MELBA’S XMAS MEMORIES

Taranaki Daily News, 17 December 1926, Page 5 (Supplement)

MELBA’S XMAS MEMORIES

MERRY, LIGHT-HEARTED DAYS, “Some of my earliest memories* Melba once told the writer, “are ol Christinas, when I had to stand on* tiptoe to see what was on the table. And what a little imp I was! 1 laugh still when 1 recall one day.' (I suppose 1 was about seven at the time.) My father and three old friends were playing whist—a game my father was very fond of—after our Christmas Day dinner, and poor lit He me was being ignored for the time. »So I got a pair of bellows from" the kitchen, crept unnoticed under the table, and blew a mighty blast up the leg of my father’s trousers. He jumped up as if he had been shot, and his language —well, it would have made an ‘elder’ blush. “In those long-gone days I was always up to some mischief or prank. One Christmas Day. 1 remember, when I was about sixteen. I dressed myself up as a nun. with my face cunningly veiled, and called on my father for a contribution to some charity. The dear man was all sympathy—he always was—and after listening to my story put a fivepound note into my hand. j “This was too much for me. and. like ] a donkey, 1 broke into a peal of laughj ter and gave myself completely away. ‘You little rascal!’ was all my father I said when he had recovered from the I shock. But he wouldn’t take the not® '.back; and 1 was five pounds the riflicr j for my little joke. I “Oh. those merry, light-hearted days when I was so young and so full of wickedness! Another early Christmas I recall when a minister was staying with us and held a service in our house oil Christmas Day, to which neighbours came from miles around. He had preached a long and prosy sermon, and at its conclusion suggested a hymn which ho asked me to accompany. I sat down to the piano: and. (o the horror of I lie good parson ami the congregation, played with groat gusto, ‘See mo dance the polka!’ Oh. that minister’s h.*e! I can see it vet.”