MAINLY FOR WOMEN

Greymouth Evening Star, 11 October 1928, Page 7

MAINLY FOR WOMEN

ITEMS OF INTEREST

(Notes by

Marjorie)

DRESSES AND BETTING. .DEALERS AT THE CASINOS. “Whore can I get a few more francs s<> Ihat I can continue to play?’’ is often the despairing cry of women holiday-makers who haunt the gaming rooms of casinos along the northern coast of France. The answer conics from an unexpected quarter, lor there are wardrobe dealers from London, women —and men —who make. the journey to Boulogne, Wimereux, Le Touquet, Dinard, and other French seaside resorts to supply the need. Few women visitox-s travel without a. full complement of clothes of every description. Many of them “pinch” for 50 weeks in the year to have a. “fling” on the Continent, and what daughter of Eve could resist the lure of dainty garments so as to compete will), her traditionally more chic, French sisters?

This is the opportunity of the shrewd wardrobe dealer who sees a woman without money to continue the play. “Call on me at the Hotel to-morrow morning and bring some of your clothes and I’ll give you a good price for them,” she whispers. The temptation is too great and the price paid is naturally only a tithe of the actual value. As the garments have been worn, the dealer has no difficulty in getting them through the Customs, and she returns to her shop in the West End, or the suburbs, chuckling, because, she has had a. free holiday and handsome profits in addition out of the sale later of the frocks which were designed to adorn the dining rooms and dance halls of fashionable French resorts.

A black satin skirt is a useful possession. So many jumpers can be worn with it, and it is always smart. With the pleated example shown the. jumper is of black ami white crepe de chine.

PLATES IN SETS. Everything matches these days. Not only our frocks and handbags, our gloves and stockings, our shoes and handkerchiefs, but our pretty household things as well. Wine-glasses, tumblers, and glass dishes are bought to tone with the colour scheme of the sitting-room in which we take our meals. Tablecloths go with curtains, and if we have not succumbed to the charm of the dainty coloured table-cloth, then we. have raffia mats, or painted cork ones, to match our cushions. No louge are we content to use the plates from tea. or dinner service for “odd” occasions. If sandwiches are being served after a visit to the theatre, a set of special sandwich plates may now be obtained, with a dish to match. The dish is oblong in shape. The plates are small and square.

Sets of crystal plates are offered in the shops now for stewed fruit. They can be had in plain glass, or tinted ruby, bottle green, or honey colour. The newest fruit plates of ordinary decorated china have a rim round the edge to accommodate stones. The fact that stones slid back into the fruit left in the bowl was one of the drawbacks of the old type. Now it has been done away with. Sets of coloured “sundae” glasses are often used for fruit salad. You can get a bowl to match them. The plainest “sweet” seems more attractive when it is nicely served, and, these “sundae” glasses add a picturesque note to any table. Salad plates to match a salad bowl and cheese plates which tone in colour and pattern with the cheese dish are other attractive sets which the bride would welcome, or the ordinary housewife would delight to add to her china closet.

STOWAWAY GIRLS. Recent reports indicate that stowaways are on the increase. “Women are as a. rule the greatest problem,” said a and O. official. “On one occasion a woman stowaway was discovered after leaving Newfoundland and the nearest British, port where she could he landed was Leith.” Desperagiven by the National Union of Seamen as one’of the reasons for men trying to stow themselves away (reports an exchange). Mr Cattery, the acting-general secretary, said: “J have no doubt there are more stowaways now than there used to he in the old sailing vessels, because then they could not hide themselves so well as l hey can on the big modern ships. Generally when stowaways are found after Hie vessel has left port Hie caplain invites lhein to work their passage. If I hey arc, willing Io work., Hint is iisilall.y the end of Ihe matter, hut if limy give any trouble they are handed over to the authorities. Some of Ihe big shipping companies, however, who are finding that this kind of thing is becoming more prevalent, have stowaways arrested directly the ship arrives in port.”

