Afternoon Tea Gossip

Free Lance, Volume III, Issue 131, 3 January 1903, Page 6

Afternoon Tea Gossip

By Little Miss Muffitt.

Wliile tr-3 New Zealand Coronation Contingent was in London, one of its members was introduced to a large, brilliant bit of red tape. He was orderly one day ait Hounslow Barracks, and, while delivering a message to the commanding officer, a man reported himselt, said he was a soldier who had been reported killed at Camelsdnft, had found, on going to liis depot, that he was dead" and, being dead, the legiment he had belonged to before his decease could not take him back. They did not have any rations for dead men. * * * He was not a soldier— he anything except starving. Would the commanding officer help him ? The C 0. could not resurrect him, and askod the New Zealander if he could make a suggestion. The New Zealander remarked that the best thing the "dead man could do was to be born again, change his name for 2s 6d, which he would lend him, and enlist. And, it is a fact that this had to be done before the man, who had three wounds and the enteric microbe, could get an Army meal Shall we have a standing army in New Zealand ? * * * The big iron bridge at Wanganui is being called the "Pons Asinorum." The bridge has been in use for thirty-one years, and is rotting from neglect. Nobody cares, and nobody paints it. The people of Wanganui are talking about a ferry service, in case the costly structure collapses. It will take the Euclid of the city council to demonstrate that it is cheaper to paint than, to allow collapse, but, as the first-named person would say • "To make a silk purse out of a saw's eiar is impossible." * ♦ ♦ Miss Cheong Chuk Kwam, a Chinese lady of high birth, as her name' will show to the most ordinary observer, will be around here before people have left off writing 1902 instead of 1903. She threatens to look into the lives of her country men in Ne<w Zealand, and to study English style, so as to be able to go back home and become bored in an aristocratic way. She does not know how much she 'is worth, asi it takes a cartload of Chinese money to co to a pound-note. She is reported to be of great beamtv and is very accomplished When: you notice the local Chinese burst forth into brilliant costumes, Miss Cheong, etc., may be expected. » • • Still another royal road to health I If you have lung disease, don't breathenot in the ordinary way anyhow Sniff your oxygen one nostril at a time, and live long in the land. It does not matter if your face grows awry, or your handsome features are puckered up in a Manx grin. Do it. A great medical man says so. By this means one lung gets a rest and, by the time the other one goes on shift it feels capable of producing a hiss like the breathing of the mighty Sandow. Walk backwards for a headache, roll solemnly round on the drawing-room floor for corpulency, wear a respirator for floating microbes, go without a. hat for baldness, do not eat bread to keep your teeth whole, (to barefooted to collect earth electricity, do "Sandow" as you walk backwards, sit in a chair and rock four pints of hot water about inside you, and you will enjoy good health. Work? Oh, your employees will do that.

