Entre Nous.

Free Lance, Volume VII, Issue 338, 22 December 1906, Page 12

Entre Nous.

THERE was a large piece of consternation supplied to people on the crowded Quay one recent sunny afternoon. Suddenly a wetud something hurtled into the street out of a shop doorway. It was veiy much alive. It tried to cliimb a lady who was crossing the street. The lady shrieked. The animal looked like nothing on earth, sea or sky. It left the lady and! bolted! down the street. Everybody wiho saw it in its erratic flight swore he would never touch alcohol again. It appeared to be a concentrated jim-jam. It was awful. * ♦ * People fell out of its way and faded screaming into houses — mostly hotels. Still the (hybrid gilgny eaieered. It suddenly darted into a wa&te-bairrel and) stayed tlhere. A sergeant of police, very pail© bu* reliant, stepped up and pokedl it with a pieoe of pack-ing-case. It emitted a frightfu l sound. He kept on p'roddbnig it. It kept on emitting frightful sounds. "Oi befave it's a caatl" said! tlhe eeirgeant. He poked again and. gnramned 1 . "Bedad, ihe said, "it as a caat, and oi'll go to billyho if he ain't got a schtioky flypaper round him !" The true facts' are that a cat in a fish^shop Ihiaid triedi to paw a ny on a fly-paper, had 1 been- unable to shake the paper off, had become entangled and got away and had nearly frightened to death one large police sergeant and five hundred human beings. True as you'ie alive, tool # A story without any charm whatever is toldi in Auckland 1 a propos of the Calliope Dock catastrophe. Somebody blundered, of course, and a few men got killed and a few injured by a moving steamer. The stoiv without charm is to the effect that one of the men who was billed' was allowed to lie in a wharf goods shed for four days. It began to strike the authorities, after a while, that the man should be buried. He was buried — without ceremony or service of any kind. At the time the victim was buried an Auckland man was fined £1 and oorafcs for allowing a dead 1 horse to remain on his land foi three diays. Nobody is fined for allowing a dead man to lie for four days nnburied and then to be ■dumper' like any other kind of unsanctified refuse.

A pink gentleman, with a very fine "weeping" moustache, otherwise elhaved three days under the skin, wearing dark clothes, but a very light waastooarti over a "comfy" embonpoint. Suspended from the embonpoint an opulent gold charm, gold pince-nez, gold! sovereign case (he needs it) and another gold something that our pioor colonial mind doesn't understand. Dark hair beautifully brushed, hands superbly manicured— -tout ensemble fresh rosy English. It is the great West, the picture man. It is the West for whom Nature smiles in New Zealand, and 1 whose paotures of tlbese gorgeous isles are beinig shown by eighty companies in Britain — it is thatl It is 1 the West who has taken the Maori haka and George Munro in motion — moving, mind you! Geoige Mumro! That ought to draw the British crowds', eh? * * • Mr. West has been picturing ever since the. kinematograph got going. He started 'in the" village of Edinburgh, but himself is a native of the township of London. His headquarters are still in Edinburgh. Mi. West has taken pictures under various difficulties. It is rumoured that in order to get an, adequate picture of a gieat Manchester function he wiae hauled up a steeple in a bucket and. tied by a steeplejack to the rooster at the top of a churcn spire. On another famous occasion he was at Arbroath (it's in Sootlaar 1 ye mmd 1 ?), and to gain a nice film of fine subject he stood on a box. To gain <a stall finer focus he forgot about the box and stepiped, off the box quite "unbeknownst" as it were, so to speak one might say — and the picture isn't taken yet. Mr. West was duly mended by the surgeons and his machine is all right now. ♦ • •■ Lord Roberts evinced a terrific interest in the pictures taken of the New Zealand) oadet® in Wellington and Auckland and exhibited at Home. He asked' the man with the moustache to go along to Portman Square and have a yarn. "Bobs" plied him with questions 1 about the cadete and Colonel Loveday, 8.C., and Mr. Wesb just said they were all that fancy painted them and more to boot. When the Field Marshal went to the great preparatory schools (Eton, Harrow, Sandhurst. Woolwich, Rugby, ■etc., etc.) to lecture on defence he took the New Zealamd picture and he (has it yet. Talking about the Rre^cians, there are seventeen Martinengros amd fourteen Haywards, and they like each other so mudhi that they have dome a lot of intermarrying. Countess Matrtinengro, a distinguished member of the family, who lived several centurjes ago, was canonised by the Church of Rome for her good deeds and holy life

