ROUND THE TEA TABLE.

Auckland Star, Volume 55, Issue 12, 15 January 1924, Page 13

ROUND THE TEA TABLE.

(By SHIRLEY.)

MATTERS OF GENERAL uSTEREST.

We hoar a good deal in these days about "pinching" and purloining, but is there not something rather touching m tlie frequency with which persons in parks or trains ask their unknown neighbours to look after their property wlnle the owner is absent? The feelin'" is that even though the trusted one is really ex-burglar Bill or Jane on probation he or she will be so moved by this confidence as to act rightky for once. And really, whether this be so or not, the system seems to answer well. As I came to a park seat one holiday, a weary looking individual upon it asked mc if I was sitting here a moment, would I mind looking .after this bag of plums which at tho'time was leaning against him? A lady had asked him to keep an eye on it on behalf of another equally unknown who had gone away tor a cup of tea or something. The deserted bag being after all neither a bomb nor a baby, the two things to be avoided, under the circumstaces I consented, but after a while, a girl now taking the place of the tired man, I passed down to her the tradition of the tea-searching lady owner, the girl receiving the charge with almost exaggerated pleasure. Nor did she pay herself from its contents, for when I happened to return balf an hour later I noticed the parcel still there and bulging as before. Its entourage, however, had now completely changed, consisting of three boys, among whom floated a dim legend of the ownership. It had become so dateless, however, that a newer arrival wa 3 able to start some newer thought idea as to the plums having, as it were, no true first cause. "Don't believe they belong to nobody, them plums. Who sor her anyways?" However, they had been carefully guarded through the hands of some half dozen persons, perhaps more, s o even if they disappeared through this higher criticism as I fear they did, Auckland honesty had been fairly well vouched for. • » • » « What has come over South Australia? She has taken to separating native children from their parents just because they are native, and keeping them until twenty-one. The parents at Point Macleay Mission Station have presented a petition to the authorities in which they stated that by this law "the wildcat of discord had entered into the dovecote of peace," which amused those in power very much. The parents also stated that they could endure such separation if it were for the young people's good, but they want there to be some meeting with them occasionally. The authorities decided, liowover, that this would be the thin end of the wedge, having now got their own thick end well in. • * » * . Out of the Frying Pan into the Fire, is how a South Island writer heads the storyette of a certain Ethel in Wellington. However, come to think of it, the fire, after all, always is better than the frying pan, being anyway quicker and not more ultimately deadly. The frying pan in Ethel's case was the industrial school which evidently didn't train her to anything in particular, for after getting out at eighteen, she could do nothing except dishwashing. Wearying of this business, she took a room and looked out for a day job, without success or any encouragement whatever, after some months of which, her room being unpaid for, she tried an innocent caniping-out with another girl at Lyall Bay. Unfortunately she took with them' her landlady's blankets, which admittedly was not the correct procedure. Ethel is now having some years at the seaside—but not at Lyall Point Halswell. In this establishment she will be wept over by benevolent persons, though not so much maybe as if her camping arrangements had been more dashing, but if people wept over Ethel less in the reformatory, and got her a job when she was out of it. it might be a "far, far better thing than they have ever done," etc. »*\ * * * Death masks for face and figure are now the rage in Paris. They are called death because formerly they were taken only after life was extinct, but they still deserve the- title as the lady almost dies of the process. Warm plaster is poured over the lady, the mouth being protected then left to harden. If the workman is unskilful in taking off the hard concrete substance eyebrows or skin may then come off. The idea is for the ladies to give those death masks to their fiances as proofs that the donors have suffered for the sake of the loved one. Why a Frenchman should be pleased with the idea, however, only a Frenchwoman can understand. • * * • * There was something a little coldblooded perhaps about the Sydney woman pawnbroker who allowed her husband, when lies separated from her, to come and pawn certain articles of his with her. "A good customer, though a poor husband," he took them in and out in the usual strictly business way, until seized with a fit of early Vietorianism, he broke into the shop one time and took away all his own pledges this time of course without paying up. The idea that what was liis wife's was his suddenly struck Mm as it were, and he reverted to his own grandfather The magistrate before whom the irate wife took the malefactor also had a fit of early Vietorianism and decided that the wife being a chattel couldn't do business against her own husband, so the accused was discharged. Why is it tnat early Vietorianism in a hero never attracts the girl novelette reader as does the regular out and out caveman ? Auckland girls who still, I believe, choose the author of "The Way of an Eagle" for surreptitious perusal when the boss is not looking (I refer only to those who o do thus improve the shining hours) may enjoy the new version of "Beauty and the Beast." In this the eldest daughter demands a Rolls Rovce, the second a diamond tiara and the" third because she weeps over fiction a great deal, a silk handkerchief. Naturally the father is reduced, like the original, to stealing from a garden, but this time a back garden furnished with a laden clothes line. The most snarling of cavemen discovers the theft and compels the unhappy father to take him along in the Rolls Royce as suitor to his youngest daughter. "I love you," he snarls when she appears, and seizing her by the shoulder he shakes her violently. She kisses him, but bursts into tears when the spell is thereupon broken, and he becomes a soft-voiced Prince Charmin<T. "This has spoiled all," she sobs, "before you were my ideal, but now—" You see she had been a great reader of Ethel M. Dell.