THE WEEK, THE WORLD AND WELLINGTON.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3000, 24 September 1908, Page 6

THE WEEK, THE WORLD AND WELLINGTON.

(By Frank Morton.)

Tennis Days.—This Ancient TenNIS .—A Curb for Seasickness. —Pity THB STEWARDESS ! —TItE OLD LADIES. The weather is capricious and irritatii gbut its pleasanter than it was, because it's warmer. I find it a quaint thing enough that I should find any tiling u> complain of in cjlcl I who have always boasted my strtne to climate; but there is something peculiarly depressing in tne cold of Wellington. There is a auit of greyish clamminess in it that depresses and annoys. It has no snap, but only a distressing gnaw. It is not tonic, but only tiresome. So that I'm glad the winter is over. I'm glad, for another reason, because che football season closes with the end of the gnawing days. Now we shall ha;e tennis. Ido not pretend to you that I play tennis; but i like it. There is a certain pleasure in sitting under a decent tree with a flushed girl who adorns a racruet and occasionally enounces the glad £cspel tnac love' 3 all. It used to be; buc theie are few enough that are i willing t j a.imit it now. Tennis is the g-ime of . leasant glows and dappled afternoons'. It is decorative. It i stems to go quite naturally with tea and cakes ami the easier sorts of con- ■ versatioii. It come* from France. J Our lawn-tennis, in ita original form, ! id nit) j-<J ""J yaume. The true or 'i t "lis is « vastly order and more disjnified game. Of roavl tennis th 3 world knows very little in 1908. I'here are,, 1 think, only four or five courts on earth; one, curiously enough, in little Hobart. A court has to be provided with fit substitutes for castle-walls, and is an expensive thing to build. The game itself is fast and hard. Ladies could never dream of playing it; but in Hobart ynu shall see men of standing (and reniwn that extends well into the nearer suburbs) playing cheerfully and laughing at their livers. It is a i violent joy, but rrianly. It is the < game ot tennis that) Will Shakesperu was thinking of when he wrote: 1 We're glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us. ' His present and your pains we thank you for. When we have match'd our racketa to these balls, We will, in France, by God's grace, play a set Shall strike his Father's crown into the hazard, Tell him he 'ath made a match with such a wrangler That all the Courts of France will be disturbed With Chases. With the summer too, we shall have the summer visitors. I'm no lover of globe-trotters; but our visitors here in summer are mostly Australians; and they do brighten things up a bit. The visitors most lately arrived have not brightened up yet. They came in the Maitai. She used to be the Miowera: but it was thought weil to change her name—a wise precaution breathing hard of the invincible shrewdness of Dunedin. I'm never seasick; but I'm warm with sympathy for the seasick soul and the chap in the lower bunk. There is only one cure for seasickness. I have tried it on my friends with excellent results, and ' several of the married ones have been quite enthusiastic about it. Take ten or twelve drops of chloroform in water when you first feel the motion, and stay on deck in the breeze for at least an hour. It's probable that you won't be sick. If the qualms return, reptat the dose. It's quite harmless, and much tastier than lots of things people drink for pleasure. It will make you sleep well; but you won't mind that. The people I pity most when I'm at sea are the stewardesses. Their endurance is marvellous, their temper superb. If Paris had once seen Helen seasick, the domestic felicity of Monelaus would have been monotonously extended to the finish of his days; but Paris didn't, so what's the ude of worrying 1 Of all the women whose work is never done, the case of the stewardess seems harshest and worst. In teeth of all discomfort and contumely, she has to be courageously polite. A steward (I dare say) can swear in the secrecy of his room, and so relieve his feelings overwrought; but a stewardess —never let it be suggested. Pity women. From the cradle to the grave they have to keep guing. Apropos of that, I saw some very pathetic verse in an American newspaper rscently. "WOMENS' WORK AIN'T NEVER DONE!" A nice old lady by the sea Was neat as she was plain. And every time the tide came in She swept it back again. And when the sea untidy grew And waves began to beat, She took her little garden rake And raked it smooth and nfeat. She ran a carpet-sweeper up And down the pebbly sand. She said, "This u the only way To keep it clean —good land!" f3he fed the catfish clotted cream And taught it how to purr— And were a catfish so endowed She would have stroked its fur. She stopped the little sea-urchins That travelled by in pairs, And washed their dirty faces clean And combed their little hairs. She spread white napkins on the surf Witu which she fumed and fussed "When it ain't covered up," she said, "It gits all over dust." v And she was sometimes wan and worn When she retired to bed—"A woman's work ain't never done," That nice old lady said. You may not have noticed it, but this New Zealand of oura is full of just such nice old ladies.