In Lighter Vein

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 13, 27 March 1902, Page 18

In Lighter Vein

(By • Quip.')

newspaper cuttings, etc., intended for this dspartmentsboiild be addressed • Quip/ N.Z. Tablbt Office, Dunedin, and should reach this office on or before Monday morning. 1 There's nothing like a little judicious levity. 1 . _ . R. L. Stevenson. A Reform. The War Office has at last allowed itself to be influenced by public opinion, and has determined to go in for reform To give an idea of what it can do when it means business, it has issued an order (so the cablegrams tell us) permitting the soldiers to wear spectacles. Spectacles are as much out of place on a man who wears a padded chest and a spiked helmet as a Geisha hair frame would be on a man with a bald head. Nevertheless, it is a step in the right direction. And when the idea is fully developed and carried out in its entirety, we shall be able to put an army in the field so thoroughly 'made up' in every respect that a vaudeville Boubrette won't be a circumstance in comparison. After a while the soldiers will be allowed to wear glasß eyes. Then wooden arms and wooden legs. And then, if the present go-ahead people remain in office, wooden heads and bodies stuffed with sawdust. That would be something like a reformed army. It would be a great improvement upon the armies of former times, when every soldier who wanted to go to battle had to have himself measured for a suit at the foundry. It would be an improvement upon the armies of the present day, when the soldiers fall down as soon as they are shot. Our reformed soldiers won't do that, not even if they are shot through the sawdust, or in the head, or in the gloaming, or anywhere. They would simply have to be tied to a paling fence— put on ' picket ' duty, as it were—and they would stick to their posts as long &b there was a tag of rope to hold them. Imagine the moral effect that would have upon the enemy. But apart from that, the money it would save in the Ambulance and Commissariat Departments should recommend the idea to the public, and Btop would-be funny fellows from being Barcastio at the War Office over this spectacle business.

Sofa Cushions. The following advertisement appeared lately in a Chicago paper :— ' Ladies wanted to work on sofa pillows. Materials furnished. Steady work guaranteed. Experience unnecessary. Apply X.Y.Z ' Working on sofa pillows is nothing like working on an empty stomach, though both may be kinda of cruel work. You will notice in the above advertisement that experience is unnecessary. Anyone oan make a sofa cushion, especially of the kind that is fashionable at present— one of those that has an affair like a bed valance tacked around the edge. This is its genesis. You Btart off with the idea of making a blouse. You study the brown paper plans and specifications; buy the rag, and begin. If, when you are two-thirds finished, you discover that you have not enough stuff left, or that you have erred in laying the foundation, you say to yourself that you think you will make a toque or something out of it. If you are not able to do this, you just fill the affair with feathers, and you have a sofa cushion.

I should like to know why it is that these cushions are allowed to lead the aimless life that they do, Bprawling about on sofas, evidently only to be looked at. You dare not rest your weary head upon them, because the • kerosene ' work, and the bead work, and the other filigree work in high relief will pain your ear unto diatraotion. And don't imagine that the other side is any better. It may be a little less corrugated. You may be able to rest a while. But when you awake you will, most likely, have a view on the Wanganui River in oils, or a green leaf and the major part of a tiger-lily beautifying your cheek. According to Dooley, General Sherman said that ' th' on'y good Indyun is a dead Indyun.' The only good sofa cushion is a cushion that hasn't been made yet.