One day when Peter Allen, member for Wallaroo, in S.A. Assembly, was in one of his most eloquent flights, Archibald, of Port Adelaide, got up and asked leave to interrupt.
“Does the member for Wallaroo yield to the member for Port Adelaide?” asked Speaker Coles, gruffly.
“Nothing,” replied Allen, “affords, or can afford, the member for Wallaroo greater pleasure than to yield to the distinguished and able member for Port Adelaide, who never makes a speech or interrupts the speech of another member without adorning it with brilliant radiance.”
Archibald stood, blinking behind his spectacles, until Allen had finished
his sentence, and then said, “Mr. Speaker. I move we adjourn.”
And they adjourned.
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A vaudeville lady complained the other day of the gallery of Melbourne theatre throwing apple cores and the like on top of her while she was singing. She wouldn’t complain if she had appeared at some of the fourth rate halls in London. At one in particular of the writer’s acquaintance, right across the front of the stage there is a net to save the performers from being hit with whole apples and other bigger things. When the net first came into use the vegetables used to bounce off the net and hit the poor, innocent orchestra, so they had to be cased in with wire-netting too.
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An Excited Voice – “ Hello, hello, is this the city editor?
Well, one of your men down here at this fire has fallen down the elevator
shaft and is very badly hurt.”
Busy City Editor – “ Never mind, I’ll send another
reporter.”
From The Gadfly ~ 14 March 1906
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia