CIGARETTE PAPERS.

Southland Times, Issue 21648, 9 March 1932, Page 6

CIGARETTE PAPERS.

SUCH AN OPPORTUNIST! Quite recently I had the good fortune to be host at a most delightful gathering (in an earlier decade it would have been called a “sworry”) at my apartment, 133 A Bond street, Invercargill. All the elite were there—all six of them, besides numerous notables from overseas. All of the guests immediately seated themselves without any suggestion of malaise and engaged each other in that bright conversation which marks such people apart. I was extremely grateful for the appearance of Mr Spencer Sinjun Postlethwaite-Carlinger whose patrician presence certainly lent a je-ne-sais-quoi to the proceedings. As befitted a man who has been sent down from Oxford and has spent all his father’s money, he carried himself with a certain hauteur, for the first halfhour or so contenting himself with smoking my best cigarettes and saying “Quaite.” Occasionally he varied this with “Quaite, Quaite!” or “Quaite, Quaite, Quaite!” Everybody voted it a charming party. I handed round some carrot-juice cocktail and fried potatoes, which lent a Bohemian touch. A Russian countess sang “The Volga Boat Song,” which Spencer Sinjun (or ’’Ruggy,” as he asked me to call him) described as "How volgah!” a remark which caused roars of laughter from the assemblage. At this stage I lost my gold cufflinks, but told the guests not to worry as they had only cost me ninepence; this evoked further merriment, and everyone thought it a most witty remark. A young lady from Mount Cook, viewing one of my drawings of a man with a cigarette holder, said “What a charming bottle that man has in his mouth!” This bovine comment I treated with the ignore it deserved. During a lull in the proceedings I took advantage of the opportunity to impress on the Russian countess my views on travel, hula-hula girls, buckwheat cakes, saxophone solos, salesmen, unexpurgated editions of “The Arabian Nights,” George Bernard Shaw and the atavistic impulses of Beni’al tribesmen; she told me what she thought of men. I speedily dropped her, however, when, on looking at a volume of Punch, she said the drawings were nice but weren’t the sketches in Smith’s Weekly ever so much more clever? Shortly after this Ruggy said that he must be catching his tram, “because it was bad form to walk and he abhorred taxis.” This was the signal for a general exodus, though everyone seemed to have enjoyed it ever so much. So charming, they all said. Ruggy confided to me that he had got nothing out of the party, for which I was duly apologetic. I was not so inclined to agree, however, when I returned to the empty flat and discovered that he had absconded with a pound note which I had absentmindedly left by his chair. Nevertheless, I thought, I must see more of these Bohemians. They have such taking ways! -CEO.