AROUND THE TEA TABLE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 195, 19 August 1930, Page 11

AROUND THE TEA TABLE.

MATTERS OF GENERAL INTEREST,

(By SHIRLEY.)

There are many ways of testing a city's prosperity. First, watch the jumble sales. What goes first? Recently it was certainly the men's clothing, not too good a sign, for the master of the household does not willingly give in to having his wear, picked up second hand, and not under his own eye. However, on this occasion, the score of women who swooped down on the stalls as soon as the doors were opened, certainly carried away in their large bags something to help father, along. Father never'comes himself. A jumble sale. resembles that museum room in which the little giri was told to look at the mummies. "Are there no daddies V she inquired. Jumble sales are emptied quickly these days. Only some dozen of women's hats usually remain. For some reason or other these never go well, • though often the ornament in one is worth the price.

Another way to test a city's financial position is to examine the dustbins. This is not so awful a job as once it would have been. The Auckland housewife is considerate to the official who' collects, and sometimes "parcels up the dirt." Half loaves of good bread may be a sign of prosperity, but one wishes that prosperity would show herself differently. Fruit tins speak well for the family purse, and treacle ones not so much so. .Everyone likes to see baby's food containers. Meat tins tell too much, father is not getting a square deal as regards fresh food, and oh, the frequency of those bottles which the bottle man won't accept, medicine bottles, modernity's shame. But it is the food in the dust bin that hurts the eye most. If it could all be cleaned and collected there would be enough to help on the -unemployment; funds to some extent.. There is, by the way, another method of helping on this fund, resuscitated lately .in Australia, that is the long line of pennies on the pavement to which citizens are invited to stoop that they may lengthen it. In the Australian case, one stooped, and lifted a coin or two. ■ 'I'll take my share now/' he said.

The thought of waste afflicts the farmer, "I'm losing two hundred and fifty a year through not having a wife," quoth one recently. No wonder. When a pig was to be he handed out two pounds of butter with which to do the deed. Into this place of wasteful men, all wanting, country fashion, five meals a' day, there will presently come the wife. She will rise at dawn and finish up after dark, and will enter herself on the census paper as "No occupation!" But if her husband gives up, and takes' a billet in town, he will probably raise the roof of the small, rented flat if she wants to "go out to work." Consider again the problem 01 that other bride, who holds down a job of four pounds 'a week, and considers giving it up to marry a man/whose earnings are not much more. . She has: to give, it up, not right for her to "work." But if he, finding, his "screw" not'enough for wife and child tries out farming, there will Toe no objection to her growing ten years older in as many months running the farm, gratis. I'am. afraid it is not objected to the fact that women woi'k, the objection' is to their being ■ paid. ' '■•■•• ■■■■'. ' . ■ As a rule these modern times, wife number two has a tolerant feeling towards the memory-of wife number one. I,have known one who insisted that the enlarged portrait of her predecessor should, be above the living room mantelpiece. "I wish to do her every honour," said she, husband giving no opinion. There . are exceptions, however. To illustrate a point an Auckland preacher 1 the: other day instanced ■ a case that came under his own observation. The bereaved husband erected, a monument far superior to that which is usually given a private person, and not long after, grief assuaged, took a second wife. The' parents of the first wife .came to see the place of their daughter's last rest, and could not even locate it. By command of the second spouse, the husband had liad the monument removed, placing not even the smallest other sign on the weed grown place. Literature is now kinder to stepmothers than it once was, but , I can't help thinking it a flaw in "His Hous*e in Order" when Nina, the new, wife is actually expected to attend the ceremony of the unveiling of a public testimonial to wife number one.. I think tact would have allowed Nina to have a headache on that occasion, instead of dragging Ilea (or rather trying to drag her) to -the somewhat baleful occasion. Nina does stay at home, of course, and finds the letters which prove the lady-to be quite unworthy, of the testimonial. Women are intuitively right;in not worrying over their predecessor.. It is the woman of the future a wife should fear, just as the husband may fear the man of the past, if there is one. . .

• They were discussing "With all my ■worldly goods" lately, and almost everyone objected to it. The men objected to it most of all. They said it was hypocrisy,- and were glad the phrase was being omitted. The women were more pensive. It has a pleasant ring about it, that pledge, even though you are dead certain you are not going to collar tlie lot. Of course in these days of de-: pression it doesn't amount to much what a man promises in this respect. As one male speaker said, he had listened to many friends taking this vow, with great enthusiasm, and in, every case they hadn't any worldly goods whatever to "thee endow," which reminds one of the story,of the punctilious man who marrying a rich woman made it, "With all thy worldly goods I me endow," while of another, equally impecunious, taking this pledge, his best friend said in a whisper, "Holy smoke, there goes his bicycle."