Afternoon Tea Cossip

Free Lance, Volume VI, Issue 308, 26 May 1906, Page 10

Afternoon Tea Cossip

By Little MUs Muffitt

THE latest definition of a "grass widow" : U A lady whose husband plays bowls." • • # Hobart "Clipper" is the latest paper to cast the stone of accusation at the heroes who shoot pigeons. Anyhow , some of the "Tassy" clubs have given up feathers for glass balls. Good enough. • • • Alleged that the Princess of Wales had to undergo the boredom of that Indian tour against her will, and that May didn't speak to George all the ' time. They came home, and a seivice of thanksgiving was held at Westminster Abbey. • • • You can absolutely hear the type in the Southern papers lick its lips when it rolls out the- following: "The installation of Most Worshipful Brother Lord Plunket 1 as Grand 1 Master of the Masonic Grand Lodge." "Brother!" A real live lord! It's tremendous that's what it is' • • « A lady on the Terrace made a huge mistake the other day. In showing a rich friend her collection of china, she let it be known that it had been m the family for one* hundred years. The rioh friend, has been going round since declaring that the china lady cannot afford servants. • m r Rua, "the Maori Messiah," was curtly questioned by a rehc of the cannibal days the other day. Asked the ancient one: "Where is your father?" Rua knew not. "Where us your uncle?" Rua again didn't know. "I know!" croaked the old chap, gnashing has toothless gums; "I ate them!" " • • The old-time Dr. Chappie, of the ravea-wing beard — and not the present bare-faced medico — has a "double" m a local drapery emporium. Said a lady who was buying things in that store the cither day to the supposed doctor: "Oh, Doctor, I am surprised! How long since you gave up practace?" " • • Som« of the suburbs are really dark at night. One short-sdghted' merchant lately stumbled over a cow m a -ooggy by-lane. He apologised profusely before he noticed the lady had horns. At the next corner he collided with a woman, and exclaimed- ' Well, I'm dashed! Here's another of • the beasts!" • • • Kings often have to give up smoking. King Richard', once a persistent user of the acrid weed, some yeais since was medically advised' to cease his fuming, and now his contemporary of Britain (EdVard of the same token) has had to forswear the aromatic vegetable. Also, he is white as to whiskers and 1 lame as to leg. • • Mr. Seddon reckons every human being's worth to th© state to b« be £300. What a miserable atom a human being is compared with a racehorse. A filly foal has been born at Home, the pa horse costing 30,000 guineas, and the filly's mother £25,000. Cyclone was the pa, and 1 Sceptre the ma. What a lot of people £56,500 would' buy! In a small room in Wellington, where a peculiar people meet, and on the walls of which are pictures of very deoollie people, spiritualistic mediums sometimes pursue their arts. A newhand' was testing one of these mediums the other night. Said 1 the medium) : "With whom do you desire to speak? I can caJ] up any spirit you may desire!" "Well," said the new-chum, "make it Walker's, will yer?" • • ♦ Princess Henry of Battenberg is this month presiding over a big "Sweaters' Exhibition" in London. All articles known to be the result of sweated' labour are shown in the process of production by real sweaters. The Exhibition is designed to arouse the ire of Britishers with kind hearts, yet who would, through ignorance, allow tens of thousands of people to exist on wages of from sixpence to a shilling a day.

The owner of the' champion egg-lay-ing hen. now-a-days. gets photognaiphed with as much frequency as the pingpong marveJ, or the bowling wonder, the cricket te<rior, or the football fury. Some of these dlays the man with the prize boil, or the lady with the largest pimple, will get a punse of sovereigns, and a photo m the Southern weeklies. I notice, with a lump m the thioat and a pearly tear on my eyelash that New Zealandeis in the country are losing their old expensive colloquilisms. One sample. In numberless papers and among numerous people to take the hoTfees out of a conveyance is now to "outspan" — Dutch Also, to put horses in to the shafts is "mspan" — Dutch. Also, to "off-saddle"— Dutch. Why not the old-time "yoke-up," or "unyoke" — colonial ?

Shall hacking cough my rest destroy, And all my pleasure here alloy? Are pains that cut me like a knife To make a misery of life? Shall bronchial troubles wear me out? No — never, all are put to rout By best of medicines, simple, pure, "W. E. Woods' Great Peppermint Care.