AT HOME AND ABROAD.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 88, 14 April 1927, Page 11

AT HOME AND ABROAD.

Many of the new felt hats have "goffered " edges to the crown or brim, or both, and the effect is both original and amusing. • • • • A goffering iron is the latest desire of the woman who follows closely in the trail of Dame Kii-liion. for some of the new spring clothes are decorated with prim little frill-, produced by this almost forgotten implement. It sounds a little premature to some of us. says a Home paper, but already Princess Mary has entered her two little sons for a famous school in due course. Xothing like being in time - yet. surely, a place would have been found anyhow—but — more sporting to do a< oilier do! * * • • There is always something - quaint and fresh from America; one of the latest is the news of a bequest by an a■_■••! millionaire for founding a college where women will be taught to be "wnin-iti'. and so lie aide to have good chanics of suitable marriages. ,\= every Anii'iican woman seems to marry as often :>- -he desires, there do-en't seem any great rea-ou tor the lninfai tor's fear-! In England one bri !e has initiated the id.'.i of two wedding-rings, one of platinum and the other an all-round diamond fin-let. The plain one is for day wear, and will be exchanged for tiie more elaborate ring in the evening-. Rut there'- really no rc.t-on to sonic people why a bride should curtail h>>r -ilpply of evening ring-, and a ca-e of half a do/en or more <jem-ser weddingrings n ,av vet tig'tre in the li-t of present- labelled "bridegroom to bride."

We have often thought tli.it poor Ophelia would have gone mail mivwav, even if there had been no Hamlet. Laertes preaches to Ophelia: Polonius preaches to Laertes. Laertes escaped by going abroad, but the pirl had to stav at home. Hamlet saw that pithy Polonius was a preposterous and orotund ass. Polonius* doctrine of friendship: "The friend.s thou hast and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel'*—was, we trow, a necessary one in his case. It would need a hoop of steel to keep them near such a dismal old Bawmonger. —Christopher Morlev.

In reading the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" I have been -truck by the number of proper names which have changed their sex since older times (,-avs a writer in

"T.IVs Weekly"). Klla 'was a king of Xorthuiubria: so was Ida, who built the first castle at Hamburgh. Ina ruled in We.-.-ex. Anna was king of the F.ast Angles in the seventh century; so when Lnimeline. in "The Hlue Lagoon,'' called her boy Hannah, .-he was departing but little from the cu.-tom of our forefathers. Florence of Worcester was a twelfth century historian, and the name ioccasionally masculine in Ireland to-dav. Mildred. Hishop of Worcester, died in 772. When. I wonder, did the transition take place? In recent years I have met women called Sydney, Stanley. Douglas and Leslie: perhaps, i;i centuries to come, these names will be monopolised by inv scx.