WALKING MATCH BY LONDON WAITRESSES.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXII, Issue 8861, 11 July 1907, Page 1

WALKING MATCH BY LONDON WAITRESSES.

The waitresses of London took part in a greit walking match recently, and amid wild excitement championship honours were secured bv'an attendant in the Ludgate Hill citation Oafe. The occasion was the annual athletic meeting of the Hotel Employees Society at the Stamford Bridge grounds, and the majority of those interested in the catering trade of London were pre’ent.

The waitresses’ event was the event of the day, and when the blushing damsels emerged from the pavilion each was hailed with enthusiastic cheers, and it was some time before the officials could clear the track of the many admirers who thronged round them with sage advice and good wi.-hes to offer. But the girls themselves waved away their attendants with an air of hauteur which can only be learnt successfully in the tea-shop. They were as business-like and distant as if they were presenting customers with checks for pots of tea and! buttered scones. Each wore a short walking skirt and shirt waist of artistic hue, and each carried a pair of corks tightly grasped in her hands. As they toed the mark they glared at each other, and elbowed fiercely for the inner berth. But at once the pistol went. There was a chorus of feminine shrieks, and the great event had begun. The distance was one mile, which meant four laps of the cinder path. The first to make pace was a young girl with golden hair and a jaunty blue tam-o’-shanter. She was the only competitor who affected head gear, for all the rest left their tresses to fly wildly behind them or piled up in the latest coiffure. The pace became absolutely terrific, but the leading girl kept gamely at the head of affairs. Then an awful thing happened. It began to rain in torrents, and half the competitors dashed wildly for shelter. The rest went steadily on, wet but undismayed. When half a mile had been covered the girl with the ’shanter stopped, sat on the railings, and began to cry. She was too tired to go any further. It was now that the heroine of the afternoon first came into notice. She was a tall girl with blue eyes, russet brown hair, and the most graceful w r alk imaginable. In fact, it is almost profanation to say she walked, rather she glided along, with head well back and a frown of determination on her brow. " There goes Kittie Davis,” burst out in a triumphant shout from all the waitresses who had not entered for the contest. For a moment a girl in a costume of green attempted to keep up the pace which was being set, but unfortunately a couple of hair-pins fell out of her back hair, and by the time she had picked them up her chance had gone. The crowd roared with delight, and waved hats and handkerchiefs as the undaunted Miss Davis stepped it out with grace and agility, smiling gently as she realised that the first prize of a sewing machine of great beauty and utility, was hers. She finished as fresh as a daisy, and told a newspaper representative she would walk him five miles whenever her duties did not detain her at the Station Cafe,

“ I love walking,” she said, munching a large chocolate presented by an enthusiastic admirer. “ How people can go about in those nasty motors I do not understand.” Miss K. Dcdds, of the Birkbeck Cafe, was second. It was laughingly declared she would have won if she had been allowed to walk with a teapot on a tray in the usual way, but that was against the rules. Unfortunately, tho lady who finished third was disqualified for running, and Miss D. Ingram, of Ludgate Hill Cafe, secured the third prize,