AROUND THE TEA TABLE

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 218, 15 September 1925, Page 17

AROUND THE TEA TABLE

(BY SHIRLEY).

MATTERS OF GENERAL INTEREST,

The lightness as well as fewness of clothes was realised by a lady the other day who noticed in a diary of hera, written twelve years ago: "Weighf/d my race hat to-day because it gave •_ue such a headache," the weight of that headgear being duly given. Ins.pired by this memory she was induoed to weigh her whole racing outfit of to-day, including lingerie and shoes, th<i weight coming to but an ounce or two more than the hat worn more than, a decade ago! • * » • • There are people who ara- always saying that they could % have forgiven a sartorial extravagance if it hadn't got worse, though they really wouldn't have. Thus a critic of Oxford men the other day. "I could forgive the bags and the heliotrope shirts with Byron collars, but what of the two undergraduates I saw the other day using the lip stick in public and with signs of powder and rouge about them?" Well, let us hope they were simply omt to caricature the extremes of fashion in the other sex, a legitimate exhibition of wit. We do not fancy our own grads. are becoming effeminate when they dress up as Aunt Jane or Mother Twankey in moments of exuberance.

The spider game is the latest in London. You first dTawn a chalk circle on the table with lines coming from it leaving spaces like cartwheels on which are numbers. Then you eaten your spider and put him or her under a glass tumbler in the circle. When the bets are made and the spider is coming down to his last bit of oxygen, he is released, the prize- going to the person who has backed the number which he first reaches. The trouble is usually in catching your spider, and then after the glass is lifted,, in inducing him to go anywhere at all. It happened in Australia where, when the men are old bachelors they aTe of a determined type, especially when there is a touch of Scottish blood to cement the obstinacy. Two such men batched together on a small holding, and entertained themselves sometimes with amateur gardening. The homestead next to them was taken by a pretty youn<» woman, who, on the day after her arri° val, was without her own tools. Over the fence she asked Jim for the loan of his spade, which he ceded with a few civil words. The next day Jo packed up to quit. "He was not staying with any fellow who was always after the wimmen." *** * • • The Queen, of Rumania is writing articles for the London "Weekly Dispatch."..The style is commented on as "frank and intimate." Her own ideal man is described thus: "I want to ride through great wastes with him. I -want him to fell trees, swim rivers,, climb lonely peaks. I want to share his tent, his fire, his food. I want to lean my head on his shoulder and hear his strong, faithful heart. Bnt I never met my man or great wastes, my pioneer,' which is perhaps just as well' for the King of Rumania, whoever he was exactly—l am not well up in monarchs. •*j * • • Berta' Ruck demolishes another illusion, namely, about the Toy Girl that men forget. She resurrects a ditty which Americans tell us is a sermon in song, about the frivolous girl who'll be left outside '*When they play here comes the bride—just a girl that men forget." For quite two generations this doctrine has been preached by the prudent upbringing of girls, and plenty of Victorian and Edwardian girls reluctantly gave up all sorts, of amusements and styles of dress, and practised the "oldfashioned smile" (whatever that is) that the song demanded, with what result? The shelf. So the new girl took counsel to herself, and instead of pretending to be twice as staid as she was, pretended to be twice as frivolous,- with what result? She attracts. Marriage, then, is the testing place. Can she throw off this cloak of frivolity and turn into the sort of woman her Jack now requires, namely, a model matron? As a rule she can, for as Berta Ruck- points ont, every young woman has in her two personalities —the toy girl and the model matron, and she should be able" to go from one to the other, but, alas 3 when the second stage is reached she often asks amid the sewing and mending: "In the model matron must the toy girl ibe quite forgotten?"

"That driver is a danger to herself, her family and the public generally." This magisterial remark was quoted by a motorist during the usual argument, "Can women drive ?" The chivalrous one retorted with statistics—of some thousands of motorists before the Court only twelve were women. Th© chivalry of policemen not wanting to arrest a' lady was adduced as a reasonable explanation. "Look at that car just ahead," he added, pointing to a vehicle wobbling to and fro some -way on, and not very visible in the traffic; "there's a case in point. Women can't drive." During a stoppage of the traffic he was out to see what kind of lady was driving the erratic motor. There was a splendid silence in his own car after he made his explanation: "It's the manager of the Motor Car Association, and he's been driving for ten years." #"♦*# c It is quite a mistake, it seems, to assume that American men are always lenient towards the woman desiring to get quit of her husband by taking him to Court. The other day, it appears, the Court was quite indiarnant with a I**-* who wanted to get rid of her marriage bonds because her husband's hair didn't match the furniture. They stated that she ought to have been more careful before she bought the furniture, and refused a remedy. Washing silk frocks with a trouser skirt are actually being sold for tennis in London. G Till seen on the court, however, they have the appearance of an ordinary wrap-over skirt.