OVER THE TEA-GUPS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIII, Issue 72, 23 March 1912, Page 15

OVER THE TEA-GUPS.

i A CABINET OF WOMEN. California should be a very paradise d for suffragists. The Mayor in Santa ie Monica has recently made the interesting i- departure of appointing seven women as l- a municipal advisory cabinet, who will be a called on. as their title indicates, for adh vice in all matters concerning municipal ; government, and who, also, will have v d voice in all appointments made. is WOMEN IN SULPHUR MINES. 0 In reply to a well-known admiral who r recently rather jeered at women) in ' Britain for demanding a vote when they r seem to have no desire to do men's work a in mines, drew from a lady the followe ing true anecdote: — T "My friends was being shown over a chemical factory in a large Northern n town. He came upon a deep pit with n clouds of sulphur fumes coming out of n it. There was a sound of knocking down 11 below, and. shading his eyes and mouth ™ from the sulphur fumes, he peered into s the pit. Through the clouds of mist he saw dim forms stripped to the waist, knocking off and collecting the sulphur crystals as they formed on the sides. v "" He said to his guide, ' How can you get men to do such work?' The guide answered, "Good lord, sir! No man would be fool enough to do it. They are c women. " y '[ FOLLIES OF THE SEX. lv the course of drastic criticism of t women's modern tendencies, a writer oi "The Girl's Own Paper and Woman's Magazine' says: —"Nothing is more s humiliating to mc than tne sight of ,'f women in a toilet-room, in a place like j the .stores, pulling out their hair and c powdering tneir laces. If you watch n long enough, yt-u see so much pitiful vans ity that it makes you sick and furious c at once with the conditions thafc foster ( in women this silly passion—personal 1 vanity. I have seen them preening thui ~ and finally getting the crowning mark of n imbecility, the hat that covers one eye, c set cocked at the proper angle over hair s ridiculously arranged and resting on a . bare neck and a pair of shoulders humpt ed into the fashionable mannish attitude, s until 1 have felt like shrieking out and -, thus getting myself safely established in •_ a madhouse, where a straight-jacket would seem the only garment that could cure my disgust with the pitiful carica- I tures of womanhood that stalk the streets of the great city in interminable c processions all the day long. At such c times my heart harks back to farmhouse >- kitchens, to find there some plain, busy II woman, and to heal its aching over the s follies of m* sex in her big comforting l- presence." it HAREMS AS THEY ARE. > Western ideas concerning the Turki-h harem contain some fantastic miseon ,1 icptions. The most popular notion is s that of a collection of wives, more or j less numerous, penned up in a sort of ,! gilded cage, and subject to the capri c ~ of some imperious "Bluebeard." Th s (1 arises chiefly from the confusion in the i. Western mind of the harem with the r seraglio of the Sultans, an institution a fundamentally different in constitution, 0 traditions, and manners. Another erro- :, neous supposition is that polygamy is s the rule in Turkey, whereas it is a very i rare exception, and is becoming rarer '- evcTy day. The law. it is trup. allows '- four wives, but one may frequent Turkr ish society a very long time without 11 meeting with an establishment that has 1 more than one. To all who are not 0 wealthy the expense would be deterrent, j for the law requires each husband to provide each wife with a separate suite of " apartments, servants, and all the ad- . junets of p. household, with an establish- . ment of her awn, in short. Hence polygamy is an impossibility for the vast ma- _* jority, whilst among the few who could , afford the luxury of a dual establishment j monogiyny i-. v. matter of preference. s Domestic pea-c is as dear to the Turk as _ to anyone els.-., and he is pre-eminently . a lover of tranquillity. Agiin. albeit a i) Mohammedan, he is a child of the North, t and not uxorious in temperament, like the Arab. The fellah of Egypt divorces and remarries with facility, a practice, unknown to the Turkish peasants, among whom one meets with Darby and Joan as frequently as in England. Pubic opinion in 'the circles of the educated nnd - well-to-do has set its face against polygamy. Tt is stigmatised as barbarous - nnd out of date, and, to put it on no .' higher grounds, it i- unfashionable. It 1 would be a hard matter nowadays to i find parents willing to give their daughter as a second wife. If there was really - a disposition towards polygamy an effec- . tual barrier to it exists in the fact that, ) in spite of the introduction of slave wor men in past times, the female population - is not greatly in excess of the male. This i alone is sufficient to show that the vull gar notion of the Mormon indulgence - in plurality in wives has no foundation ; in fact .---"Turkey and the Turks," by Z. i Duckett Ferriman. EEEPINC FIT. A London medical man in an American . paper thus describes the way a woman I may keep fil :—"Every woman should ■ allow herself at least twi hours a day . out of doors, one lioiiT in the morning, l and one in the afternoon. Or, if her I circumstances will only permit one hour . a day. let it be divided into two equal , parts, one in the morning, and one in , the afternoon. Try to get your exer- , cisc periods into the sunlit hours. Walk t briskly during the hours out of doors. . Or play briskly at whatever you are dol ing. I approve of all out-of-door sports , for women, except hockey. That is too violent. Remember that the weight of .' the body must be equally divided between two legs. Don't make the right ' leg do the work of both right and left, j The legs should be helpmeets, not shirks. _ Hold your bony so that the weight ( settles upon the balls of the foot. Keep ( your knees straight, and walk with a long, free stride from the hips. Throw the weight upon the bones, and you will not tire. It is only the. muscles that grow tired. An indoor exercise that will ' help to keep you 'fit' is the imaginary motion of lifting a piano, and the other of drawing a cork from a bottle. Hold the bottle between your knees, and pull 'at the tightly-driven cork. Both of these contract tho muscles of the abdo- ' men. which in mont women are acid and fall, giving them a balloony appearance. Another exercise for this purpose is to • hold the knee firmly by both hands, drawing it up on a level with the waist. ' Stand thus for as long as you can. Then 1 shift to the other foot and repeat the 5 exercise. This, like the two foregoin" 1 exercises, makes the muscles of the ab- " domen firm, forming a natural corset | and giving a naturally straight front. ''fo. they -educe the hips. Walking 1 and the exercises I have described, comi bined with deep breathing and free use 1 of the bath, and plenty of rest—cverv • woman knows how long she must sleep 1 to awaken refreshed— mil keen her beau_*__*Ht __"• v 4