Entre Nous

Free Lance, Volume V, Issue 215, 13 August 1904, Page 13

Entre Nous

ONE of the most sociable le-unions which have become a fixtui c m the city is that of the Corporation staff, the third of which was held an the Council Chambers last Thursday evening. The meteorological conditions could not have been worse even if Inclement Wragge's "Waid" cyclone bad struck the city. As on the eve of Waterloo, there was a sound of revelry that night, and not one of the sixtyod'd fellows present took his enjoyment more seriously than Mayor Aitken — unless it was Town Cleik Palmer, who presided, and kept things going lively until that witching hour when graveyards yawn 'and the Bobby takes shelter with the Boots. • • ■* There were several features of a jolly evening. Somfe Columbus on the Entertainment Committee made am important discovery in a most humorous raoonteur, Mr. A. J. Paterson, a Soot, whose Irish stories were inimitable. The new City Engineer (Mr W. H. Morton), like his predecessor, was found to be a singer with both voice and method. Inspector Murdoch showed., in the playing of the clarionet, that his edlucatioi. had not been confined to drawing scales. There was a pitched battle between Messrs. W. H. Honour (cornet) and A. E. Taylor (piano), in which the iisue was for some time in doubt, but in the end honours were even. Mr. Hastwell played auto-harp selections, and a large number of officers plaived euchre and other games with a skill which caused the Mayor to shake a sorrcwful head. But, how did he know p * » * Thane is quite an array of musical talent amongst members of the Corporation staff. The Town Clei k condescended to vacate the chair and sing a song, his first-lieutenant, Mr. R. Tait, committee clerk, A, Pedder ("Peddyrewski" someone dubbed him), and Mr. A. J. Geary, also of the Town Cleik's staff, obliged' the company with songs. The City Treasury's "rep." in vocalism was Mr. A H. Stevenson, and Marcus Julius Caesar Casey kept up the reputation of the City Engineer's department. Solicitor O'Shea "spoke a song 7 (all about football) for the legal side of the city's business, and Traffic-manager Petersen raised a tuneful voice on behalf of the tramway service. The company "Jolly-goqd-fellowed" the Mayor and his councillors, of whom there were a number present, and throughout the evening strong man Doyle (chairman) and the persistent Petherick (secretary) did the honours on behalf of a capital organisation of committeemen. » • • Lucid English from a local philanthropist's speech : — "Though some of us may not have widows and orphans at present, we never know when we sha.l have them."

Mr. F. Loudon, a candidate for the vacant &eat in. the City Council, knows something about looal goveiinment, foi he has had a seventeen-years' experience of them as a lnembei of various local bodies. He is a conversing kind of an Irishman, and confident withal, and if he- should happen to "get home" he will, if he sticks to his platform, make things hum, and, as he himself says, "be execrated inside and outside the Council." His platform? Mainly, light on the dark deeds of the Council, no bungles, no town belt as a nuiseiy far weeds, the housing of the poor :;t reasonable rents, and all the rest of it. * * * Mr. Loudon aveis that there has been no excuse for the gigantic blundeis the Council have committed, and that a schoolboy would have worked the compensation scheme in Adelaide-road more skilfully than the Council. He wants to cut off 150 feet of the Town Belt for leasing to poor people, who should pay no mioie than £15 or £17 a year rental to the municipality. The other night, after a meeting at which Mr P. O'Regan presided, he was accosted by a 'orney 'anded. "Aie ye the candidate for the City Council?" asked thte 'orney 'anded one. "I am." "Bedad, I was there. Shure, yez had Pat O'Reer,an in the chair, didn't yez ?" "Yes." "We.ll, he's a dacint kind of a mahn, so he 'is, and bedad, if he thinks yez are all right so do oi, entirely. I'll vote for yez'" Which is logic — of a kind. * * * He was. a very smart-looking chap, and he gazed for a long time in the window of a looal bootshop. The everalert proprietor, scenting a customer, left the shop, and remarked pleasantly, "Anything I can do for you, sir — boots, shoes, sliopers, polish, bootlaces', ooirk soles or boot-rvrotectors ?" "Boots ?" the man auerierl. "Why. you Wellington people don't know anything: about boots. I always get lamed when I buy boots here'" This stirred ur> the proprietor. "Shall we send a few pairs foi you to, try ? " he askedi. "Huh' Yooi ran if you like. Pend 'em to Captain Dinkum, at Doughboy's Hotel." * * * The bootmaker sent up half-a-dozen of his very finest pairs, and the boy was stopped on the steps of the hotel by a smart gentleman "Is that a parcel for Captain Dinkum?" "Yes. sir." "Well, I'm Captain Dinkum , give 'em to me." Subsequent hankerings after those boots took the bootshop man up to make enquiries at Doughboy's Hotel, but he has failed to discover the gallant officer. He has faded into the whence with his ill-gotten trilby-casings. * * * The Scottish photographer who endeavoured to get a group of Premier and British footballers on the steps of Parliament House last week is the most übiquitous of his class. His stern, smileless order to the crowd to "keep still," and his assumption that the honour was a bit too high even for Premiera made people smile. Having, by his solemn methods, insisted on everybody looking like a funeral party, he prepared to drop the handkerchief. A footballer whistled the first bar of "Oom-ta-ra-ra," when everybody was looking most funereal, and broke up the show. The photographer will be sending in a bill for a cracked lens, Why doesn't he cultivate a smile, and use requests instead of demands?

