As understood by our grandmothers they are, of course, obsolete. “Lady of my heart, I kneel humbly at your little feet, and offer you now and for ever rny undying devotion. You are the sweet high symbol of all I hold dear—to fly with you to the ends of the earth —to obey your slightest behest, to serve you—in short to be the humble slave of all your wishes is the one and only desire of my devoted heart.” Imagine the modern girl getting stuff like that. She would either shriek with laughter, or say: “Steady on, Woggs. Cut out that soppy stuff.” He has little time anyway to sit and bite his pen (and fountain pens won’t stand being bitten), and think out such effusions as this. He is too busy cleaning his little old bus —or standing out in a crowd yelling at the Cup-tie semi-final with a pal—or doing any of the things that crowd up his life.

“She” is busy, too. She lias to rush off to the office, and also has her little car to see to. She telephones him—sometimes a little too often. He rings her up—much too often.

If anyone tells you love-letters have entirely died out, don’t you believe it.They may not be couched in the same extravagant language, but the language will sometimes be just as extravagant. The modern lover says: “Sweetest kid, it's quite imposs. to wait until to-morrow. It can't be done —so do be a sport and come this evening. I did not mean to be late, and it hurt like the devil when you were so stuffy about it. Do come for a run to-night; phone before twelve if you can come. Yours both here and in Hades if necessary.—Woggs. “P.S.—Curse this pen, it's made a blot and I've no time to rewrite it, so just pretend it’s a tear shed by yours humbly in case you let me bring the bus round for nothing. Precious bit, don’t, don’t let me down—l’m really and truly abject over yesterday.”

While he writes this and sits looking ruefully at the blot and thinking what an ass he was to be late (he having forgotten the exact time she had said!) he is thinking of the soft little hands that were laid against his face the evening before, and he can hear again the golden voice saying in a husky whisper: “Dear, dear Woggs, oh, how I love you, you silly old Woggs.” He wants to get down to the bedrock of love and desire. Does she want him as much as he wants her? —that is all he wishes to know. Her letters show she does —but just now she is “stuffy” with him. Oh, Lord, what can he do?

He sighs as deeply as any woebegone lover of the past has ever sighed, and goes to fill his petrol tank, thinking how ghastly it will be if she really is stuffy and won’t go out with him after all!

IN A NUTSHELL All dyes should be strained through muslin before being the water. Whitening is splendid for scrubbing saucepans. lodine stains may be removed with ; eau-de-Cologne or methylated spirit; j never wash with water. All green vegetables except spinach, i should be cooked with the lid off the ■ saucepan. If the rolling pin is washed in boil- j ing water without any soap it will not 1 stick when-used again. A little glycerine rubbed on a coffee } stain with a piece of clean flannel will ; quickly remove it. Shabby leather can be improved by being rubbed with the well-beaten white of an egg. * * * Do not use soda to clean aluminium. A little pumice powder on a damp rag is most effective. * =* * Fruit stains can be removed from the j hands by rubbing with salt moistened ; with vinegar. A simple but satisfactory moulding clay may be made from one cup flour, ! one cup salt and one teaspoon pow- | dered alum with enough water to mould 1 easily. By wrapping in a damp cloth when the children are tired of playing j with it, the clay can be used fre- L quently. ’ I