Afternoon Tea Gossip

Free Lance, Volume VIII, Issue 369, 27 July 1907, Page 10

Afternoon Tea Gossip

By Little Miss Muffitt.

MANY a woman whom the world thinks rules her husband with a rod of iron manages very well with a mere broom or the clothes brush. « , • Writes "Jack" :— ' Most girte I know are women of few words., but the few words get worn smooth with use. . • * Many a man who is passionately enamoured of a blonde wiU marry a girl however dark if she has a fair income. • * * Many a girl who boasts that she made the oaike with her own hands would not be suspected of very great latent strength. • • * A doctor has diagnosed l the malady of laziness as "Lanohydstomiaßisdtuodenailfis." But, of course, any schoolgirl knows this. • • • Whether vegetarianism pays I know not, but this I know, that a bullock is a vegetarian and he is always cut off in the prime of his life. , • * In spite of all the homilies Of preachers and exhorfcers, Men often leave their better halves In quest of better quarters. • * • I read that the Bey. Gertrud Yon Petzold was hooted by a Berlin audience, who objected to a woman preaching. The objectors were all married men. • * * „ "And have you ever loved before?" He asked, "I pray you, speak! She blushed; her sweet eyes sought the floor. . . „ She answered- "Not this week. • • • Overheard in a big rag store on Tuesday at noon "Yes, he's beer l engaged to her for over a month now! -Go on I I thought from his looks he'd backed a wrong 'un at the races! Very swell girls they were, too! m • * The Parliamentary party that visit ed the Waimarino country were welcomed by Messrs. Punch and^Brass^ The weather was cold and the nrst would be welcome. The second represents what it will cost the country. This appears in an Auckland paper -"The population of the British Empire is estimated at about of whom approximately 348,000,UW are native races." On the whole a White Race League seems to be needed. m „ . Mates. Two boys went goat shooting in the Manawatu. One boy returned to town with a limp, bleedine hand, and said a dog had bitten him. It' was a white lie. His mate had accidentally shot him. He told the do°- lie to save his mate. lne Recorder will probably forget to enter that lie. # , A gentleman with a hard mouth and a business-like air called at a rather swell house the other day He was shown into the drawing-room. The house-lady asked him politely it he would take a chair. He said he didn't think he would "What he d come for was the piano'" That hirepurchase system ! • • • Betting is, of course, extremely reprehensible. No respectable member of society could countenance it tor a moment. But I think it must be confessed that if a reliable seer could by rhance select the winner, a large ntimber of those who decry horse-racing would be prepared to sacrifice their scruples. # The Archbishop of Canterbury has sanctioned the holding of church series in the Esperanto language. What about the deliberations of Par liament being conducted in the same language to make them lucid? Here's * small slab- — "Ni havas almenau dv TJniyersitatoin, man leghoin, nian lingvon en lernejo}, praghejoi,_ k.c. Finante leteron mi sendas sinceran saluton al vi."

"Men must work, and women must weep" — to get what the men work for. • * tr "There are five sorts of voices," says Oscar Hammerstein : "Grand opera, light opera, concerts, voices for the hand-waggon, and shouting at hueband's." He forgete invoices. * * * Says a lady writer. "The present Parliament, in point of calibre, is piobably the poorest New Zealand ever had." The lady probably has no relatives in Parliament, and no chance of getting in herself. • • • WKeai Maicus attempted to Caesar, By her smile she showed it would ploasar ; When he swore by his honor He doted upon her, She coyly allowed him to squaesai . * * • Statisticians prove that, so far from it being a tact that marriages are made in heaven, they are manufactured often in ballrooms. It is necessaiy for the creation of Methodists that marriages take place. Methodists abhor dancing. Kill dancing and you kill Methodism. Simple reasoning, isn't it? A lady who appeared for the ninetieth time before Auckland magistrates, pleaded that she "never had a chance." Never m the whole course of a blameless life, she remarked, had she done anything worse than habitual thieving. The magistrate, touched beyond expression, gave her an indeterminate sentence. ♦ » * A member of a local select club has not, until recently, been accused of burglarious designs, but in a fit of absentmindedness he actually removed fifty-two articles from the club the other night. On representations being made by the secretary, he has, I learn, restored the whole pack of cards, and his character has been given back to him. In New South Wales they are now advocating "young age pensions." That is that parents who have more children than three shall be paid bonuses for each infantile redundance. This idea was first mooted by the Free Lance several years ago, and I am assured the editor is grateful even though the notion is looked upon as the very latest thing in novelties in Australia.