A Union Company skipper tells the story as a sample of the manners of some Wellington youths. One youth, who is engaged by a local mercantile firm, was sent round on business to the Steamship Company's office, where the captain was putting in a spell of office work. The youth patronised! the skippei (who is a strict disciplinarian), asfeed him a few leading football questions, smoked his cigarette, and! kept his hat on. When the youth got back to his own office, the "bass" asked him . "Well, did you see Captain X ?" "Yes." "How is the old gentleman ? I haven t seen him since he returned from that trip Home." ♦ * * "Well, it's like this," replied the youth , they reckon skippers and pilots ought to have good eyesight. Captain X- is nearly blind!" The "boss" was astonished, as he knew the captain to be possessed of remarkably good sight. "Blind P" he queried incredulously. "Yes. Why, when I went into his office he said, 'Well, lad, where's your hat?' when the bally thing was on my head all the while!" And the skipper, who has heard about it, told us. * * * Novel use for old tram oars m England are to make them into playhouses for the children in the garden of a London hospital. In Covent Gardens over thirty may be seen as store houses for potatoes. A lady in the country took one as a little cabin house for her gardener and his wife, another i® used for an oyster saloon, and a doctor has used some for the open-air treatment for consumptives. Three are in the Thames as house-boats. A coffee palace and a fried fish and chip potato stall also take up some lately ~ disabled train cars. In Wellington disused cars are used for street ornaments. And they certainly do give Cambridge Terrace a traffioky look. He was a haraesed-looking citizen, and he faced the might and po^er ?* the Hutt Borough Council. Well/ asked Mr. Orton Stevens, fixing him with a steely orb. "What is your trouble?" "I want, sir, the Council to grant me the use of a boat to get to my section." Mr. Stevens looked serious. He assumed the "beavv father" attitude. "Look here, sir, I'd have you to know that this is not a oomio opera society but a Council composed of grave men, doing serious business. You are flippant. Kindly retire, and let us get on with the business." But. the man with the trouble reaJlv proved! that his section was at present an island, and that he really did want a boat., and that he didn't look upon the Council as a comic opera company or anything of the kind. But, he didn't get the boat A T>ropos of water, we noticed a suburban boy one recent Sunday pulling pleasantly around his father's back garden in a punt! In the city area, too!

