FLOWERS OF SPEECH.

Otago Witness, Issue 2359, 11 May 1899, Page 8

FLOWERS OF SPEECH.

There were some curiously personal remarks made yesterday, says the Christchurch Press of the 4th inst., in an otherwise very decorous crowd, and some odd disappointments seem to have been met with. " I don't see any sunset," complained one lady. This sounded quaint, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. " I was told there was going to be a snowstorm worth seeing," said another. This, too, in early May, seemed slightly in advance of the season. "' Viscount Hambledon has a pretty blush." — " Oh, and so has the Prince of Wales !" " Florence Davis looks almost too green for my taste." The phonograph would have echoed a good many speeches of this kind: "Is Maud Addey single?" asked one voice. " Yes, you will find her by the wall in the dancing room. Jane and Effie, Maud Addey, and Annie Holden are all single." " Have you seen Mrs Warren down there — and isn't she a big beauty?" asked one young man. " Well, you know, I thought her colour rather poor," replied his friend. " Not a bit of it," said the first ; " you have been looking at Edith Tabor, and of course she is a little, more brilliant, but Mrs Warren's colour and shape ! — here, come and • look at her with me." '" That Mrs Carpenter ought to have been better dressed," grumbled a rough-looking man whom ono would hardly have supposed a critic of frocks. " She does not look as if she had been properly fed, and she is not half curled." " Oh, isn't my great, handsome Edwin Molyneux perfectly fascinating !" cried an enthusiastic lady. " And the trouble I had to get him ! I'm sure I have spent hours with him every day this lrist week." An equally frank" young lady answered her: "Well, of course, my set is not so grand as yours ; I could not aspire to an Edwin Molyneux; but I do love my Colonel Smith!" It was a decidedly interesting crowd. But of course they were not hoping for literal snowstorms, or rudely discussing ladies' charms, or declaring tender sentiments in public — those were only some appropriate fragments of conversation overheard at the Chrysanthemum show in the Art Gallery.