AROUND THE TEA TABLE

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 80, 6 April 1926, Page 17

AROUND THE TEA TABLE

MATTERS OF GENERAL INTEREST,

(By SHIRLEY.)

The hot cross bun is almost the last ceremonial article of diet that is left to us, and if anything it is going stronger than ever. So the baker informed mc. Indeed, many families had to do without, this Easter, because they " should have ordered their lot beforehand," there being none over in the shops to spare, though in one I did perceive on Saturday a few at a penny each, reduced to fourpence a dozen. Why the bun should hold its own, when the pancake, for Shrove Tuesday, is in no special demand, it is difficult to understand. The fact remains that it is so.

The fact is the more astonishing as it is sometimes difficult to ask for the former. For instance an Auckland lady in a shop on Thursday desired to have " six hot cross buns, but I want them cold." This Boundeid odd €o Lady No. 2, who made her request for an ordinary teacakej. "and put in one cold cross bun." This sounded so much like an accusation of temperamentalism against an unoffending article of diet that purchaser No. 3 didn't know how to put her order. However, a man came briskly up. " Twelve Easter buns, please," land once again the superior sex had solved a knotty problem.

The fanners and farmers' wives wanting help up country in Victoria find it well not to imitate a certain famous -workhouse boy. They do not ask for more. They cling to that which they have, and shield it from extraneous influences. Several such backblocks families, it seems, have lately " fallen in" through advertising for married couples as helps. In the first case the m.c. duly appeared, looked round, inspired the help already installed with the delights of the town, and when they left, took him with them. In another farm somewhat the same incident occurred, the couple that came to see if the place would suit them infecting the two workers already installed with the anti-country microbe, bo that the settlement was left without assistance. From these and other instances, some believe that there is a campaign to get helps from the country for the city, instead of the game being the other way round. Anyway, settlers are thinking of giving their workers already installed a holiday on the day when they are expecting new and possible visitors to come seeing if the place ■will c 'i~."

Chivalry is not quite dead in tMs same Victoria.' "We mustn't- wake father," said two girls" coming home from a dance in a motor. So their

two young men escorts got out, and patiently pulled the car the remaining j yards. One wonders, however, if the j parent were really of the Ethel Turner j type. (You may notice that that ! author revels in the domineering father, who is really almost unknown ' in her native land.) An Auckland parent of the usual quiet and amiable , kind was quite astonished to hear that his daughters, ■when young, had given ; him out to be of the sheik type, as one might say. It was the fashion then to have a male parent of the sort that " won't have " his daughters staying out late, and these two found themselves rather out of it when they had no thrilling tales to tell of .having had to climb secretly to their bedroom windows by lattice or vinery. In order to be " respectit like the lave," they at last decided to do the climb occasionally (and boast of it afterwards ), even though a very amiable and trusting widower parent was sitting within, the door unlocked, and supper ready on the table if they required it. Also, not a thought in his unsuspecting heart that he was failing to satisfy every need in their young natures.

Would such a parent be called. I wonder, a fatherette? "Husbandette" is a term applied in America, it seems, to a "long-suffering, meek-tempered, mild-mannered man." "The name." says a chronicler, "is bound to stick. It will doubtless be wielded by cartoonist and humourist. There will be pictures of the man with the new name sitting at home, smoking a forbidden pipe in some corner of the scullery, while hia 'better half is out orating at public meetings, or organising a club for the better representation of women. . .

After all, though, it doesn"t matter much one way or another v.hat is said about the married man. He carried on in various ways, and under so many aliases. that one more or less cannot trouble him much. Husbandette will do him as well as any other."

Were there -many "husbandettes." I wonder, in that conference of New Zealand commercial travellers who complained bitterly the other day that women came into smokers in order to 6moke. Some years ago they were annoyed because they came in when they didn't smoke. " There seems no pleasing them. However, let us hope that few of our sex thus unnecessarily intrude, though I think that male indignation might be even better employed against the obviously young lads who consume the weed in" public." Many of these latter pick up "fags" from" the street, but if women were the only cigarette users the boys would be much less frequently tempted, for it needs no SXerlock Holmes to note when such a "fag" has been smoked by man or woman. In the latter case'it is always consumed economically, until there is not much left, and even then she frequently puts the last fragment into * holder in order to have a few whiffs more.

Amidst our literary scenes Saddest this sight to mc, The graves of little magazines That died to set verse free.

I do not echo the above "pome" in an American magazine. lam glad the little magazine "died. What can this mean, "I have lain with buttercups fermenting on my breast." It is quite a serious line from a serious journal (American, of course), and is an instance of how much more insane a poet can be after he has loosed himself from the shackles of rhyme. He is often quite insane enough in the shackles. Yet there is one class of person that do free «rerse well—dhildren. Some poems given in a journal done by children under seven are not bad—for children under seven. Let us leave the art to them.

Eirde are firing In the sky They all fly together— They unhitch and fly by themselves Swallows fly like waves. This and others -were written by one child of five, and they are the best free verses that I have ever seen.

THE AU(JKLA±Ni> fciAR, TuE«I>AY, AtniL t>, 19^6