Good ideal The Post Office hare printed bushels of "greeting" telegraph forms for t(he festive season. If you want to send) a cheap greeting you mustn't vary the message. They are sorb of printed b*- the mile and sawn off in chunks. The brigjht a<tea of doing a wholesale greeting business at reduced rates is eminently businesslike, but hardly gives the wit and humour of a great people the opening tihat such an occasion sfooaild furxush. It irresistibly reminds me of the old, old yarn of the lazy person who had his prayers povnted on a card and hung over his bed. Jerking his ..aumb up at the prayers before he rolled into bed, he said :' "0 Lord, them's my sentiments!" You can buy sixpennyworth of real sentiment, warranted not blended with cheap, nasty sentiment, for sixpence at tue P.O.

It's a gey haird time the Scots is getting at Christchuirc'h< richt enexicli, or words to that effect. The Dunedin papers are full of wails about the way the puiir bodies have been suffering. One man borrows a pen, from one neighbour, a bit of paper frae anither and ink from a third. One Soot waite : "At one fruiterer's they sold me apples from a 'heap that looked sound ■in the window, and' when I took tlhe bag home we had to throw half of them away; the second shop that I tried cheated me with figs so olid and musty as to be absolutely uneatable, even by tike not-too-partiouiliar small boys of tne family." Ye ken, Saundv tried the figs on the children before he trusted himself to eat them. * * Sand" continues: "At another establishment the saleswoman charged me a shilling for a book that I could buy in Duniedin for sixpence and laughed When I asked her if it was the regular price that she was charging." How dare she laugii at Scottish caution P Sandy proceeds : "A confectioner had the impudence to push down tihe scale with his finger while professing toweigh a shilling's worth of Tollies' for me." Ye see the confectioner wdsi a wee bit too shairp. He saw Sarandy trying to push the scale up on the itnpr side! • # • "I don't know," concludes Sandy, "if the same exploitation of the foreigner is still going on, but visitors to the Exhibition would be acting wisely topatronis© th© leading shops, which treare fair to me, or, if compelled to go into a small place insist on seeing the -contents of me bag before leaving." Why didn't "Saundy" look at his bags? ♦ * # The various Island natives at the Christohtrrch Exhibition aire said to be unhapny. Their health is not good because of the change of diet. They cannot get the fruit they largely live on. New Zealand 1 throws its chest out and' calls itself the most fertile land on the earth. The fertile Chinaman in Wellington has* been sellings oranges at Is 6d, 2s and 2s 6d a dozen. The common, every-day cherry is sold' at Is per pound. Even the easilygrown and cheap island banana has been dearer than ever before. • • • The people of New Zealand' ought to be a great fruit-eating people, and they certainly do eat a vast quantity of miserable fruit and pay a vast price for it. In good seasons 1 the fruit is very plentiful and not cheap. It usually rots on the trees because of freight charges, packing, picking:, and so on. Imagine New Zealand having to import apples, oranges and peaches from California, temperate stone fruit from Australia and often allowing its own stone fruits to rot because it is cheaper to ship at an Australia^ or American port direct to say Wellington than it is to convey them from the backblocks of New Zealand to the same port. And when they get to this port there is no one to distribute them but Chinamen. It is a disgrace to a progressive country.

