The Club Smoking Room

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XL, Issue 3, 18 January 1908, Page 26

The Club Smoking Room

By

HAVANA

THE engineer wore a tired look as if he had been struggling with refractory machinery, and sipped his grog with a listless, meditative air. He was evidently puzzling over some problem, and a sportive youngster tried to rally him. “Still thinking out your cheap motor?” he queried, “or is it your new and infallible substitute for rubbeT that is on your mind? You ought to give your inventions a rest or you will be going dotty. Now you are having a bit of a holiday away from your engines you should be taking things easy, but you look as if you had been sitting up all night inventing things, and when you have invented them they will probably fail to catch on. What do you say to a day or two’s yachting round the coast?” © © © “The truth is,” answered the engineer, “that my holiday has been a bit spoilt, and I have really worked harder I believe than I do when I am in harness. When I got home I found that our girl was away for her Christmas holidays, and as my wife is not up to much work just at present I have been helping a bit in the house. I never realised before how awfully old-fashioned we are in our domestic arrangements. ’Pon my soul, I believe women think that it is a sin to use mechanical appliances in the house. You can buy an excellent machine, for instance, for seeding raisins. Yet you will find they never use one, they prefer to spend hours picking out the seeds by hand. They say a machine spoils the taste. The same with cutting up vegetables or fruit. In spite of slicers and peelers, they still insist on doing things with a knife in the old-fashioned' way. It makes me mad to see how they scout the idea of using any labour saving appliances. I could invent a hundred different things to save work, but they would never be used. I wonder in these days of scarcity of domestic help that women don’t try and invent contrivances for the house, but I never knew a woman to invent anything except Mother Seigel’s Syrup.” © © © “ My dear man,” interrupted the cynic, “it is easy to see that you have not been long married, or you would have discovered that women were past-masters in the art of invention. Romance plays no unimportant part in both their life and speech. But in domestic affairs they are most horribly conservative, like the average British farmer. They think all mechanical appliances are the wrrk of the Evil One. They stick to the old-fashioned way of scrubbing floors and polishing linoleum by going on their knees to do it. I believe they think it shows a greater piety. The woman with a passion for tidying up is one of, the greatest curses that the average mail can meet. When you have put all the papers and books in your study where you want them, and where you can find them, you will be unpleasantly surprised one day to find that the room has been swept and garnished in yoqr absence, and everything of any importance-pitched out on the dust-heap. The hideous tidiness of the room will get on your nerves, ana you will be quite unable to do any decent work till you have untidied it again. Most women make work in a house. They cook twice as much as anyone wants to eat, and have no idea of saving themselves trouble. The infernal habit of polishing linoleum till it becomes as slippery as ice ought to bv made jienal by Act of Parliament.”

“If you want to find anything in your room after it has been tided,” said the journalist, “ you want to be a clairvoyant, and possess the gift of second sight. Talking of clairvoyance, by-the-bye, did I ever tell you chaps of a funny experience I had in this way? I’m blessed if 1 know how to account for it, and the thing is as great a mystery to me now as ever it was. I was staying in a country town and wanted an overcoat, so I went to the local bailor and had one made to order. I selected a cut and pat- . tern a bit out of the ordinary, and 1 was rather proud of it when they sent it home. I had to go up to Auckland at the end of the week, and on the very morning that I arrived the coat was stolen from the hotel. I tried to trace it. put the police on to it, and rousted on the proprietor of the place, but 1 never Beard or saw any trace of it. Some days afterwards, when I had almost forgotten about it, I dropped in to see two clairvoyants who were giving an exhibition at a circus in town. The woman, after being thrown into a trance, said that- there was a man present who had lost an overcoat. She then gave a long description of the coat which suited mine in every respect. I began to get a bit interested, and was still more so when she started to describe the man who had. lost it, as she gave a most accurate description of myself. She further said that his name began with an O. I then stood up and said I had lost just such a coat, and that my name began with an O, and I asked her if she knew where the coat was, and who had taken it. She said she did not know exactly where it was, but she thought it was at Mercer. She added that it had been taken by a young man, who was very thin and had straight blac-k hair. She said that he was a mechanic, and was wearing a dark blue suit and grey tweed cap. The overcoat itself was in a green canvas bag. 1 went immediately to the police station, and they telegraphed to Mercer, and the reply came back that a man exactly answering the description, and with a green canvas bag, had arrived in Mercer a few days back, but that he had since left and iiSd given no address. Anyway, 1 never saw' the coat again, but the whole thing seemed a bit uncanny.” © © © “It certainly does seem a bit queer,” said the schoolmaster; “ but the funny part, to my mind is that if these people really possess occult powers they do not turn them to more profitable advantage than by exhibiting in a circus. Why don’t they spot the winner of the Melbourne Cup; for instance, or take advan tage of the rise and fall of securities on the Stock Exchange? Or, during the hidden treasure hunts in England they could have reaped a small fortune bv discovering where the hoards had been placed.' In your own ease, if they knew so much about the thing, l ow was it that they did not know where the coat haa gone to after it left Mercer? Their information docs not seem to have been of much practical use to vou, but perhaps the powers t) at rule the unseen have a soul above merely material advantage.” ■ "O © © © , “ Th<;ir predictions don’t always pan out,” ,piit, in a member who had just entered the room., “I can call to mind a ease in which the landlady of a boardinghouse where 1 was staying was told that her- sister was dead. She was in an awful ,way about it, and packed up her things and went straight away to her sister’s to attend the funeral. When she arrived her sister herself opened the

door, looking the picture of health' and strength, and the old lady was quite angry to find she wasn’t really dead. When she returned to the boarding-housef she told us of her experience, and she really seemed to think that it was quite presumptuous and almost wicked of her. sister not to have died after the clairvoyant had so positively affirmed her to be dead. However, the worthy old soul was quite cured of her crystal gazing, or, trance, or whatever it was, and we got better meals and more attention in consequence.”