WOMEN'S FORUM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 77, 1 April 1932, Page 9

WOMEN'S FORUM.

YOUTHFUL SOCIAL WORKERS. From time to time we hear from social workers an appeal to the young people to assist in social work. ■ It seems incredible that so many young girls who can find time for several afternoons of bridge and mah jong in the week cannot spare a few hours to brighten the lives of people in less happy, circumstances than themselves. Of course there are a number of circles and clubs in the city comprised entirely of young girls who do excellent social work, but if examined it would be found that the majority of the members are girls' who have comparatively little spare time and who unselfishly devote it to a cause of some kind. The girls of the Victoria League, for instance, sew diligently for the backblocks; the Query Club take their share. The Y.W.C.A. and old pupils' associations of the various schools have all put their shoulders to the wheel. This want of the assistance of the younger people is also,felt in England, where in past days the middle-class girl just left school adopted some form of social work almost as a matter of course. Careers were less inevitable then and the filial duties of arranging flowers and dusting the drawing room had been ridiculed into unpopularity. Duty insisted that some of youth's golden leisure should he spent in helping poorer citizens in clinics or clubs or welfare centres, or in the Sunday schools. There must be hundredsof women now passing out of their thirties who remember social evenings for this purpose. The war drew the volunteer worker into another phase, and the children who have grown up since then seem to lack the social instinct which sent their grandmothers "slumming," and their mothers to play waltzes at charities.

NEW STREET CRIES,

Many people have lamented the passing of London's old street cries, but if one never hears nowadays the plaintive lay of the seller of 'JSwcet Lavender" or the more cheerful ditty of the man who asked for "Chairs to mend," in the East End, at any rate- some new cries have sprung up. One of them is the cry of "All the winners," raised not by a news-seller, but by a vendor who, with a basket on his arm, travels the streets selling peanuts. The explanation of his cry is that in some of his bags he has inserted a slip of paper bearing the name of a horse due to run in the next day's racing. If the buyer does not find a tip, the peanut man suggests another bag of nuts! Another enterprising merchant tours the streets on an over-size tricycle crying out "All Hot." The inside of his tricycle is divided- into three sections. The largest is occupied by a miniature frying well;' in wjiich potato chips sizzle to a golden brown before being emptied into a container for sale. On each side of the frying well, kept hot bysoil stoves, is a small oven containing meat pies, saveloys and hot dogs. The chips are sold by the pennyworth and the pies at twopence each, while the saveloys go for three halfpence. An itinerant trader well known in the Last End, though he has no official cry, is the man with the travelling library. He has a traveller's car, the inside of which is fitted with shelves stacked with books. Different districts are visited each day, his representatives going from door to door, each taking one side of the street, introducing the library .to householders. For the sum of twopence a book may be I borrowed for a week, no deposit being required. The library contains the latest publications by very popular authors, and books "not on the ear" may %be ordered for the next' visit. If you want to buy a nice live turtle you must'go to Limehouse, where a man, who lias inherited the business from his father and grandfather, follows this unusiial trade. Turtles are sold by weight, la nice little fellow of about COlb costing about £6.

FLOWER PIRATES. J A yellow daisy flourishing in a suburban garden was pointed out with pride the other day as having been brought from Scyros by a soldier brother. Scyros it will be remembered, is more famous as the place where Kupert Brooke's grave stands. This daisy introduced a discusson on flowers in general and one lady present spoke with quiet enthusiasm of her interest in flowers and of the various seeds she had collected on her travels. Many of these foreign ones now bloomed in her garden in company with manukas, pink and white. That a man is never a prophet in his own country is a saying that is somewhat true and rather unfair, and amazingly enough can also be applied to flowers. Homely blooms do their duty faithfully and it is expected of them, but they never seem to get the cosseting and glances of pride that interlopers receive. Maybe it is a sign of the times, but fresh faces seem to appeal, while we forget Shakespeare's advice to grapple old friends to our souls with hoops of steel. However, it must be admitted that many of the flowers of other lands enhance a garden, and if they were not imported originally we should, in this country, have very few blooms to cheer us. Another lady at the gathering admitted that the plants dearest unto her heart had been grown from slips that she had begged, borrowed and stolen. Other peoples' hedges within a radius of as many feet as she could stretch across the fence had practically supplied her own garden with its plants. When explaining her actions she said that it must be admitted that only garden-lovers would do such a thing, and surely people did not mind if it were sincere. Indeed, on many occasions she had been caught snipping off a slip and the owner had invited "her in and sent her away with an armful. Which proves, she concluded, that gardens can be owned by gardenlovers as well as pirates.

FREAK HAIR STYLES. A platinum streak introduced into dark liair, and a dark streak into fair hair, is the latest fashion prescribed abroad. According to city hairdressers it.is a freak fashion, and will go the way of other freak hairdressing styles. They say that New Zealand women will not have anything to do with such crazy ideas, and besides that, they had too much respect for the colour of their hair, for one thing, and - for another, there was too much open-air sport to allow of freaks being adopted. They emphasised the danger to the hair of having such freak treatment carried out, unless it were done by experts of very great experience, and agreed that very few people followed these extreme ideas of so-called smartness. . .