Afternoon Tea Gossip

Free Lance, Volume II, Issue 93, 12 April 1902, Page 20

Afternoon Tea Gossip

By Little Miss Muffitt.

Sydney is about to appoint a female sanitary inspector. * * • If woman makes all the trouble in life, it's woman makes life worth all the trouble. # Auckland shots are giumbhng because none of them have been thought good enough foi a place in the Bisley rifle ■team. * * * They ha\e an ox-member of Parliament o\er in Sydney who earns his daily biead and butter by sitting on coroneis' juiies. * * * Toby Barton is still treading on the heels of Dick Seddon m the political game of 'Follow the Man from Cook's." So says Melbourne "Punch." * • * Miss Ella Cooper, second daughter of Mr Justice Cooper, acts as her father's private secretary. She is an expert typist and shorthand writer * • * Owing to the plague in Sydney, and the keenness of competition, the call for theatres in the best show towns of these colonies was never so urgent as now. * ♦ • The knowing ones are saying that there is a knighthood laid aside for Rudvaird Kipling at the coronation }unkettings. Also, that Conan Doyle is safe for anothei . * # • Federal Ms P., on the "othei side," are crying out that £400 is not a livmg wage And yet they are also allowed free postage and telegrams, railway fares for members' waves, and other concessions. The Queensland backblocks papers take off the gloves when they fa]] out. One of them speaks of its rival across the road as 'A rag that reeks with the stink of the polecat and glories in shame." * * * The Arbitiation Court has polished off more work during the last eight or nine months than during the whole course cf its previous career. Sam. Brown looks chirpy as usual, but wouldn't say "nay" to a coronation trip if King Dick or King Edward wanted a bit of friendly pdvjce. * ♦ • Some inquisitive people on the 'other side" are asking whether Dick Seddon really cabled to Joe Chamberlain suggesting that Australia w r as willing to send some more troops to South Africa, and was only waiting to be asked. Re^ marks about "meddlesome outsiders" are also floating about. * * * The British fighting costume in future is to be a drab, topped by a widebnmmed felt hat of the "colonial" fasluon Also, the tunics are to be loose, and the trousers are to be wide from the top, tapering down, and only reach the tops of ankle boots, wbile all infantry are to wear putties. Alleged that King Dick and the other hrst-ela&s Premiers will not be housed in the Hotel Cecil after all, but tha.t one of the royal palaces, with all it& gorgeous flunkeys, will be set apart for their use. The Hotel Cecil will do foi the ' HappPHed-to-be^there," or garden variety of Premiers and Cabinet Ministeis * * * Constable liwm, who w as brutally assaulted in an Auckland cab by a violent diunk and disorderly, whom he was taking to the hospital, was a returned Coiitingentea- John Duffy, his assailant, is saad to be the man who, several years ago, inflicted injuries upon Constable Cullinane that are alleged to 1 aye caused Ins death. * * * Mrs. Bella Pye, who perished in Her Majesty's fire, at Sydney, was a young woman of twenty-seven, the widow of a Parramatta cyclist and footballer. She had escaped from the bakery where she was employed, and was talking with some people in the street when she suddenly left them to re-enter the bakery, remarking, "I've left something I wouldn't like to lose." When they recovered her mutilated body, the "something" was firmly clasped in her right hand. It was a small, plain, gold horseshoe brooch.

A new daily morning papci , to be urn on Bartoanan and protectionist lines, j,s to be sprung upon Sydney very soon Mr Barton has been presiding at meet ings of the promoters * * * Mr Andrew Collins assured the Trades Union Confeience, up in Auckland, last Meek, that the real objection which capitalists had to the Wellington Conciliation Board .lay in the fact that it had given to labour the best conditions in the colony Perhaps, it forgot to give anything at all to the other fellow. * * * The Premier and Mrs. Scddon, accompanied by Miss Seddon and Miss May Seddon, leave Wellington to-mor-row (Saturday), en route for the Coronation They travel as far as the Cape in the troopship Drayton Grange, and there tranship to the Kildoonan, which leaves- the Cape or> the 21st May. * * * Mr G Laurenson, M.H R., has been telling the Canterbmy School Committees, in conference, "that the Maori gentleman of a century a°;o was better educated at twenty years of age than are most of the boys and girls who are turned out of our colleges with B A or M.A. after their names. He knew a lot of practical things * # * The Auckland "Observer" piophesies that once the federation of the Fiji and Cook Islands with New Zealand is an accomplished fact, Mr. Seddon will be offered the first governorship of the new federation, with his headquarters in New Zealand. "Indeed," it proceeds, "we would ask was not the extension of Lord Ranfurly's period of office with a view to this end ? " * • • Although J. C. Williamson lost heavily by the destruction of Her Majesty's Theatre, in Sydney, his first exclamation on hearing of the fhe was one of gratitude that the fire had not occurred during a performance, and his second an expression of his deep sorrow at the death of the woman Pye, and regret for the loss that the fire would cause his employees.

Sydney Sunday Times" says Dick Sedflon will this time cut a bigger figure id London than either Launer or Bdvrton. * * ■* Tiie nonclad fact is in print that E M. Smith is detei mined to contest New Ph mouth against all comeis. Stand oft the grass' < * * A letter iecei\ed in Sydney, from an alleged Imperial Tommy, says Cronje lias written to De Wet (and the censor has parsed the note) stating that if De Wet does not surrender and end this hopeless war, he (C'ronje) will laise a burgher corps from the prisoners of war, fmd, by sanction of the Bntii&h Government, will hunt him down. Veiy like a faan ta,le. » • • A couple of We^t Coast twins were cluistened the other day, with the peculiar names of "Cherubim" and "Seraphim.* The parson afterwards asked the reason, and the miner replied "Well, you see, they're always squalling: — and we sang in ohuich on Sunday, •The cherubim and seraphim continually do cry' — so I thought I could not choose better names for them." • • Infants and diunkards get through a lot of adventures safely. Last week a fh e-year-old infant at Gore picked up a live weasel in a back street, and was carrying it home to play with when some schoolboys took the vicious little beast from her and killed it. The five-vear-old hadn't even a, scratch. Probably thought it was a kitten, md grapsed it tightly by the throat as babies aie affectionately accustomed to do with kitten*. Kms; Dick w ill be pleased to learn that there is not much of ' the kid glo\e business" that he detests among the backblocks editors. The other day one of them printed a guslung obituary upon an old identity, concluding with the words, 'He has gone, and we shall see him no more for ever." Thereupon the rival editor bluntly remarks that his contemporary is evidently quite satisfied that the old identity has gone to heaven.