It seems that only shows plentifully besprinkled with "stars" can now scoop m the lucre oil this side of the line. A propos, one itinerant showman, who paacl £50 for a piece of ground whereon to erect, his canvas, was recouped to the extent of 10s only the first night. Thereafter he "trekked." * • » If a parent does not send his child, which us leeov earing from an illness, to school, the truant inspector s down upon him with a dull thud , and if he does send the child the health inspector threatens ham with punishment dire. Inspectors, however, have to do sonien thing for their salaries. » * • She smiled at him archly, all dimpled and wise, And said, with the wit of her sex "The sun hasm't ever affected mv eves, Yet in summer I have to wear specs." ♦ * • Everybody knows Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn," the breezy, delightful, and apparently, harmless book. They have found out that it is immoral now. Some' of the pitiably pious neople of the States have got the library authorities to interdict the book, and it is classed with Zola, Balzac, and Smollett, as unfit for youth. The main reason is because "Huck" scoffed at Sunday schools. If he had not he would not have been "Huck," and he would not have been w r orth reading. He is being played a.t Parson's Theatre Connecticut at present. Parson's Theatre ' Interdicted ! ♦ * * The more fashionable you aie the moie bridesmaids you must ha.ye, if you are threatening to take the matrimonial plungei. New York, so I hear from a young American girl, now "doing" New Zealand, has professional bridesmaids — girls of much beauty — who will look beautiful, and take a diamond brooch, "the gift of the bridegroom," for a consideration of one hundred dollars. They do not confine the business to unmanned girls Young and beauteous matrons leave the baby at home, in order to participate with delight m the lucrative profession. * * * Is it really necessary for "tw elve good men and true" to gather together, and look miserable, in order to dispense justice to a, criminal. Could it not be done by proxy? For instance, in a Northern court, the other day, only eleven jurors turned up. The stern judge, questioning them, found, that as the twelfth man wasi aw a.y on important business, he had left his verdict u'th a friend ' ♦ * * When a man has outrun the constable, and speint. Ms substance, m earning the title of a "jolly dog," he usually gets wild, and advertises that he will not be "responsible! for any debts contracted by my wife." One such gentleman recently did such a. thing. Now he is sorryNeixt day, in that little country -aner, appeared an. advertisement from the wife aforesaid. She remarked therein, in loud type, that, thank Providence, she could earn heir, own living, and that she had brought her husband some hundreds of pounds at her marriage, which sum he, the poor suffered, had duly spent. Now the man cannot go down the street witlhoufe having metaphorical mud cast at. him. Tit for tat' • -• At al dinner party, which I attended last week, the conversation turned on the decimal system of coinage. One gentleman, m whom the parts of the Scotsman and the Hebrew are striving for mastery said — 'As long as the cash is the real genuine sterling article, it does not mattei a rap whether our creditors are "fat men" or "scabs," or whether the coins bear the effigy of Kinig or Kaiser, Czai or Mikado — they are always alike welcome — there is no intolerance about us on this point, anyhow." All the' same, I thmk you will never get a loyal nation like the British to do a,way with the "sovereign," or replace it with the dollar, however mighty the latter

A propos of a recent Lance article toucliing the suicidal policy of prohibited immigrants from landing on this side of the world, the Sydney "Sunday Times" remarks — "In truth, it is perfect lv useless trying to make folks in countries where the population runs to hundreds per square mile believe that the Australian Continent is sunk to its load line with three and three-quarter millions." ♦ ♦ ♦ It's nice to see a> really devout person in church. Not the kind of man who ■prays into his hat once a week, and has his hand in everybody's pocket all the rest of the time. The other Sunday, m a littlei bethel up-country, a devout person was so annoyed at a conversation being carried on in a seat opposite that he solemnly rose, consumed the intervening space, and kicked the offender on tihe leg. Then, he got him back to his seat, and to his prayers, a hatmy man, while the offender thought of fight and embrocation. • * * There are some' really old-fashioned persons in Wellington yet. One dear old lady recently took a trip to Day's Bay, in order to get rooms for the summer. She wanted, to tone her daughters up, you know. Rather liked some rooms shown her by a well-known resident, but when she heard that the sun peeped into the rooms she and her suite were to occupy every morning, she remaiked that she hated rade^ young men, and left. * « • It is hard lines when the poor Australian youngsters have to go nameless beca,use there is no water to christen them with. At Baillarat (Victoria) recently the City Council refused to aillow the churches water wherewith to baptise infants. You -who have never thirsted start I I visited Co>olgardie in the early days, when New Zealanders were dvinp of sand and fever by the score. The form that the morning "wash" took was the> "dry blow." The feverish fossickers. scrubbed their dirty faces with dirtier garments, or laved their heated brows in beer, which was 2s 6d a panniken. ''The man that blazed the track" had a. hard row to hoe, and no w ater to irrigate it with . ♦ • * Who would not "do" a publican? Veiv few, I fear. The quaintest sample of a tardy calling' of the "still small voice" is that of a person who sent a publican a cheoue for 245, "conscience" money. This person had, in the dead and seme year&, bought two drinks, and tended a half-soivereign, for whichi the publican gave him 19s in exchange. It is presumed that in the intervening Tears, prohibition had clutched the debtor, and he hais made recompense and compound interest. Some publicans will want all thei trust monies they can gather too, under the sway of "no-license."