A pale feeling surged through the community on Tuesday morning last when a loud booming quake shook up Wellington, and the buildings began to rook violently as if possessed of a devil. People in fhe city poured out into the streets, and stood 1 in, such a position under brick buildings where they could 1 be most easily killed with falling bricks and chimneys. A football magnate, who was talking to some Auckland visitors, immediately seized the occasion to remark, "There's ai sihake for you, chaps \" as if he had arranged the seismic hair-raiser for their special behoof. But, when that proved l to be only the prelude to an old-time Wellington cancan, he streaked' for the horizon lake forked lightning. * • • More ink was spilt than usuail by the crowd that always seems to have lots of spare time. The Government Life Insurance Building emptied some of itself into the street, five or six people who were going by narrowly escaping. It would have been a remarkably sardonic thing for a life insurance building to lay out a few citizens insured) in its own particular company. Everybody had a theory, but most people put it down to Wragge and l his "Ward 1 , Honorable Minister for Railways." Quite a lot thought it was Waomangu taking up her job where she laid it down. * * * Everyone was so fearfully cheerful that it is unkind to remark that no one felt that way at all. The town clack stopped, but it has since gone on working. The authorities might have tuned the chimes while they were about it. It was the sort of shake that makes rue feel that a thousand-acre paddJook is a more delightful spot than Panamastreet. One excellent effect an earthquake has is to put people with swelledhead in their place. Even a J.P. or the member of a Road Board! feels mighty small while it is on. * * * The Editor, Free Lance. — Dear Sir, — Kindly allow me to thank you for your notices and remarks re Prisoners' Aid Societies. They will reach people who, no doubt, will be interested in this branch of philanthropic labour. Every care will, of course, be taken to avoid any imposition, and we do not intend that the heart shall run away with the head, although, as youi are aware, this class of unfortunates ane chiefly won by a genuine consideration for them emanating from pure love to help them. My experience, covering years amongst the worst of Australian criminals, has proved to me that if they are to be won it is only by a firm yet oonsidierate discipline. They need discipline and experience, for incarceration means not only time to "repent," and mend their ways, but is often a season of scheming and planning, and one, to cope with every phase of it, must "be alive, and know his work. — Yours, etc.j N. TttkNBB.

Since the sticking-up case at Kaiwai - ra and the assault on a young lady, Wellington suburban women have had an eerie feeling when going to then homes unaccompanied Every heap 01 tram-rails or boulders seems to be a man thii sting for their brooches and rings Most guls walk faster than formerly, and all are glad to once more find the shelter of the paternal poof. Last Wednesday night, a certain suburban damsel, who had been tan vine o'er long at the Skating Rink, found herself with no escort. She took her courage by both hands, and waded out to her suburb. * *■ * Going up a dark hill— wheie, by the way a junior stioking-up was effected a week or two ago— she heard a heavy tread, and feau , lending speed to her number twos, she set sail for home, me footsteps behind quickened, and she cast fearful glances behind, and saw that, the ruffian was a burly monster, enveloped in a big ulster. She almost heard him pant, and saw the flash of his wicked eves If she oould only reach her gate before he overtook hei ! With a great epurtshe got to the gate, thiew itQPen, and rushed for the door. The man, still hard on her heels, opened the gate too and followed her. "Help' Help she cried, ringing the door-bell violently as the pei-fidious monster closed on her. "What the dickens is the matter, Mary?" asked the villain Help' Heh>! Muider I" And, as the housemaid threw wide-open the door, the hall light fell on a scared, white-faced girl— and her father' A prohibition older a& an advertisement is a new line. Thus a Hawera professional man —"Being a prohibited member of this community, with consequently less expenses, I am enabled to reduce chimney sweeping to 6d in either town or country." A gorgeous Government official, not entirely unknown in the Empire City, has been released from his 1 overwhelming duties for a few weeks, pending the return of the apple-blossom bloom to his parchment skm. He is a top-notcher, and you would think yourself jolly lucky if you had half his "screw" and three times has work. He has been shooting, and the taxidermist has already in hand the rabbit he killed for mounting purposes He strayed on to a settler's land in the Wairarapa, and banged away at tussocks he thought were rabbits, and boulders that looked like hares. . . . An irate farmer, who was growing mutton, strolled into view. "What the dickens d'you mean by blazing away all over my land?" he asked. «S_i- r _ r f" respondied the high official , "do you know who I am? lam the Under-Secretary for the Banana and Lemoni Peel Department'" "I can't help that. I've turned off other Government servants. Why," he continued, drawing a big breath as he thought of the saorileere, "I even bumped a railway porter off last week '" And the mere under-secret ary "got." * • * Another dodge. There was lately published, by an Australian paper, particulars of a prize competition. Best pair of knitted soaks would win. a prize , others not so good would win prizes — total prizes, £20. Knitters must use eighteen pennyworth of the special wool advertised. Socks, when judged, would be returned— perhaps. Stated that nearly 3000 people sent socks all having been knitted from the advertised wool. Somebody had the public once more "on the soft," and somebody has sold a heap of wool and' raked in a pile of cold-weather goods. * • • Mr. William Branigan is hurt that the Lance should have remarked on the absence of the chemical engine at the first Kilbirnie fire since that portion, of the city has bad a fire brigade. It apyears that the reason why the chemical engine wasn't there is because there isn't any engine. The complete plant at present comprises a bell and an empty shed ,and the brigade hasn't got even a bucket. The presumption that the brigade itself didn't turn out was due to the fact that there weie no glittering helmets and trusty axes to be seen. However, Mr. Branigan, who js foreman of the suburban brigade, assures us that there were fourteen members of that body there during the conflagration, and that they fought the fire with kerosene buckets, and effected a very desirable "save." » • • There was a five-roomed house within a few feet of the burning shanty, and the said shanty and its adjoining sheds were full of paints and inflammable material. It seems that the brigade has been put to considerable personal expense, and that it is only by their enthusiasm that the suburb has such a body. Mr. Branigan is not only keen on getting the chemical engine, but he is moving heaven and earth to get water to the suburb. "Billy" i? a restless young man, and if he stirs the City Council to the desired extent he will achieve a miracle.

