AROUND THE TEA TABLE.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 230, 28 September 1929, Page 15

AROUND THE TEA TABLE.

MATTERS OF GENERAL INTEREST. (By SHIRLEY.) The Mayor of Dunedin has been advising motorists to take up boating instead of C their own pastime, and so clear the streets. It seems a good idea, though rather a menace to the pedestrian's only safe mode of locomo «m nowadays, which is swimming—if one may call a swimmer a pedestrian. Spite of shark and undertow, in the sea there is safety. I do not know whether it is as yet with us as it is in the United States, 'where, according to a writer in the "Christian Science Monitor," it has been computed that if every person at the same time entered an automobile, an average of five or six in each vehicle, there would be nobody left standing. If any did chance to be left over, he adds cautiously, there would be enough trucks to pick them up. The sea, so far, however, has not come to be regarded as an alternative to the pavement, but, with spring arriving, it is attracting us in its own way. Even those of the old school may admit the claims of the beach, for here we see not onlv the too up-to-date bathing dress, but the prim and old-fashioned ordinary costume. Thus a young boy who had never seen a veil-wearing woman before, perceived an ancient lady walking down in rather long skirts, her face protected from the sea breezes. "Mother," he asked, "how does that lady get her tea through the wire netting." One often wonders that period novelists do not make more of the older style of transport, especially regarding the days of the early train journeys, when in England anyway the third-class passengers stood all the way in trucks. Writers, however, merely content themselves with rushing the maddened hero into a train after being refused, because this is the. most reckless thing he can do, and he does not care whether he lives or dies. In "Oh, Genteel Lady," however, Esther Forbes gives some slight information about the railway journey of crinoline times, when Boston was to be reached. Railroad was the expression, and coach instead of carriage. There is a stove in the middle of the coach and a brakeman is supposed to come round with armfuls of wood occasionally and feed it, also there is the Usual grumbler in a muffler, who wants the old-fash-ioned horse coach with straw at your feet instead qf a stove. He has no time for these modern improvements. When a lady thinks herself annoyed, she is advised to appeal to the captain of the train, and the same official has to see that everyone is out of the train when he or she should be. The train goes so slowly that perhaps it is impossible for them to know that it has stopped, even when a horn is sounded. « * * * One-room flats are not to be for us in Auckland. So it has been decided. We have visions of American skyscrapers, on the lower floors of which artificial light rules perpetually. A possible apartment house of the future has been shown, in which you got sunlight by pressing a button —but somehow one does not seem to want it that way. Even colour schemes at will and dishes automatically washed, when not made of material that can be dissolved after every meal, do not compensate. Many years ago in a simpler way London Rowton House was erected as a home from home for men workers, but it was said that this made bachelorhood so attractive that there was much bitterness. No woman might enter its precincts, and it was spoken of darkly as a place of club-like magnificence and ease. The objectors, mostly women, it is said, would have liked some counteracting influence, as in Gotha, Germany, to-day, where the obdurate celibates are taxed 10/ a month, if the income is over £150 and the age over 30. The taxed ones are furious and resolved all the more to remain hachelors, which for such angry gentlemen perhaps is just as well. Somehow or other, we in New Zealand have always disliked any system of structure which assumes spinsterhood or bachelorhood as a permanent state, so that a girl on her own will continue to "live in" with a family itself, either in flat or house residence. If. the decision will get the younger generation over their objection to any domicile beyond the second section, it will be a good thing. At present Auckland is full of landladies compelled to live reluctantly in the city because their tenants, if a removal to the third or fourth section is suggested, look as if a suicide pact were being proposed. * * » » A friend of a deaf old lady once remarked to her that her girl loved jewellery. The other, tfiinking the "help" was meant, observed that "it was a common failing in her class." When she found out the swish lady meant her own daughter, she observed: "A very natural feeling at her . age." This incident recurred to me the other day when some advocate said of a working girl guilty of elaborate shop-lifting, that "she was a good girl. She never went to pictures or dances." And just why stealing should be condoned because a girl doesn't like amusement, I cannot understand. The assumption seems to be that if a girl works for her living manually it is a good mark for her if she refrains from the ordinary enjoyments of other girls. "I could understand it if those enjoyments were deprecated for all girls," said Aunt Jane, "but if they are wrong for any 'class' of girl, well, it is just the girl worker of this country for whom they are not wrong, for that kind of girl I hold, is the best-behaved and most admirable that we have. Indeed, it is quite an insult to have to speak of them as best behaved," and she went on insulting them for quite half an hour.