The prize-giving at the Girls' High School last week demonstrated the capability and' soundness of the female lungs. His Excellency t!he Goveimor was nearly blown off has feet by the volume of sound! with which the girls, at the call of the chairman of the Board of Governors, gave tihree cheers for His Majesty's representative. It seems that Mr. Alfred Brandon, as chairman, is responsible for this vocal proficiency. He has drilled them into it and we will back those College girls in a "three times three" against any equal numbei of the averagie male article. • • • Why it is that a woman's voice is more penetrating and' fai -reaching thatn a man's we know not, but it is so, and, in concert, where girls have evidently swatted up the art of hooray i mo- they make a very oredlLtable tornado indeed. At these functions, the ueoonsidiered male student, who has come along to see his sister scoop a prize, is crowded out into the ante-room, and on this occasion -the cheering of the girls roused the boys 5 anthusiasm, and they replied 1 with as much vim as possible. But it was a feeble volume' in comparison with the girls' lung artillery. • • » "Look! A White Fruiterer'" This opulent line, in fat black letters, appears on the verandah boards of a «rhop in Courtenay Place. Of course, you look for the white fruiterer. He isn't there. Nobody is there. The windows are plastered over with ofld Biewspapers. You assume that a white fruiterer, full of hope, vigour, determination, courage and. British aeeressivenees, put up that sign as a challenge to the Chow. Then sat baok and waitred for the rush of white people who would rather do business with an European than a Mongol. But the Mongols over the roadi — three of them — haven't shut up shop. As before, the Bworn protectionist, the New Zealand worker, protects not his own. His main idea is to protect the monopolist. At least, this is what he succeeds in doing. The rather quaint idea that the Maoris are really Scotchmen who left their own country two hundred years ago and settled in this country needs verification. The only point of similarity 'between the Sootch and the Maoris is the treatment of the aspirate — they both sound a good, hard .aitch. But no, there is another point. Both are generous. Here ie evidence of tlhie generosity of Hone, anyhow. A merchant dasfc weeik received) by posit a small, Maori-made feather basket, together with the f oßowing letter • — "I have the chanoe of writing you this few lines of words to let you know how I am. lam in getting the best of health. I keep mv mind in good order with my body. My people are all well. I hope you are the same. I send you a feather basket for to let you know I won't forget you. Will you send me a feather hat for it, E lease?" Following; out this exoelmt idea we w 11 give a pmmd of i=u^ar (paper and all) to any kind Ofopistian friend who will send along a motorcar or a ten-roomed villa.

" 'Ome Player," from Manigatainoka. chides us mildly for asserting that Captain Wynyard, of the English cricket team, came out by the Corinthic, andl 'belonged to the 'Gorcntihic" soccer football team. "Do you not mean 'Corinthians'?" he asks. We do, we do ! Heaven forgive us ' It was not a printer's error. Just a ■fruiter's ferocious haste to get away to a mothers' meeting. We hadto't time to write the whole woid. Thanks. " 'Ome Player," yer 'and ! • • « One recent day a man who lives m one of those shockingly respectable houses off the Terrace went home to lundh. He knocked at the door. There was no answer. He> knocked twelve times and there was still no answer. He feared! that his wife and children had deserted him, for he had a vague remembrance that he had bad a quarrel with his wife. He got a little frightened and asked the neighbours about it. As he hadn't been jiving in the vicinity long, the neighbours knew little about him or his people. They could give him no information. » * « He decided to break into the house, and wicui the help of a borrowed ciowbar, he did so- He found everything in order, the beds hadn't been recently slept in, and a cold feeling ran

up his spane and rustled in his hair. They had deserted him! Horrified, he returned to Lambton Quay and went into the B 4 Hotel to arrange his shattered nerves. "Hello, B 1 brought your family back from Lowrry Bay, yet ?" was the greeting he received from a friend. "Thanik heaven 1" exclaimed the man who had lost a family. The light broke in upon his soul. He and l his family had been livkug at Lowry Bay for two weeks' holidaying, and hie is absent-minded. .This yarn has the unusual advantage of being actual. • • • It was a glorious day. The warm sun bathedi the clear atmosphere in golden glory. Trotting round the corner came two police troopers, shining like new half-sovereigns! — white helmets, drawn swords, shoulder belts, silver buttons, lovely spurs, and aristo-cratic-looking horses. Behind - them New Zealand's nobleman, Lord Plunket, distinguished' and monocled. Beside him, gay in his Lancer uniform, A.D.C., specklessi and flawless. The whole picture was worth paying for. It made you want to take your hat off and grovel. It compelled you to stand off the grass. But, the picture isn't complete. Closely following, step bv step is Wellington's "Black Maria." As the two imnortamt State vehicles pass a cab-stand the cabbies raise a cheer — for "Black Maria."