MAINLY FOR WOMEN

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 August 1925, Page 8

MAINLY FOR WOMEN

NEWS AND NOTES.

Lawn tennis is, in the opinion of a prominent doctor, the most healthful form of recreation. A woman centenarian, aged 105, has recently crossed the Atlantic from America on her way home to Beirut. The Magistrate sitting in Stockton (California) sentenced Aliss Rachel Edwards, a college student, who appeared before him charged with exceeding the speed limit, to copy, by hand, the entire' motor vehicle act. The transcript of the 50-page enactment must be returned to the Clerk of the Court. Physicians here Live discovered the oldest woman in Mexico, perhaps in the world (states a recent message from Mexico City). Antonia Pedrasa, who was found living in poverty, has convinced the authorities that she is at least 125 years old, as she relates events that took place in 1810, when the Mexican colonists began their independence movement against Spain. She converses fluently, and her faculties are preserved in an extraordinary way, with the exception of her sight, which is failing.

In confessing that she still loves and plays with dolls, Toti d-.il Monte, the famous Italian singer who appeared at Covont Garden recently, can claiih the precedent of Sarah Bernhardt. The;great actress made a hobby of collecting dolls, which she dressed in all manner of beautiful costumes. The gems of her; collection, however, were exquisite little figures which she carved herself and dressed in the characters of all the parts she had ever played on the stage.

Lacey Frederick Besant (37), a married man with two children, was, at Shrewsbury Assizes, sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment in the second division, for the manslaughter of two girls at Hinstock, Salop, on May 17. The. evidence showed that Besant was driving round a corner on his wrong side at an excessive speed and ran into the girls. Mr Justice Horridge said he hoped the case would be a warning to others. Motorists must realise that foot passengers had an equal right to the highway.

The Yorkshire Post refers to Miss Isabel M. Peacocke’s “The House at Journey’s End’’ as another addition to the list of pleasant stories of New Zealand, written by her. “We imagine,’’ says the reviewer, “that Miss Peacocke has a wide circle of readers among those- who look in their novels for something to entertain them and rebel against the disturbing element which is the mark of the diction of the day. If Miss Peacocke achieves nothing original or brilliant, she has a real talent for telling a good story in a style which is both pleasant and restrained. ’ ’

1 The place of the Mexican woman is in the home, an.’, once married, she becomes virtually a slave. A few women, howewr, have stood out in Mexican history. During the colonial days there was Juana Inex de la Cruz, whose writings are read .whereever the Spanish tongue is spoken; a girl who clipped her hair and dressed up as a boy that she might attend the University, and whose learning outshone that of the wisest men of the day. The recent revolutions have brought a number of able women to the front. The head of the feminist movement in Mexico to-day is Elena Torres. Another progressive woman is Esperanza . Bruegas, a writer and poet.

A woman presented at one of this season’s Buckingham Palace drawingrooms writes that the thing that impressed her most was not the wonderful figure of Her Majesty gowned in cloth of silver and wearing marvellous jewels, the men in gorgeous uniforms, the wonderful frocking and jewels of the women, the foreign diplomats in gold-embroidered Court dress, white knee breeches, and silk stockings, or even the gorgeous lustrue chandeliers from which brilliant light shone down on a brilliant scene but —and she never will forget it —a lovely little woman from China wearing the most heavenly native- clothes, a riot of lively colour and perfect embroideries, who made her curtsey Chinese fashion, running a hand over each knee as she curtseyed. Not any other woman present could touch her for perfect grace.

Talking of university life in America, and more particularly in California, a Melbourne woman who had recently returned from spending some time as a student at Berkeley College, California, had some interesting things to say concerning the women’s side of life there. “The most interesting thing to me at the university” she told an “Argus” representative, “is not the university life, nor the courses of study, but the students, men and girls, who work their way through the university. The girls in ay do clerical work in the office of the dean of women, or in the recording office; they may work at the telephone exchange, wait at table m the students’ fraternities, drive a taxi for a few hours, cater for other girls, mind children, even darn stockings. It must, of course, be work that can be done in broken hours to enable them to attend lectures, but they have to go- strenuously. And then they generally attend the summer schools in vacation to catch up with what they might have had to miss.”