Afternoon Tea Gossip

Free Lance, Volume IX, Issue 456, 27 March 1909, Page 10

Afternoon Tea Gossip

By Little Miss Muffltt.

YOU have noticed how the hat badges are increasing month by month. Their distinctive colouring, diverse designs, and intricate monograms afford quite a study. I was struck the other day with the increasing craze for abbreviations in the way of capitals for words. In an Auckland paper, which I chanced to be reading, it was announced that a grand concert was about to be given in aid of the "N.Z.Y.M.P.8.C.U." Heyings! When this lot is written out in full, what a thunderingly majestic title it must make. • • • Here is a hint for some of our WelJittgton doctors. When they see the splendid advertisement it holds out there ought to be a rush for it. A Philadelphia!! surgeon is giving a dinner to 150 men upon whom he has successfully operated, aoad from 125 of whom he had removed the vermiform appendix. Now, who will be the first Empire city sawbones to banquet the citizens whom he has had his knife into? He surely owes them some return? « • • A gentleman keenly interested in zoology visited Wellington from Sydney the other day. He was taken by his friends to Newtown Park, where !he saw King Dick and the other members of our growing Zoo. On the way back to the city in the tram the little party were talking about King Dick's loneliness, and his pining for a mate. "Oh, that Teminds me, said the Sydney gentleman. We were placed in a similar plight once in Sydney with one of our animals. The head keeper had gone to Melbourne on a visit, and, while staying at the Grand Hotel, in Spring-street, one morning, he received the following wire: — "The chimpanzee seems to be pining for a companion. What shall we do until you return?" • • • Does anybody know him? He has evidently been at the game before, and has been hoaxed. It looks, also, as if ne had tried and failed in Wellington, for I noticed this in, last Wednesday's "Auckland Star": — "Advertiser (Roman Catholic), in good position, Wellington, desires acquaintance with lady, also R.C., age 20 to 27, with view to marriage at an early date. As this is genuine, it is requested t!ha.t none out genuine replies be sent. — Address Catholic, Star Office." • • • The latest rumour afloat with regard to Mrs. Hannam, the only woman survivor of the Penguin disaster, is that the Union Company have offered her a positions as a stewardess on one of " their steamers. The Marlborough "Express" supplies this item, and, haaEaag as it does from Blenheim, it appears to have some colour about it, though it is rather a remarkable suggestion after the terrible experience through which Mrs. Hannam passed. I .notice that we are not the only people on earth who have trouble with the domestics. Even the dear old Motherland has her ups and downs in this respect. For example, a domestic servant whose attention was attracted to a dog fight slipped down the open shoot of her mistress's coal cellar, and under the Workmen's Compensation Act the other day recovered 7s 6d per week for injury. It is now up to the mistress to proceed against the owners "of the dogs for caxising the fight which caused the girl to fall down the coalhole. « • • I often wonder how it is that more accidents do not happen as a. result^ of the careless way in which many girls and ladies carry their umbrellas and sunshades in our crowded streets. Only last week I was near enough to one scene of a minor accident of this sort to near the outburst of sarcasm from the mere man. He looked a "grumpy," but a poke in the eye is not calculated to sweeten anyone's disposition on a dose, humid day. The gentleman, a stout old party, ran. against the end of a^ sunshade, carried carelessly, just outside the Bank of New South Wales. She said: "I beg your pardon." He glared', and, after a moment's eloquent, if profane, silence, said: "Don't mention, it, miss, I've another eye left!"

In one of our suburbs there has lately came to leside a gentleman named Burst. Of course, theie's nothing much in a name, and this gentleman cannot- help his. But he was surely misguided when he called his daughter Annie May, and still mare so when he named the latest little stranger Ernest Will? How Ernest will bless his sue some day! • * « I heard a smart bit ot repartee tne other day. It was at an. evening party. A well-known man was being bantered about a report that he had thrown the handkerchief at last. "I thought you knew me better than to believe it," he said. "Why, I'm a confirmed bachelor." "Indeed," said the youngest minx of all, "and pray Mr. Singleton how many gills assisted in>_ the confirmation? 7 ' It was a sure hit. * * * We were talking the other afternoon over our tea-cups about the influx of fortune-tellers into Wellington since the Commonwealth put tne ban on them. Then, one of our party made a confession. She said that she made

a call on one of the wise women one day last week. "And at was so funny," she said. "The fortunetellers said to me : 'Your future husband will be tall, have a dark complexion, and be yery wealthy.' Then, I thought it was my turn, so I said 'Now, tell me another thing. How can I get. rid of my present husband?' "