LINES ABOUT WOMEN

Evening Star, Issue 15293, 19 September 1913, Page 3

LINES ABOUT WOMEN

[By Osachaken.]

Mise Jessie Wilson,-the most beautiful'of President Wilson’s throe daughters, is about to marry Robert H. Sayre, a member of an old and wealthy Pennsylvanian family. Jessie’s eloquence and seriousmindedness have led Iter into the field of social betterment, but she plays tennis, rides on horseback, swims, and dances. ■She is blonde, like her mother, with a Greek profile, delicate rcec-pink complexion, and. large blue eyes, Educated at Gor.cher College. Baltimore, Maryland, where sho specialised in political science, she has done much settlement work in Philadelphia, and been actively identified with the Y.W.C.A., having recently made many speeches on Us behalf. A very remarkable woman is Mme Mario Louise Gavctte, who is known as the Queen of St. Pierre-Mequelon. She was taken to Pierre-Mequelon, which is a barren rock in the North Atlantic Ocean, by her fisherman father when she was a child. Sho was left a widow when 52 years of age, started a hotel for sailors! prospered, bought enough land to build 50 houses upon, and the houses she used for sailois boarding. From this she got a fine income, which she invested with great success. She pays pensions to 50 widows and 50 superannuated sailors ; she has organised a police department, and pays the officers from her own private, fortune. She employs 1,000 sailors. She educated herself, divides her rime between Mequelon and Gascony (where she has purchased a line estate),' and is overrun with offers of marriage. The suggestions made hy Mr Justice Phillimoro at the Surrey’ Assizes at Guildford that a woman police constable should be. appointed in each petty sessional division is receiving the attention of theautho. rities. The Home Office, indeed, has long had in view a, considerable extension of the employment, of women in many and varied directions. “They are already used as probation officers," said an official, “as factory inspectors, and. of course, as prison wardresses and female searchers. Here their usefulness had been tried and proved, and there seems no reason why they should nob succeed in the police force in certain cases, but those must naturally be of a very definite description.” It is well known that women are engaged by Scotland Yard, but they’ have no official recognition. In secret inquiries the Commissioner and his staff have women, shrewd and resourceful, at their call. Many crimes have been cleared up by the help of women, who have obtained entry into circles which are rlosed to men. But they are in no sense police, and do not hold oven delegate powers. One of the immediate results of the political enfranchisement of women in the State of California has been a successful demand that in future they shall be tried by their “peers.” At Los Angeles the other day a Mrs Bertha Williams was charged with extortion, and her counsel contended that she had the right to bo tried by a mixed jury, since the Constitution now acknowledged that a woman can elect to bo tried by her “ peers.” Judge Dunne, of the- Superior Court of San Francisco, ruled that a woman defendant can and ought to have women on the jury selected to try her, and ordered that the names of 30 women should be taken along with the regular venue of men from which the jury should bo empanelled. Though women have during the, present year sat on several juries, "this is the first time that women have been put on in answer to_a direct request from a woman prisoner. The announcement was made on July 2 of the engagement of Miss Margaret Draper, daughter of tho former American Ambassador to Italv, to Prince de la Tour d'Auvc.rgnc. The, wedding will take place in the early autumn. Miss Draper is known in Washington society as the “ Humming Bird Debutante,” owing to the hundreds of birds liberated in the. great drawing room of the Draper mansion when Miss Margaret made her bow to society last December. On that occasion Mrs Draper gave a grand ball in lienor of the coming-out of her cla.unhter, at which £2,000,000 worth of pearls were worn by the dancers, Mrs Lb'a.per wove pearls costing no less than £IOO.COO, and among the jewels of the debutante was a necklace the pendant of which was a magnificent white pearl, which was presented to her by her godmother, the Dowager Queen Margharita of Italy. Miss Draper is heiress to the large fortune left bv her father, a cotton manufacturer, which is estimated at nearly a million and a-half pounds.

