AROUND THE TEA TABLE

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 9, 12 January 1926, Page 13

AROUND THE TEA TABLE

(By SHIRLEY.)

MATTERS OF GENERAL INTEREST.

"Dear Shirley, don't worry." This is reassuring, especially coming as it did when the year was yet young. I look to, the end of the missive to see w_o is my friendly adviser, and perceive the stately signature, "A Wellington Smith," which reminds mc somehow of A Wellington Wells—was it not? —who was a "maker of magical spells." So, also, is this Wellington Smith, for he is one of the great Smith family started in Australia, who are doing good by stealth and not blushing to find it fame, for they never intend it to be fame. With a pleasant allusion to Shirley's "kind heart," and her having the distinction of being the first to raise the question (as I did recently in these columns) as to the anonymity of the helper being pleasing to the recipient, as it is to the giver. The young and old who are benefited by the great and continued kindness of the Smith family in Sydney are quite satisfied with the anonymity and receive the good things without wanting to know if their benefactors are the 'Toney Smiths" of "Aristocratic Lane." As "Wellington Smith" claims to be one of the helpers' "in a very small and humble manner," he ought to'know what he is talking about. _ * • All the same some of us will never be happy now until we have seen a Smith. The more they hide the more shall we be on the look-out. The instinct of the chase is in us all. For myself I shall suspect I am on the trail when I see old institution ladies taken to vaudeville shows instead of to something "more suitable to their time of life." Also poor children being given some chance to develop a talent not meant "for that class of child" will make mc convinced that I am on the right track. The reverse of Mr. Buzfuz and Mr. Chadband, not unknown in this country, is the family of Smith. _ * _ So a man was refused permission to sun bathe at Cheltenham. It might pust as easily have been one of the other sex. Xow let us have a storyette with a moral. Miss Jane Brown, who is a pretty girl wanting a quiet holiday, comes to Auckland—she may even be an older woman and not pretty. To enjoy the beauties of nature she goes quietly dressed, with a book, perhaps, in hand, and sits in the park. At once, or maybe later, some one of the other sex comes and sits with her, trying to be "civil." She arises and, perhaps, seeks some place in the Domain, secure from observation behind a tree. Here, however, she is again accosted by someone who takes for granted that she sits alone and in some obscurity in order to invite a quiet flirtation. Miss Brown now hastes, perhaps, to the pictures to enjoy nature at second hand. Here annoyance is less likely, but if she is alone it is possible. At last, our Miss Brown betakes herself to the beach, Cheltenham or any other. Presently, in Canadian bathing dress, she is lying back on the sand reading or enjoying the view just as she had desired to do. She is not so much dressed as when in the park or Domain —she is much more "conspicuous," but nobody takes any notice of her. Nobody imagines she has gone there to attract attention. And so the afternoon passes genially and cheerfully away. Moral, when in doubt take your daughter to the beach and leave her there. The sea is an excellent chaperone. Wax mannequins in Paris are having a very small Psyche knot at the back of their shingled heads. This, it is murmured, is a sign that the doom of short hair is at hand. Others, -however, maintain that it is in for a long, long reign. That is beause the middle-aged have got over the idea that this fashion is not for them. As a matter of fact it is more "in their line" if we go by history, remembering in how many countries and times the woman becoming older orgetting married was shorn of her locks. Perhaps, after twenty years or so of the shingle we may find the present day arguments against shingling for the middle-aged being used against long locks. "It is all very well for the young to let their hair grow, but the older women should not start a fashion which will make them ridiculous and also seem like an aping of youth. Are an older woman's locks so very attractive that one wants a lot of them?" the critics will say very justly, and so poor old grandma of 1946 will have to keep "bobbed" as more suitable to her years of discretion and to the dignity of her age. * • * Heart-shaped "hankies," spectacles also heart-shaped, and a fish imitation instead of fruit or flowers for hat adornments are among the latest crazes. The fish ■ idea strikes mc as particularly good — t the flying fish is for the audacious young i flapper, while codfish and lobster are for ' the more sedate. I think some ladies of - the more alarming, not to say wowserish type, should surround their "pull ons" i with a well-imitated schnapper, though I flat fish and flounders might probably f be the fitting emblem for others of us. , An "unsherette" in a Paris theatre is , said to have been chosen to try introducing this new fashion, which will be interesting if it spreads to the colonies, where we have rather more fish to use as headgear.