WOMEN IN PRINT.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVI, Issue 137, 9 December 1908, Page 9

WOMEN IN PRINT.

"People who are ready to die for you never think it necessary to pass you the salt. They seem to think the greater includes the less— which it doesn't!" Isabel Carnaby.

, The engagement is announced of Miss Eila Williams, daughter of Mr. T. C. Williams, to Mr. Vernon Reed, the lately-elected member for the Bay of Islands. Mrs. Newman, wife of Mr. Edward Newman, M.P., left Wellington for Marton yesterday. Mr. and Mrs. Ledingham, of Melbourne, leave by the express for Auckland to-morrow. _____ _^ Miss Horton, who has been staying with Miss Tolhursb, has gone back to Auckland. Mrs. Trimnell, of Nelson, is staying at the Hu^, with Mrs. C. Trimnell. Mrs. Louis Bright leaves this week for Russell, Bay of Islands. Dr. and Mrs. Chappie and their three daughters intend going to England early next year. They will remain some years, the girls being sent to school there. • The meeting of Mr. Herdman's supporters in the Town Hall last night was overwhelming, both in point of enthusiasm and numbers. The musical part was excellent — Miss Thackeray's violin solo, to an exquisitely played organ accompaniment by Dr. Kington Fyffe, being listened to with great pleasure, and • Miss Lloyd Hassell's singing of "The Vale of Avoca" proving a rare treat. The feature of the entertainment, however, was not Mr. Herdman's speech or Dr. Newman's opening address, or even the welcome humorous items, really funny as they were, but Miss Nathan's speech. Every woman in the audience felt a personal interest in, and sympathy for, the plucky pioneer, and breathed a long sigh of relief when the ordeal was triumphantly passed. And what she had to say — in a voice that, though low, reached the very end of the hall, was worth listening to. There were solid facts, sprinkled with a little good advice, and a flavour of humour, which they say — so unjustly — women are lacking in. As long as men are what they are, women will have ample scope for cultivating their allegedly-deficient sense ! A bouquet of flowers was handed to Mrs. Herdman, who, with Mrs. Yon Haasfc and Miss Nathan, were the only ladies •who decorated the platform. But in the audience could be seen numbers of those enthusiasts who worked so hard, for Mr. Herdman at the second ballot, and who sat enjoying the fruit of their labours. Mrs. de Castro gave a pleasant tea, yesterday in honour of Miss Langsford, tof Auckland, who is a guest of Mrs. de la Mare. Mrs. Tapley Lang, Mies Mona Mackay, and Mrs. Kreeft recited, during ths afternoon, to tn© great pleasure of all. The tea-table was prettily decorated with yellow and mauve, irises, daisies, and sweet peas. The hostess wore cream Indian muslin with cream lace and touches of pale blue, and: Miss Langrfora, was in cream Bicilienn© with embroideries, and a green toque with pink roses. ' A pleasant tea was given, by Mrs. Saltnond at the Kelburne Kiosk yesterday afternoon. Miss Vera Tregear was the guest of honour at another tea, yesterday given for her by Mrs. Will Lawsou. At some Parisian restaurants the piece do resistance is camel-flesh, especially the hump ! The following, by the lady correspondent of a, Melbourne paper, will be lead with interest by tennis girls and their mothers in Wellington: — "Some Sydney ! mothers are rather glad that our tennis girls did so little good in Melbourne at the tournament. But they daren't say so, or their daughters would be down on them. If our representatives had come off triumphant in anything girls here would most likely have gone in hard for tennis all the summer. As it is, their spirits are dampened by the losses sustained by some of the best, and those who had hoped to bo champions next year, or at most the year after, wonder now if the game is at all worth the candle. And in this game there is a candle. Playing tennis in the steamy, moist heat of Sydney is terribly rough on the complexion ; arms ,and riecks get brown as berries, and the glare of the sun, oven on a grey | day, obliges one to screw up the eyas, and this makes wrinkles before one's time. The exertion of playing set after | set, as enthusiastic girls persist in do- I ing, is too much in this climat-e, but day after day they march out vnfh their racquets. "My daughter's no use to me now, since her tennis craze," complained one mother. "She won't go calling with me, she won't go to parties; she just plays tennis every day, and' all day long, and comes home fagged out, and fit tdr nothing." Tennib girls wear simple frocks, but as their skirts and blouses must always be white, nothing else looking so nice and suitable on a court, their "things" occasion a great deal of laundry-work. TEis, according to the house-mother's idea, is another ground of complaint. A smashing blow at the English feather trade is threatened by Lord A?ebury's Plumage Bill, according to representations made by the leading wholesale firms concerned in a memorandum which they have drawn up (writes a London correspondent). They state that the Bill will exclude about £1,000,0P0 worth of feathers out of the total annual imports, which are valued at £3,000,000, and that in the absence of similar legislation on the Continent, England will at once hand over one-third of the trade to its rivals in Germany and other European countries. At present London is the recognised market of the world for feathers, and it can clearly be foreseen, the English firms state, that "if the market for the prohibited birds and plumages is, as it certainly would be, transferred to the Continent, then the mai'ket for ostrich feathers would undoubtedly also go into the hands of the Continental importers — probably to Hamburg, where there is already a large trade front* South American ports and also from the Cape." The English manufacture of fancy feathe-rs is practically dependent upon the class of plumages which it is sought to prohibit, the command of the lower priced goods, made from ordinary poultry feathers, being in the hands of the German manufacturers. The losses of the large English importers would greatly affect the retail/ trade and cause a heavy loss of employment. It is argued (no doubt correctly) that the exclusion of most of the feathers mentioned in Lord Avebury's Bill "would force those ladies who must be in the fashion to go to Paris to buy then- millinery, and %vhile there would purchase other goods, thereby seriously injuring other blanches of tiade. Others would be able to receive the prohibited articles through the post, an evasion of the Bill which it would be almost impossible to control." The statement of tho manufacturers' case is to be brought before Parliament.