Entre Nows.

Free Lance, Volume VI, Issue 308, 26 May 1906, Page 12

Entre Nows.

SAID a man to a citizen in a cai, breathing thickly on him, and supporting hjn&elf by the back of a seat : "Am I drunk?" Answered the diplomatist : "Of oourse you aren't! You're as sober as you always are l " " 'Cos," continued the man, ''I tried to get on a car at the Op'ra 'Ouse, and the guard wouldn't let me. What 'ud you do if you wus me?" "I'd wait for the next carl" "I'm a gom' to report that ther ' bloke.' "He might lose his billet!" said the diplomatist. "Well, and didn't he oughter lose his crimson billet?" "Yes, of course, but he might have a wife and family, and 1 he mightn't be able to get another job, and he might go to the Benevolent Trustees, and you might have to keep him and his wife and family 1" # The absolutely sober person steadied himself, and' said he didn't care, "the bloke as had the oheek to" turn a 'ardworkin', sober, respectable workin'uxan orf a car oughter starve, and his missus and kids too ! I'm a goin' up to see the manager now!" He stepped off the car, and 6at down in the rain, because he, couldn't help it. "I'll let 'em know wh'fcher they can fool with a 'ard-workin', sober respect " "Here, get ai move on, there!" came a command from a large, we>!l-fed person in blue. "You're drunk!" It was the last straw. The perfectly-sober citizen, who was gome to pet conductor No. 985 the sack, went home. • • • The meek, long-suffering wife' Southern woman approached the Bench, asking that a prohibition order might be issued! against her. The Bench remarked, with courtesy, that she did* not appear to be specially tlrink-soddeni, that she was a rather neat party, with a nice- olear skin, and a bit of clean lace roundi her neck, a well-fitting black skirt, and a laundered blouse of unexceptional whiteness. She explained that, although she had never tasted alcohol, her prohibited husband was in the habit of forcing her to go to the hotels to collect beer for him, and! if the worshipful Bench would prohibit her, she would be •legally restrained from planking her stainless number three across the threshold of a pub. • • • The Bench of Js.P. didn't know what to do, and adjourned to the "Cow and Foghorn," and, over a pint of hops, decided to refuse the application, for a prohibition order to issue. She is, therefore, legally entitled to trek for beer until she is charged by the police with obtaining liquor for the consumption of a prohibited person. The law is long-eared, and brays like Balaam's charger.

Talking about slums, in about ten years' time or less some of our salubrious suburbs will be festering rat holes. Badly-built, badly-dramed, and constructed of the most inferior material, it requires, only a drop in values to make them worse slums than those at the back of Cuba and). Vivian streets. Say what you like about values- — -which are raised by the State, which ba&es its calculations on the value put on a property by thle greediest man to be found — there are numberless- cases in which landlords' draw 20 per cent, on their outlay. • » • A favourite plan now-a-day® is to build two houses in one, on a single allotment, the brick dividing walj, m moist cases, being absolutely useless as a preventive of fire spreading. The idea is to economise material and space. Ordinary. — that is, extraordinary — rentals are charged. The City Council is absolutely indifferent in the matter of slums, jerry building, and an -space. People in ill-health frequently have bad dreams, and a local doctor tells how one of his patients came to him the other day with the story of a vision he had sustained. He — so the doctor says — dreamed he died, and got as far as the pearly gates. St. Peter was doing duty, and' asked him his name and address. He gave it. Peter rang the telephone for Gabriel, who brought the residential roll. Gabriel turned up the date, but seemed much put out. "I can't find it, sir," he said to Peter. Peter scratched his egg-like cianium, and looked himself. Tiie man who was dreaming got frightened. He thought he wasn't down for bliss. "What did you say your name was, my man?" asked Peter an a tremendous voice. The dreamer shivered, and told 1 him. "Why," said the Old GentJeinan with the Keys, "you're not due for twenty years 1" "Go on 1" said the dreamer. "I was a patient of Doctor X , and' he was short of cash, and said I was suffering from appendicitis, and the oper 1" "Dash that doctor!" exclaimed Peter angrily, "What a dickens of a muddle he makes our books in. Get along in before I hit you with No. 7 key !" And, taking a harp from the' stack inside the door, the dreamer was passed on to the changing room before going on shift. # • * There are plenty of petroleum stories going around as a result of the New Plymouth oil strike. One relates to a 'cute broker, who discovered' that a far-back farmer held a share. He presumed the poor old hayseed, being cut off by roadlessmess and ignorance, would part up for about fivepence half-penny. "How much will you take for you Trodr od share?" hie wiied. "Five hundred pounds," replied the poor, bucolic person who didn't know anything. Another oil story- New Plymouth man wanted clothes. Had no ready cash. Offered the tailor two £5 shares for two* suits of clothes. Righto! Sold otoe .chare since for £49, and has the other. The seller would kick himself violently only he is frightened of soiling his new clothes.

