Boudoir Gossip on Frocks and Fashions

Observer, Volume XV, Issue 850, 13 April 1895, Page 15

Boudoir Gossip on Frocks and Fashions

Mrs Harle Giles thinks that women should be eligible for at least one seat on the Hospital Board. We think so, too. Then, there would be a likelihood of an eye being kept on the ' medical comforts.'

Lord Glasgow was understood to say at the Society of Arts conversazione the other night that the paintings looked better in the daylight than in the dark. H'm. One would naturally expect they would, and yet this was not true of all the pictures.

One of the crew of H.M.S. Karrakatta — McGrath by name — is an expert Pitmanite shorthand writer. He startled one of the Wellington reporters by criticising and correcting some shorthand notes that were being made in his presence.

Miss Manning journeyed down from Te Awamutu by the excursion train last Friday and received her prize of Mr Kohn's beautiful diamond and ruby dress ring, which she won in the recent Observes prize drawing. The ring fitted Miss Manning admirably, and she was delighted with it. She is a young lady still in her teens, and just at the age to enjoy such a charming prize.

George Musgrovehasthe reputation of being one of the stingiest men in the theatrical profession in the colonies, and it is said that he can make a threepenny-bit go further than a half-crown in the hands of most other men. George's weakness was put to a practical test tow?>rds the close of the recent opera season. In view of the immense takings of the company in Auckland, a leading citizen waited upon him and urged the. ; cf|Bmß of the Ladies Benevolent Society. Birf' George couldn't see it He flatly refused to, give a benefit performance, or any share of a performance, to charity, and what was more he wouldn't even give a guinea subscription. And yet he must have taken £3,000 during his three weeks' season in Auckland. Contrast this with the action of Pollard's Juveniles in giving a charity performance recently at Christchurch which realised over £ 100.

Mr C. E. Nicholas, postmaster at Bulls, has been transferred to Whangarei. Mr C. L. White, of Whangaroa, is to succeed Mr Nicholas at Bulls.

Oscar "Wilde is by no means the first man who has had reason to feel wild with himself for entering upon a libel suit, and there is every prospect that he will be Oscar wilder before he has done with it.

Guard Turner, recently transferred from the "Wellington to the Auckland railways, is described by the Wellington Post as one of the most- courteous and efficient railway officials in the district. Courteous guards are always a desideratum on the railways.

Fred Pirani has now, with his brother Dave, acquired the ownership of the Manawatu Standard, which they nave been running for some years under a lease, and have converted it from a dead-and-alive dry-as-dust sheet into a readable .and prosperous paper. May good luck continue to attend them.

Colonel Fox has been getting great kudos for the fact that his ' lynx eyes ' — rather applicable to a fox— noticed the least defect at an inspection of the Kutnara volunteers. Not another soul, it appears, had observed that one man was minus the stripes on his trousers and that another wore his belt upside down. But possibly it would'nt have been noticed at Kumara if the man had appeared in his stripes and minus his trousers.

The Hoben boys are doing well out of their rollicking football song 'Crom-a-Boo.' The first and second editions have gone off like hot cakes, and a third is about to be brought out, with sundry necessary alterations both in the scansion of the verses and the arrangement of the music. The Pollards are booming the song.

Robert Carrick, formerly of the Thames Advertiser, is now editing the Waimea Plain* Beview, owned by H. S. Valentine, ex-M.H.R., and published at Riyersdale, Otago. Evidence of his activity is just to hand in the shape of a pamphlet about a town on the new goldfiolds in Fiord County.

Traffic Inspector Turner is no respector of persons in his regulation of the street trafiic of Auckland. He made Dr. Haines toe the mark before the magistrate the other day for furious driving, and the doctor didn't deny it, either. If the inspector said he drove furiously, he wouldn't dispute his word, though he had no knowledge of it, but he mentioned by way of mitigation of his offence that he was on his way to a consultation which was a matter of life and death. It was very nicely put. The doctor paid his fine with the air of a man who took the shilling and costs quite as a compliment.

