The Home.

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 3976, 23 March 1900, Page 4 (Supplement)

The Home.

Miserable, Thonjh Married.

Joseph Hatton, in the Newcastle (Eug.) " Weekly Chronicle." has the following sharp rap at the ".new morality" :- "If yon are married, j'ou must be miserable. This seems to be the doctrine of certain philosophers in petticoats. The parable has been taken up by the sympathetic male. True and noble love desires no legal ties. It wants no marriage bonds. It must live its poem as the birds of the air and the beasts of the field live theirs. That is the idea of ' The Woman Who Did.' It was the notion of * I Forbid the Banns,' and the first of the trio which was called 'The New Antigone.' It Is the underlying motif of ' The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith.' And yet neither the dramatists nor the novelists bring the high-souled female through her experiment with any satisfaction io herself, to, the man she leads astray, or to the audiences who sit at the feet of the preachers and follow their problems. It is a weary business, flat, stale, and unprofitable. Better the audacious Epicurean philosophy of Theophile Gaufier than this hysterical dalliance with a ' new morality' that English authorship exploits in a preamble and an interrogation." Love's Failares and Follies. There is a jaundiced egotism (says Joseph Hatton, in the Newcastle (Eng.) " Weekly Chronicle*') in the new gospel of marital misery, a poor disappointed selfishness In the plea for free love. The most jaundiced pessimist must admit that there are happy marriages, homes of sweet content, men and women united Li legal bonds who go through life to the md in a blissful companionship. When Mr. Mallock asked " Is life worth living ?" he had to confess that it is waste of labour to try and convince a happy man that he really must be miserable. But this is the attitude of certain men and women who have failed as lovers, married or single, towards those who have not. Every writer of poetry or fiction, every essayist draws his illustrations of life from his own experiences. Those who have been most disappointed make the most noise with their spluttering pens, and just now it would seem as if the men and womeu who have proved marriage to be a failure in their particular cases had seized the world by toe throat and were banging the univerfal nead about in an impotent rsige. It Is hard upon the majority of decentrainded men and women that the Pessimism of Disappointment should make • so much noise, and harder still that it should use indecent language and tell prurient stories : but the world is always •nore or less afflicted with oue craze or another; and we must bear with the. sexual outbreak until the public is tired of paying publishers to have it expounded and the shillings cease to rattle ! nto the " Tay Here" box of the theatres. Then this literary rabies will be eclipsed by some other calenture of the brain. One only hopes that the -succeeding folly will be more harmless and less unpleasant. Salt: Some of Its Uses. Salt has a place in every household, Goodwives, and it is useful for other purposes than that of merely seasoning our food. A bag of hot salt applied to temples that ache and throb with neuralgic pain will give relief to the sufferer speedily, and this remedy is the more to be commended that it is always procurable and costs little— even in the matter of trouble ! Salt and water is said to to be a good dentrlfice also, and while it cleanses the teeth it hardens the gums. If you drop a little salt amongst your starch, whether that be cold or hot, you will not be annoyed with sticking irons. The discolouration which appears at intervals on our tea-cups and saucers can be removed by the application of damp salt. Matrimonial Complications. "Up and down our Indian Empire certain matrimonial complications have been going on, of which, though they began four years ago, and have got themselves— some of them, at any rate— into a court of law, it would be quite unsafe to say that they : are at an end yet (says the "Pall Mall Gazette"). She was the lovely Alibat Bee Bee. She began the evil by marrying Chuling. She is, indeed, careful to explain that she did so " according to Mohammedan rites." and these would seem to possess so little binding force that the Woman Who Does might also do as much again. So it was that, at the end of a month, in the temporary absence of Chuling, the Advanced Alibat went through the same rites with Hossain Bux. But she had a mother, and so had Bux : and the mothers had words, and her mother spirited* her away from Bux, and Nussoo came along. Nussoo emancipated her from the maternal thrall, and with rites as before she married him. Meantime, Chuling had come home, had heard what had happened, and was tracking Eux. And Bux had found out about Nussoo, and was tracking him. But by then Nussoo himself had got upon the warpath, for, whilst his back was turned, there had been yet more rites, and their wife was Noor All's. Now all four have found one another. Chuling has commenced an action for damages against Bux, who has sent in his state- I ment of claim against Nussoo, who has writted Noor Ali, who, as last holder, is no doubt expected to pay up. Two Enp»ge«M«iii». It's as good as a circus to listen to the general conversation of two engaged ! girls. The interesting dialogue usually ! jogs along something like this : — "We haven't decided yet just when we're to be married, but I think perhaps it'll be some time in " "Mine is going to be a swell church wedding, with a tulle veil and flowergirls and white ribbons strung up the aisle and " " Dear me, I wouldn't be married in church for loads of money. I never could say ' I will' before a crowd of people. A simple little home wed " " Jack says he knows I'd look sweet in a white satin gown, and white is so becoming to me. Jack says that I'll be the prettiest' bride in the worid. Of course, his ideas are a trifle biased, but " " Oh, say, you ought to have seen Will when he proposed to me. He acted just like a lunatic, and I wanted to laugh so that I thought I'd die. He plumped dewn on his knees and grabbed my hands and began to talk in the wildest manner, and—- " Huh, Jack wasn't that way at all. He was as dignified as a— as a policeman, | and he folded his arms and said, ' Marie dear, I love you with all my heart ' '' i •• And, upon my word, 1 felt just like yelling for mother, she has Such a i fondness for humorous - scenes. But i after a while he got sort of rational, i a.nd-— -" • •'--— And Jack said-- — ' • At that point there is such a salad of ! words that it is Impo.ssible to Unclasp i one girl's talk from that of the other. ? Each appears to talk especially for her | own benefit and pleasure, and pays abso- • lut*-ly no attention to her companion's j remarks. Shakspeare, when he declared : that love and lunacy were of the same ] order of affliction, certainly hit the nail i on the head. | The letters in the various alphabets j of the world vary from twelve to two hundred and two in number. The Sandwich Islanders' alphabet has twelve, the Tartarian two hundred and two.

It is said that the Prince of Wale* never heard the expression " vamped up" till the other day, and he desired to know what it exactly meantIn every country but Great Britain and the United States there is a sign I or symbol of some kind that distinI guishes the matron from the spinster. • Smokers are less liable than non-