There is a little oily creek in. Taianaki the Maoris call Honga-Jmngi, which, being interpreted, means ' stink stink." The old-time ■chocolate warrior didn't know much about bores and oil-flows, but he knew a good deal about smells, and, as he was mostly a person of a sea-going type, he held a theory that a 6011001 of sperm whales had been driven by stress of weather up that creek and had died there, thus causing the smeM-smell that emanates from th© greasy stream. A propos of oil, several people with shares in the Taranaki oleaginous enterprise are. quitting shares with great sudfdennees. Why this thusness? • » • Onoe upon an evening dismal, I handed her a paroxysmal Kiss, and spoke her name baptismal, Spoke her name — it was Lenore. Ah, ©he was a scrumptious creature, • Glib of tongue and fair of feature, But, alas! I couldn't teach her, For she had been there before — And 1 she winked! at me and murmured, Murmured that one word, "Encore!" Only that and nothing more. • • • When a magistrate addresses the court at Taihape he has to throw his voice into the stable-yard where the public are camped, for the sittings of the police court are usually held in a stable, and the Great British Public lines up along the fence outside and strains its ears to catch the wisdom of Solomon. Unusual interest centred round the stable one recent Monday, for a hatch of youths who had' been using the crimson pain t-b rush on Saturday night appeared in a dinted condition. • • • The presiding J.P. had sustained a ghastly cut in the head with an axe — bv accident — and he was much bound up. The police were squeezed against; the wall by the excess of prisoners, and things were very unusual, especially as the rain fell on the just outside, and didn't touch the unjust inside, when a policeman, recognising that the Rtable-vard was a part of "this honorable court" — a court-yard, in fact — wedged his way out of the stable, and commanded the wet crowd to uncover their heads in the presence of the law. The crowd commanded! him to bane his head into a sack, or something humo<row like that, and Tin-sorkv Jack danced i hornpipe in the mud to the strains of n mouth-ov-ran. • • • About one culprit setting away in Wellington the other day while the constables were securing another, and about the Australian method of throwing the handcuffs to a pair of bad-eggs and commanding them to hook together at the point of a revolver, this latter is said to be smart. But, the smartness doesn't compare with the brilliant idea of a midnight Wellington policeman three years ago. He was in pursuit of two men, who broke into a jeweller's shop. He had no difficulty in catching the first, a small man, but he wanted the other. He didn't know how to manage it until a bright thought occurred to him. He took his coat off, and stood the man up against a lamp-post, buttoning the garment right round man, post, and all, and, buckling his belt round the whole lot. He eot the other man at the Basin. Reserve, brought him back, handcuffed the two together, and took them to Lamb ton Quay. That man is out of the force now, and is a local preacher in Auckland.