Dr. Cutts, at the Wesleyan conference in Hobart, said that those religious people who wanted Bible teachings in the State schools were prompted by mere laziness. He imagines that the energy devoted to the agitation for Bible readings, if properly directed, would serve to give children all the necessary instruction Cut-tine cuts, eh ?

Somebody who is simply described as a labourer has spent a month on a visit to the much abused Pomahaka estate, and has written to an Oamaru paper fraying ' that altogether the locality is a desirable one, and he cannot understand bow the settlers can ask for a reduction of rents, as he heard nothing but satisfaction expressed.'

Mr B. Wolff, late of the Thames, was the runner-up in the selection o* a clerk-of-all- works to the Wellington City Council's big drainage scheme out of over 40 candidates, and he has since got a Government appointment as overseer of some road contracts that are to be carried cut between Woodville and Napier, with his headquarters at Da-nevirke.

O. A. Schoch, of Wellington, is an out-and-out enemy of monarchies and military systems. This is the way he lashed out at a meeting of the Citizens' Institute the other night : • The rotten, tottering thrones were only upheld by the military system ; abolish that, and the whole scrofulous and epileptic brood would have to find other means of earning their living.' As George Lauri says in • Rosette,' 'Warm, very warm.' And German, too, judging by the name.

One of the passengers who went through Auckland by the Monowai was Air Joseph Gee. a well-known Melbourne business man and partner in zhe ijrra of Birnbaum and Son, limited the waterproof people. Mr Gee is the writer of a number of popular songs, the last of which is ' The vision Song,' which Maggie Moore has made a big success with in Australia. He was delighted with Auckland and its surroundings, which he had seen before.

'Professor' Richard, 01 alleged electric treatment fame, is now beard of from the South of England, where be heralds his advent by publishing puffy extracts from New Zealand papers, including one from the Auckland Star. -Labouchere ' iv Truth is doing his best to expose the humbug, notwithstanding the credentials from the Auckland Star.

William Percival, the urbane secretary of the Auckland Racing Club, has dropped in for a nice, tidy little legacy of several thousands, and each of his daughters for an annual income of t'oO. They say that the first thing William did when he got the news was to send out and buy a new^ eye-glass, and the next was to ring up Wellington Park to enquire when ihe next sale of blood stock was to come off.

Hubert Clapham, who is lifting a Government appointment for ioiix months in consideration .of his personation of Bishop Cowie's son, is descxibed in one paper as a tailor of very good address, and the paragraphist who vouchsafes this information tells it in such a way as to give one the impression that it was the -good address' that first placed the voting man under suspicion.

Eawei, the young Otago half-caste lecturer, who has gone Home to make money on the English platform, ' got one in ' on Parson Talmage during an entertainment in Wellington, for having written of the Maoris as a degraded and inferior race, lacking intellect or dignity. The educated Maori, says Rawei, has a native dignity, consideration, and innate nobility and courtesy which education has failed to give Talmage.

The electric fraud Richard, -who is contemplating another descent upon New Zealand, hak suffered a severe showing np in London TrutJt. Thus a waiter in that journal : — ' I have been asked to repeat a warning, lately delivered for the benefit of the people of Liverpool, against a notorious scoundrel who has lately cut a figure there as a quack doctor, under the name of ' Professor Richard.' The man has been exposed in the Manchester paper Spy, and his history as there told is an extraordinary one. He is identified vith one -'Dr. Moross," who appeared in London in 1877, after having done a term of imprisonment at Melbourne, and was subsequently convicted and imprisoned for offences against girls. In 1885 he went to America under the name of Geismardo, and eventually found his way into gaol in Oregon for another crime of the same character as the last. Ht. came back to .England, and shortly afterwards one Edward Moross was prosecuted at Newcastle for a similar offence, but with what result does not appear. In 1892 and '93 Moross or Geismardo, appeared and was exposed at Melbourne and Sydney ; and last summer he turned up at the Cape, where he was prosecuted as a quack, and made to disgorge some,, at least' of the money paid him. In November he was hounded out of Johannesbtirg, end now he seems to have suffered the same fate at Liverpool.'.