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Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 118, 20 May 1914, Page 9

WOMEN IN PRINT.

We paint our lives in fresco; the soft and f every stroke of the brush into eternal rock.— Last night, at tho Tiffin, Mannersstreet, there was a good attendance of members of tho Women's Social and Political League. The election of officers takes place on the first Tuesday in June, and nominations were received last night. It was decided that in future meetings should be held at the Tiffin. Instructions were given to the secretary to write Mrs, and Mists Mackenzie, wifo and daughter of the High Commissioner, requesting them, as members of the league, to represent it at the July conference in England. Some new members weie elected. On Thursday evening, the Council, the Professorial Board, and the Students' Association of "Victoria College, have invited a number of guests to the Town Hall, to meetthe graduates of the yeai. The Prime Minister and the chairman of the College Council will speak, and General Sir lan Hamilton, G.C.8., D.5.0., will address the meeting. Apart from the interesting nature of the gathering, the fact that a number of the gr&duands are ladies will probably ensure a 6trong feminine element in the audience. The first-aid classes for women are now commencing for the season at the Y.W.C.A. Rooms. Dr. Robert Stout will lecture, commencing on Wednesday, 27th inst., and on Friday, sth June, Dr. Whyte will be the lecturer. It is not too late for those who wish to join Dr. Platts-Mills's class, which meets on Friday at the Newtown Mueeum. Mrs. Coverdale arrived in Wellington from Auckland on Monday. Mrs. Deriniston has returned to Christ, church. Miss L. Mackerrae will arrive in Wellington from Dunedin to-morrow. The engagement is announced of Miss Myra Smith, late of the Napier Hospital nursing staff, to Mr. B. W. Millier, of the head office staff of the Marine and Inspection of Machinery Department. Wellington. Ten weddings are to take place at Carterton within the next five weeks. Miss M'Lagan, matron of the Palmerston North Hospital, who has been a member of the staff for fifteen years, has been granted twelve months' leave to visit the Old Country. A wedding was celebrated at Newman, near Eketahuna, last week, the ngo of the bridegroom being 65 and that of the bride 69 years. The bridesmaid was the mother of seventeen children. Mrs. W. H. Reynolds, and the Misses Vida and Rachel Reynolds, her daughters, from Dunedin, leavo for England by the Corinthic on Friday. A patchwork quilt which has taken forty years to make is one of the many remarkable exhibits which members of the London Adult School Union are showing at the Memorial Buildings in Roscoe-street. The quilt was made by Mrs. F. Newman, of Greenwich, and is composed of 4200 separate pieces of varicoloured cloth. Each piece is octagonal in shape and less than an inch in diameter, and 2000 yards of cotton were used in sewing them together. Another quilt, made by Mrs. Larmah, contains 2696 separate pieces. "Has the new century evolved a new woman ? , Is the typical woman of 1914 a daring, self-confident, and enquiring creature?" asks the Daily Mail. "Those questions a famous woman sculptor, Countess Feodora Gleichen answers more or less 'in the affirmative' in a new work in plaster, which she calls '1914.' Countess Gleichen finds the girl of 1914 self-possessed in garb of a scantiness that would have been incredible to the Victorians. Her sympolical statue is undraped because i. was not desired to create a mere record of a fashion. But on a pedestal near by the model is seen in the same attitude, but clad in a fashionable dinner-gown — a gown that conceals the outline of her form no moi-e than that of a Tanagra woman or of a 'Merveilleuse' of the Directoire. In the straight, unflinching look of '1914,' and in the almost impertinent confidence in the ( pose of the right arm, Countess Gleichen has sought to indicate what she finds the characteristic attitude of the 1914 woman's mind— a certain insouciance, an insatiable curiosity, a rather frivolous sort of intellectual activity, fearlessness, and not a halfpennyworth of prudery or of coquettishness." A new position has been created for a woman in America— that of dining-car attendant on the long-distance railways. A great deal of opposition was at first made,' but finally a certain Miss Carrie Benton overcame prejudices and obtained a post with the Cincinatti, Hamilton, and Dayton Railway. Her duties ate to act as both stewardess and waitress on _ a dining-room and "parlour" car, which makes a long journey every day. Already Miss Benton has "made good." Travellers flock to the part of the train' where she presides, and they are made happy and comfortable there under her supervision. It is predicted (states the Sydney Mail) even at this early stage that women have come to stay. English authorities are taking an interest in the matter, and they are wondering if women would be successes in that "country. It is averred that the men attendants require enormous tips to extract oven" civility, and that women would be satisfied to accept much lese for their seivices. There is no doubt that the system, of tippinghas been carried to excess, and exorbitant sums are demanded in many circumstances before the barest necessaries are obtainable. A polite, quick, and pleasant woman would most certainly be appreciated by feminine travellers, and the outcome of the enterprise of the Americans will be watched with interest. The craving for air is certainly one symptom among many of that curioiiK modern disrate, wo call nenes, states a writer in the Gentlewoman. It is nearly always tho nervous, high-strung people who convert their rooms into temples of tho winds. And these nervous subjects are undoubtedly very much on the increase at the present time. Not only women who have too much leisure on their hands fall a prey to "neurasthenia." but even men whom one would have thought perfectly normal and levelheaded. There is only one real cure, which, to be thoroughly successful, ought to b& tried in the initial stage of the complaint. Interest the patient in a hobby of some kind, and thus bike him or her completely out of thomselves. 1 have, seen this done with tho most marvellous results — results that were far more •efficacious than a succession of rest cures. By all means start a hobby if you can -when fit in body; it will be a source of the greatest happiness and pleasure. But if you feel the slightest symptom of nerves, •or see them latent in members of your family circle, then ami there discover lor yourself or for other* a hobby and pursuo it with the utmost vigour, as you lovo your health and body. Gardening is probably the

'usile plaster of tho moment hardens under -Sterling. 'best hobby that can be taken up nowadays, but that, of course, argues living in the country, or at all events tho possession of a week-end cottage. Collecting loreign stamps interests and j amuses a host of people ; iso also old. prints, china, miniatures, and tho like. Nothing need bedospised, for there was a famous wine merchant once who collected -every penny toy he saw sold iv the streets of London, and when he died this odd assortment fetched quite a considerable sum of money. Never mind, though, what particular form it takes, so long as a hobby you have, mainly as a guaid against the "nerves' 1 that seem | likely to be the besetting scourge of this coining age.