In the early days of the wild West Coast pigeon-flying matches between miners' were common. Big wagers were made, and oftentimes paid, either in cash or thumps. Billy Maboney and Jack MeOacken, of' Kumara were the chief pigeon-flyers of the place, and Bdly backed hie bird, Bluey, to find its' way back from Invercargill to Kumara. But Billy couldn't sret away from, wwk to take Bluey south, and he knew no one who was going down, or no friend: £? *f n «' it to in a hamner. Ja.dk McOracken's home was at Invercargill and he was down, for his holidays' He would take it! • • • Billy made him ©wear by all that wat, most sacredi iie would let tne. bird go at a certain hour and miaute aaid Jack swore. When, However, he- got to Inveicargiil, he plucked the bird clean, and threw it in the air. Behad kept his compact. He had a fortnight's holiday, and returned' to the Coast. He claimed his wager. Billy however, refused to ante up, on the ground that he still had the greatest confidence m the return of the bird. "Give me tall Saturday, and if he. ain't back then 111 give you your money!"" he said. They agreed. Jack waited until Saturday, and then went round to lift the stakes. "Bird come home, Bill?" he asked. "Yes," said the other, "and he's got corns on his feet Jake spuds! He's walked every inch of the way!" • • • Every new-chum who comes from Home is a distant connection of anobleman or a gieat statesman, and you want to be jolly careful how you talk to a newly-out navvy or a ■freshlyarrived "chips." For instance, in a boarding-house not a thousand versts from the Quay, on a recent evenine*. there were, three men newly arrived from the Home-Jand, and a sprinkling of colonials. One of the ooloniah ie a great freetrader, and he was telling ill whom it might concern that Chamberlain was a Judas Iscariot a sort of magnified Nero, and the middle and two ends of a bad lot. • * * One of the English gentlemen was exceedingly angry. "Don't you go for to say nothin' about Joey Chamberlain," he said, with the veins standing out on his forehead ; "he's a friend o r mine, he is, and no error!" The other man, out of consideration for Joe's bosom friend, slid into other topics. Afterwards, he asked the Englishman's new-chum friends if the Chamberlain champion was a fellow scholar of Joe's, or a relative. "Well," sadd the other; 'he's a sort of distant connection. 'Is brother was a greengrocer, and he used to serve Joey's coachman's missus with vegetables!" • • • The story comes from Otago. It is stated of Otago that a farmer there attributed his bankruptcy to his goodnature in giving two swagmen a drink of water. But that is not the story. A school comandttee wanted a charwoman. Several applied, all asking the same wages. The number was reduced 1 to twoi — a widow witih eir children, and the wife of the chairman with a hundred acres of Jand, a> good banking account, and several other desirable things. The committee voted for the charwoman, and the votes wene equal — half for the widow, and hall for the chairman's wife. The chairman had a casting vote. He gave it to his wife. This is a case of touching family loyalty that should not go unrewarded.