The Princess Bariatinsky (whose nora do theatre is Lydia Vavorskal spent several months at the seaside- tins summer whilo studying the part of Anna Karenina, which is Tolstoy's masterpiece, and which she is now playing in English at the Ambassadors’ Theatre in London. The Princess, who is a vegetarian and an ardent suffragette, is one of the finest amateur swimmers in the world.

Lady Bruce, who has returned home after spending two years in the wild and remote region known as Asronaland, 50 miles from the shores of Lako 'Xvassa, doo* not admit that there is any tiling’ very remarkable in the course of life she hr* been pursuing. "If one ventured far one would take a gun, of course. Wo were unarmed, however, once when movintr from camp to camp, and we met two lions face to face-. They turned tail and van away. If they hadn't I do not know what we should have done,” she said. rn , rll «y rarely attack anvone in davlight They were probably as'much frmhton'>d as wc were.” Sir David Bruce, her husband, was sent out to Central Africa a* cluef of the Sleeping Sickness Commission' Much comment has natnrailv been provoked by the discovery that‘Miss Doris Joel, the daughter of Mr ‘’Solly” Joel the South African millionaire, has Imen married for three months without anvbodv savo her husband and herself being' a bit the- wiser. The happy man is Mr William Walter, a member of the Stock Exchange, Six months ago, it teems, h©' asked Mr Joel tor his daughter's hand, and w-is received with a. point-blank "No.” Mr Walter asked whether he might ask again in six months, but the. obdurate father would not listen. At Goodwood he asked again. Still Mr Joel refused. Then T was Mr Walter's_ turn. ‘-You'll bo suvpused to hear, said lie. tl that tout daiichter is my wife. Wo were married thro-* months ago ” And lie took his wife bv the arm and led her awav.

,The appointment of ‘.Miss Jessie ,\. Varhon as elevator conductor for fh° Federal Building at Bellingham, Washington has been approved hy the Treasury Department. Miss Vacho'ii was put ib charge of the elevator of the Federal Building at Bellingham by the- postmaster ot that city, but the supervising architect protested, saying that- the Government did not employ girls for “ elevator bo V s " ‘Senator Poindexter entered the ring*' for Miss Yacliou, and won his fight. He was .ft suffragists, says the J-hiilj' Mail, 'who wanted to establish *i precedent in the suffrage State of Washington. Miss Vachou is the iirst woman to be appointed official elevator conductor lor a United States Government building At a dinner at the London Trocadero .Mrs Lloyd George was presented with a replica of the portrait of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, painted bv Mr Christopher Williams, which was handed to Mr Lloyd George at the National Liberal dub recenUy Mrs Lloyd George was the guest of the subscribers to the presentation fund Sir Vincent Evans, who presided, read the following extract from a letter be had received from Mr Lloyd George; Believe me, I appreciate very deeply the great, kindness which prompts my friends to present to the brave little woman who is my wife this portrait of the troublesome person whom she has stood by through good and evil report. ... I could not say that in public—it would break me down ; yet I could not say less without doing'her an injustice.

Mr Ellis Griffith, M.P. (Under-Secretarv for the Home Department), said he believed no public man had been more fortunate in the possession of a wife than the Chancellor of the Exchequer. There, was one thing she had not forgotten— that was the simplicity of her Welsh heart—for whether she was in Downing street or Criccieth. she was the same person, and ,£b£ hfidJif’.t sitJfcrc.d froni J .bsipgin her

position. If Mr Lloyd George had married any other woman, things might have gone differently with him, but ho married a Welsh woman who sympathised with him, and she was a tremendous asset to him in his public and private life. Madame Freda Vidiclsky, who died at Philadelphia (U.S.) the other day, was 109 years old, and of Russian birth. She claimed to have seen the great Napoleon on his retreat from Moscow. She has 305 living descendants in the United Slates, was four times married, and survived every husband, the last dying at 75.