MAINLY FOR WOMEN

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 April 1924, Page 8

MAINLY FOR WOMEN

NEWS AND NOTES.

Jewelled heels for shoes were very startling in the 18th century, but today the woman who. would be gorgeous is satisfied with nothing less than all jewelled shoes. Thus we see evening sandals solidly encrusted with brilliants, from the tips of the slender toes to the ankle straps and the base of the. delicately-curved heels.

Every woman wears, embroidery nowadays, and hints on the care of it are useful. Often it is a question of cleaning embroidery which adorns material that will not wash. The* best way is to cover the embroidery with a paste of powdered French chalk and alcohol, lay a pie.ce of clean muslin over it, and roll up. Leave in a dai’k place for a few days until the alcohol has evaporated, then brush off the down on several thicknesses of rough towelling and iron, the back. If badly creased, cover with a cloth wrung out of cold water.

Advice on cleaning wallpaper is usually concluded with the instructions to clean with/ a ball of dough rubbed in vertical lines. Now this advice is all right as far as it goes, but it can be improved upon considerably if the. ball of dough is made in the following manner: —Take 21b of flour and add to it a heaped dessertspoonful of salt, the same quantity of soda, .and a piling tablespoonful of crushed lump ammonia. Mix this up with a pint of water—preferably rain water. Then in a greased receptacle steam the mixture for half an. hour. While it is. still hot, knead it thoroughly with the hands and divide into pieces of convenient size. It it is not to be used at once, store in an air-tight tin.. White'" china, without decoration,

but following old Wedgwood conventions, is coming into its own again. And it is really very restful in an epoch that is inclined to over pattern most things. It has. such a clean look, too. It needs, however, to be very good ; common white china shows its lowly origin more than any other kind of ware. Also it calls rather for coloured tablecloths, not merely mats. Or if they are mats they need to be of a generous size; linen of clear vivid colouring, with just a black or white edge and no “needle work.” For special occasions I should like a black linen tablecloth to use with white China, with a few white flowers in a jade green bowl for the centre. Black candlesticks and green candles, and if candle shades are used they might

have a pattern—of black, white, and green. The cloth should only just fit the table, and have a plainly bound white scalloped edge. Peculiar warning of his. wife’s death is declared to have overtaken Ysaye, the famous Belgian violinist. A premonition of ill came upon him immediately after a recital at the Theatre Royal, Dublin —a performance in which, he remarked, he had felt his power as a musician affected. A few 1 minutes later a telegram arrived saying his wife was seriously ill in Brus-

sels, and in less than ten minutes a second wire announced her death. The violinist immediately cancelled engagements in Belfast and Manchester, caught the next boat for Holyhead and rushed across to Brussels. His wife had not been in bad health, and her collapse was sudden, death following almost immediately. “The violinist and his wife,” declared Ysaye’s agent, “were a devoted Darby and Joan couple, and usually travelled everywhere together. Earlier in the afternoon, at Dublin, he had said to me, ‘There is no soul in my music today—something has gone out of me.’ ” Ysaye, who is over 60, has a highly strung temperament, and belongs to the old “romantic” school of violinists. His wife was 55. There is no time like the present when lovers, can discover each other’s temperament before marriage, yet there is no time when so readily they bring up after marriage .causes for incompatibility of temper-divorces that they could easily have discovered before. The more, time and opportunities they have for character, discoveries the less they seem to do in that line (states a writer in the Auckland “Star”). Thus one. lady wanted to divorce her husband because he had saved up a number of socks for. her to start darning after the. ceremony was pronounced, while another had an unpleasant habit of ostentatiously sewing on his own buttons on the verandah of a fashionable hotel. Now tendencies of this, sort, if indicating malice, could well be discovered before marriage, and one. wonders both at the inability to discover the, defects as well as the. after want of common sense in thinking them good reasons for a decree nisi- A lawyer once informed the writer how often a woman would come with no other particular

statement against her husband except that she had discovered he “wasn’t a gentleman,” gentleman undefined. She dedn’t think that it was. her business now to train him into one. One wonders what would happen, if the husband went to his divorce lawyer with the accusation that his, wife wasn’t a lady. gy ■! I I Him