A lady vviio left Wellington a little while ago to enjoy the invigorating smell of Hanmer, didn't stay long. Her humorouo hu&band is telling the tale. Attei she had been there a couple of days she wired . "Am having a lovely time. — May." His wire in reply read . "Am having a lovely time, too; stay as long as you like. — Will." And she was home m two days. Now, why? » # * To revert to parsons and gambling. A parson is a clergyman. What is a clergyman? The word is derived from the Greek "kleros," and "kleios" means a lot. In the early days, the people drew their parsons by lot, in fact, gambled on the chance of getting a good, pastor. Even now-a-days the element of chance is not altogether overlooked. A clergyman gets a "call." Mostly, the place that is calling is offering a larger salary than the place that is silent, and the "call" has it. Even the Pope is balloted' for by the cardinaJb, and extraordinary precautions- taken to 6ee that tihe lots are drawn correctly. They drew lots in Biblical times. In the Proverbs of Solomon you will find that : "The lot i> cast in the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord." • • • "Yes," said the editor, as be put his gum-brush into tue ink-bottle, and tried to paste on a clipping with his pen , "yes, tue great fault of newspaper oontnbuitorb js carelessness. Indeed," he continued, as he dropped the copy he had been writing into the waste-paper basket, and marked "editorial" across the corner of a poem entitled, "An Ode to Death," "contributors are terribly careless. You would be surprised," said he, as he clipped out a column of fashion notes and labelled them '"agriculture," "to see the skpshod writing that comes into the editorial sanctum. Misspelled, unpunctuated, written on both sides of the sreet, illegible, ungrammatioal stuff. Contributor are terribly caa-e-les=. They are " Just then the office-boy came in, in that dictatorial and autocratic manner be has, and demanded more oor»v, and the editor handed him the love-letter he had just written to his sweetheart. • • • JNo doubt tue avalanche oi muiderous busiiranging piayb, tne. revival 01 horrible eai iy-cUy cJimfas oy the papetrs>, and the geneiai fcvenbatioujaiism. that seems necesbary to inteiest modern people is responsible for the production of the young outlaw. Latest buts^rangrag stoiy comes from Vvhangarei, wjueie two boys, eleven and fourteen yeais of age i et>pectively, took to the scrub with a nne and ten boxes ot cartz idg.es. The kiddies went out gunning, but evidently they didn't find the Luralla coach or Constable Fitzpatrick or Sergeant Steel, or anybody, and, as for the Glenrowan Hotel — welJ, we daresay ti.ey would have been glad to get any shelter. Presumably, the persistent shooting woke the police, and a trooper went out and collected them before they had even shot a rabbit. The charge will not be "(robbery under arms," and the punishment may possibly be just a handful of spanks. • • . Theie is a lawyer in Wellington who bears a rather striking resemblance to American Piesident Roosevelt, and who is consequently very proud of himself. He frequently tolls the story of how on a visit to America last year, he was walking down Fourteenthstreet in New York when Senator Nicholas Longworfch crossed the street, clapped him on the back, and exclaimed 1 :"Gee whiz, Teddy, is that you?" The Wellington lawyer tells the story every day to everybody he meets. He met a friend the other day, and loosed the tale off at him. The friend countered with a personal experience- of mistaken identity. Said he- "It was here in Wellington. I was walking down Willis-street when I felt a tremendous slap on> t^e shoulder, and a hearty voice yelled out* 'Holy Moses, is that you?' I l™d never seen the man before in my life!" * ♦ * You have heard about piJgi lms going to Mecca, and gentlemen stumping all the way across Palestine on their knees 1 to look at some kind of a shrine or other. New Zealand has itt>" pilgrims. Indeed, we have it on the best authority in existence- — that of a West Coast paper — that the stream of pilgrims from all over the earth to Big Dam grows yearly. In the early days tht greatest man that ever lived 1 — Mi . Seddon — lived at Big Dam (but nevei said it). The West Coasters a.re getting annoyed that stray dukes and tourists and admirers of the Premier are in the habit of hacking off pieces of Mr. Seddon'e old house until the historic edifice is a danger. "If," asks one newspaper correspondent, "a comparatively unimnortant house like Shakespeare's, at Stratf ord-on-Avon . is protected from vandals, why should 1 not the one-time home of New Zealand's greatest statesman be 6imilarlv preserved f

Democratic as we New Zealandters say we are, most of us love to remembei that we have an uncle with a handAe, or a grandfather who is a lauded, proprietor, or a distant relative who hs a J.P. or a city councillor. iSonne of us get married, and. while we reoogn.i&e that "one man is as good as another" in. New Zealand we mention the fact that pa is "esquere," and that tbs girl's grandfather tvwce removed was chairman of a drama? c board 01 president of the worshipful company of tintackers. • • • Pei nut us to plaoe a laurel-wreath an the brow of Sergeant-major Collier, of the Masterton Mounted Rifles. Hie corps broke out into gladness over the sergeant-major the other day, and tried to present him with a purse of sovereigns. Sergeant-major Collier and a schoolmaster are the only two persons in New Zealand, as faj- as we can remember, who ever refused a purse of sovereigns on the grounds that the mere doing of duty was not sufficient reason for an outburst of applause and 1 a subscription-list. • • • Says a man who ha© railway-travelled down South • — "There was a man trespassing on the line at Buroside, and, as two local trains came along, the trespasser was caught between the two sets of rails. He threw himself on his face, intending to get up and depart when the trains had passed. When that happened, he was picked up dead. He had died of staivation. • • » Why is it that little Gentiles are not gentle. Why is it that, although Hebrew boys are usually most populai in the State schools. — on account of their genius for having everything a boy most prizes — the boys who are not Jews call him "Porky"? Why does, a Gentile child talk' through his nose when in conversation with a child of the chosen? It is because of the brutal frankness, of youth. There is in Thorndon a Hebrew tradesman. He is doing rather well. He works lonehanded. He goes away, and shuts up his shop while he does business elsewhere. Last wfek he went away, and staved 1 away a day or two. He came back. On his <shon door, in large characters, was the inscription • "G-one up oountrv, pig-s^ootinsr." It was the Thorndon -schoolboys' idea of a iofre. If Ikey had caught those boys — but, there!