AROUND THE TEA TABLE

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 86, 13 April 1926, Page 19

AROUND THE TEA TABLE

MATTERS OF GENERAL INTEREST. (By SHIRLEY.) There are two women preachers in Australia, but so far we have not heard any innovation through their installation. They have not imitated Miss Maud Royden. the doyen of lady ministers, who, when the offertory goes round, steps forward, and announces "You may talk now." As a result, it is said that many lonely persons make friends, while dropping their sixpences in the plate. It is a very feminine idea. Church door acquaintanceship has hitherto been the usual rule, not a pleasant method when a gale is blowing, or the prayed-for rain descends with too much punctuality.

In Boston, they have ideas even more advanced than this. In the women's college, connected with the University, there has been instituted a Chair of Love and Marriage! Every girl who can pass successfully certain mental tests is given her diploma. She is entitled to wear the letters, C.B. (certified bride). No better way of guaranteeing perpetual spinsterhood could possibly be imagined. Had Juliet worn it. there would have been no Romeo. It was the idea of her being so entirely unsuitable for him that attracted, and so with his spiritual descendants to-day. A wife certified to be perfection, so that if trouble comes, it must be the husband's fault! No C.S. (certified spinster) would give the poor girl a much better show!

The C.B. in all probability would never think of using the frying pan. A correspondent informs mc, however, that

it is common for a New Zealand man to boast, loudly and sincerely, that his wife is not of the "frying pan brigade," when the very reverse is the case. You see his mental complex always associates that cooking utensil with the pound of sausages with which the comic-paper wife rushes home, after shopping, about six o'clock or so. Such a man has no idea of other food in connection with this article of kitehenware. Yet the other day it seems such a boaster returned home quite contentedly to a supper of drop tartlets, savoury triangles, and cheese puffs, all of -which, according to certain recipes, were made in the frying pan. Next day he was to enjoy feather balls (a potato dish) and another cheese delicacy made by tbe same means—and he would not suspect! • ♦ ♦ ♦ His wife will not enlighten him. because she says no man is capable of understanding that the fryine pan may be the sign of an artistic cook, though it frequently is that of no cook at all! • • • » The cheapest dinner, however, is never to be produced by this means. It was with the stew pan that a Sydney lady lately won a prize for the most inexpensive three course meal for one man. Hers came to the sum of threepence. With one of the pennies she purchased a sheep's head. Here, however, was shown mental ability, for there was only one establishment in which it could be obtained for that sum. This, with an onion, a little parsley, and some seasoning, supplied soup and stew, while a little butter and flour made a small dumpling for the third item of the banquet. No prize was offered the lady who should produce the husband willing to eat this dinner seven times a week. _ • _ • Now is tbe time for all bad boys to be as delinquent as they choose. The policeman is helpless, the probation official may merely frown. Bill and Jim .Tunior for a little while anyway can throw stones to their hearts' content. They may do so, because the now Child Welfare Act in Auckland caught the officials napping. They evidently did not know that the juvenile offender must now be sentenced in a building quite unconnected with that of tho ordinary Police Court. So. not knowing they had to set free, untried, one small accused. Was it because the Act began working on the first of April that these gentlemen took nn notice of it ? Anyway. it proved a good joke for one small boy. • • • • I always like those reformers who look at one coldly and then remonstrate aggrievedly, if one uses the phrase "sentenced" or "punished" in connection' with small offenders? "Nowadays." they say softly, "we do not speak of punishment but of correction," and seem I to think that this must make a birching a good deal easier to bear. They do not remember that the House of Correction not of Punishment was a phrase established well back in the nineteenth century. A good deal of starving and cat-o-nine tails work went on in it, of cour.e, but it was correction not punishment, so that made it all right.

Latest report, tell _s that the mechaI nical bust and figure models for trying jon frocks, etc.. have had to he altered. ; The shoulders are to be made rounded j and stooping, the old grenadier posture being now quite out-of-date. Of course the curved-in waist has had to go, so what these bust models look like it is difficult to say. A New South Wales artist solved the problem by showing— sticking a broom upside down in a show- . room, and telling the attendants to drape the model frocks upon it. * — * • While feminine shapes are standard- 1 ised, however, somewhat on these broom- j | stick lines, colours remain as diverse I ias ever. Mere man expresses greater i j perplexity regarding the shades he is I j sometimes asked to match—nude. sand, j j champagne, coat ( whatever that i j desert, smoke, etc. He suggests colours j , bein? classified in points of the compass j fashion—thus the blues could be—blue. ! blue by green, blue blue green, blue green blue and so on. • * • • When one humble flat dwel- ' ler gives up to another. there 11 is always criticism as tn how j "it has been kept." Greater people than j we are given to the same idiosyncrasy, j It is pleasant, therefore, to note that a certain Mrs. Baldwin, comin_ into _To. 10 Downing Street, expressed pleasure in its perfect condition, with one exception, the drawin£r-room carpet, on which Mr. Ramsay Mac Donald's friends in their enthusiasm had probably been rather hard. She asked that it be renovated, nnd for the fir«t time in forty years—oh. thesp politicians—it was . e-iven a. pood washinor. the Public Work = Department undertaking the iob. A ouite unknown caroet of brilliant Persian design was. it seemed, revealed underneath, like a long lost famous picture.