Wheie is the Society for the Prevention of Ciuelty to Animals? Lovers of dogs will be hurt to see that then canine f 1 lends ai c being used as hacks. Advertisement in daily paper -—"Wanted, Purchaser for Lady's Greyhound, JNo. 2035 suitable for girl or boy ndmg to school. Cheap, £4 cash." * * Dear Lance.— Would it interest you to learn that it was the highest-salaried officials who led the van in the precipitate flight from the head office of the Bank o-f New Zealand during the late seismic distuibanoe ? The chairman, of some 18st avoirdupois, got well away, for when I rushed out I found that he was first ensilv in the mad rush for the stairs Then came the accountant, followed by the managers of the different departments. The whole scene was highly amusing to the under-paid and inglorious clerk who kept has block and post — Youis, A Mere TJndersteapPBK. He knocked down a dozen horses And without a sign of feai , He wasn't a strong man either, But he was an auctioneer. An insurance man, who lives not a bundled miles from Island Bay, is undei the grave suspicion of his better-hair just now. It is his custom to cycle to and from town, the homeward trip being made very often late at night, owing to the excessive demands of office work. Towards midnight a few days ago, he returned home as usual, but, when he sauntered down to breakfastnext morning a freezing reception awaited him. In the porch stood a lady's bicycle, where his own was wont to be, and it was evident that it was the machine that had brought him home. The wife is awaiting explanations, and he has none to offer, but she has confided to an intimate friesd that if he doesn't satisfactorily elucidate the mystery before next Sunday, she is going home to her mother. The insurance man is thinking a lot but he doesn't say what he thinks.

"Cyclops" remarks: — "To-day Pahiatua is Mrs. 'Awkins — Mrs. William 'Bnry 'Awkins. The spouse of the particular donah under notice is likely to fully discharge his responsibilities towards her. Speaking as on© who has butted up against him on the football field, I can testify to the inelasticity of his head, and, having seen him keep wickets for the most fiery bowleis the distuct could produce, I can speak for the deftness of his hard, rough hands. Heigho !" "Tell the mother of an ansemio girl that her daughter needs fresh air and exeicise, and you are regarded as a fool," says a physical instructor. "Tell her that what is needed is Bunkum's Blue Bobs for Biliousness, and you at once become a friend of the family." Let a doctor tell herthat there is no drug existing that will do pei mianent good but that air, light, open windows, sensible food, and exercise are all that can be done for most disordeis, and she will regard the doctor as a fool. She will consult the chemist, who will supply her with a half -penny worth of coloured water for 2s 6d. * * * The yarn told by Mr. Bedford, M.H.R., of the abundance of whisky in the Prohibition state of Maine is confirmed by the recent experience of a travelling conjuror. Duiing his entertainment, the conjuror had performed many ■amusing and mystifying tricks, when he announced he would for the next require a pint flask of whisky. Not a man in. the audience moved. Thinking that they had misunderstood him the magician asked, in a louder tone — "Will some gentleman kindly loan me a pint flask of whisky?" This was also followed by a silence, and it looked as if the stories told of the plenitude of whisky were pure romance, when a tall, lank fellow in the back of the hall arose, and, holding out a flask, said • — "Mistah, would a quart flask do ?" "Just as well, sir," replied the conjuror. And at that every man in the house arose, and extended a flask of enormous size.