AT HOME AND ABROAD.

Auckland Star, Issue 38, 14 February 1929, Page 12

AT HOME AND ABROAD.

The latest recruit to the scanty ranks of women qualified to sail the seas as ship captains will certainly give a fillip to this career as a promising one for women. For sh# U not only a Princess —Ileana, to wH» youngest daughter of the famous Quopti of Rumania—but a beautiful girl, and she looks pretty enough in her uniform coat and peaked cap to stir any girl's ambition to wear the same garb. Princess Ileana, now 19, accompanied her mother in the latter's spectacular tour in America two or three years ago, acting as her secretary. Whether she means to take up seafaring in dead earnest, like Lord Amherst's daughter, Miss Victoria Drummond, or only to use her knowledge for yachting, like Lady Ernestine Hunt, is not yet apparent. But the pretty Princess has passed her final examination with honours.

There was quite a ghostly atmosphere at the Lyceum dub, London, recently, says an English paper, when the Irish Circle gave a successful "Ghost Story" dinner. Flickering blue lights were the only illuminations, and owls, banshees and witches lurked in the table greenery. Lady Henniker Heaton wan among the guests; she brought her handsome daughter, who still limps as the result of a riding accident in Corsica; and Lady Herniione Blackwood was an interested listener. The new Irish playwright, Percy Robinson, was there, but could not be persuaded to tell a ghost story.

Most of us read in bed, some of us take early morning tea in bed, and all of us are on occasion ill jn bed. For which reasons a bedside table is a most useful piece of furniture. But if we would be completely luxurious we should go one step further and indulge in a bedside cabinet which is the most complete item of furniture of its kind I have ever seen. The front of this cabinet consists of a bedside bookcase with two shelves. The back is fitted with a specious cupboard with a removable shelf, and the door, which opens downwards, forms a ledge. There is a well in the top of the cabinet in which the early tea-set can be packed, and-the lid of the well folds completely over to form a table for the teapot and teacups, which is just the right height. A newspaper and magazine rack is provided at the side. Thus everything is to hand as required and may be packed neatly away when not in use. This bedside cabinet would make a delightful gift besides helping a good cause, for it is the patent design of one of our best known ex-soldiers' associations.

Miss Ceeile O'Brien, Sir Timothy and Lady O'Brien's plucky pilot daughter, is slowly recovering from the injuries she got in her recent aeroplane accident, writes our London correspondent. She is minus a leg and will not be able to fly again, but Lady Heath, who is one of j her greatest friends, told me before she left for America that Miss O'Brien hopes to be able to get some secretarial or clerical work to do shortly in connection with civil aviation. She is learning shorthand and type writing with that end in view. Miss O'Brien is tremendously plucky, and her cool courage has been the envy and admiration of her friends ever sincc she took up flying. The cause of her accident has not been given a great deal of publicity, and she is very distressed that so many people think it was due to lack of skill. The rudder bar of the plane became disconnected, with the result that, when the machine went into a spin, it was impossible to pull it out.