BUSY PEOPLE. POLITICIANS’ DAUGHTERS. In an interview given recently by Miss Rosemary Worthington-Evans, da,lighter of the Secretary of State for War. to the “Daily Mail,” she said that it was usually recognised that politicians’ wives were extremely busy people. But little credit was given to their daughters. “Politicians’ daughters are thoroughly hard-work-ing women,” she said. “Megan LloydGeorge, foi- example, who is, although we never dscuss politics, a great friend of mine, is completely at the disposal of political exigencies. Very often her social engagements are upset at the last, minute by a call from her father. She never fails him. “In summer, when garden fetes and sales of work abound, a Cabinet Minister’s daughter has engagements innumerable, most of them involving short speeches. The other day, for instance, I had to deputise for my father at a fete in Finchley. One must, of course, be able to make an impromptu speech, though I do not regard this as anything of an accomplishment.' It should not be difficult to say a few words after ten years’ experience. “The ‘nerves’ of politicians’ daughters are usually broken at a very tender age. I can remember very well the first occasion on which I showed signs of ‘cold feet.’ It was when I was six. I had to go round the cottages in the constituency saying, ‘Please vote for Daddy,’ and in one cottage my infant nerve failed, and I refused to utter a word. I was not allowed to leave that cottage until I had made my speech. “Such a training makes a politician’s daughter pretty well inured to the idea that she must face her public, l hough 1 remember feeling many qualms at- the meeting of the Junior Imperial League after the war. That was in 1921, and as it was the. first meeting of the League after the admission of women members, I imagined that the credit of the sex depended on my reply to a toast. “One is called upon to speak not only, when deputising for one’s father at political or social functions, hut on behalf of various societies. The Junior Imperial League, for instance, has 1000 branches continually calling for speakers. “Committee meetings, if one is on the executive of two or three political organisations, again take time. Such odd jobs as helping to organise a ball occasionally fall to one’s lot. Often the purely social, as apart from the actual speaking, duties fall to daughters as well as wives of Cabinet Ministers. On two days in one week recently I had to appear at political meetings and a garden party in the country with my father. Last year 1 worked it out that I spent one day a week in my father’s constituency alone. Sunday is the one day we count upon having to ourselves. . “There is, of course, a vast amount of fun in it, and one’s duties have the merit of being enormously varied. For reading, there is no time at all, unless one ‘makes’ it. Time must be found somehow to read the important political books as they appear, especially if one is doing any public speaking. Luckily, however, this is the sort of reading I thoroughly enjoy, so that if. hardly constitutes a penance. “tn the intervals I manage to put in a normal amount of dances. Possibly it is advisable for a political worker to keep up social activities, but I do i< simply because 1 enjoy if.”

THE LOUNGE LIZARD. “The Times” vouches for the following essay in Natural History: — The lounge lizard (Lacertus balnearius) is a mammal without exact precedent, though clearly of the dandiacal. species, having generally an elongated body wrapped in a. pliant sheath, a small head, a. mouth slightly open in an attitude of expectancy, and legs which, on occasions of languid animation appear to be gelautinous. He is at birth vertebrate, though the evidences of this condition have a tendency to dissolve as adolescence approaches. His customary positions are recumbent or sedentary, from which, when sufficiently goaded by his appetites, he stirs reluctantly with the tortuous motion of a sick eel, rising at last to a. position approximately upright, wherein, unless exceptionally stimulated, he totters and droops. His sitting down has less resemblance to the human taking of rest than to the collapse of a thin pinnacle of iced pudding when placed in moderate sunshine. Hut, in spite of this apparent lack of stamina, he will, like the garden slug, exhibit on his particular occasions, an astonishing energy.

Though unresponsive to slangy polkas, he is marvellously enabled, by the clangour of bells, the wailing of discordant instruments and _ the screams of savages, so to intoxicate himself that he can, and will, rock from one foot to another throughout a whole night, by which monotonous exercise he appears to be unexhausted. Though the “dusty cavalcade” is no concern of his, for in his world horses are extinct unless petits, he is so enchanted by the smell of petrol gas that he will press pedals, and pull levers with the greatest industry for no more selfish or useful purpose than that of releasing to the world, in the course of what he calls a “joyride,” the fumes of his own delight. The masher held the ribbons; the lizard lounges at a. steering wheel. Ono was served, cheated, and moulded by the abundant scoundrels of Lever or Surtees; the other is served, cheated, and moulded by the progressively minded office-boys of Mr Wells. Tile difference is much more than personal; it. marks the clash of age with age. The change from masher to lizard, from belle to flapper, is the change from sherry to cocktails, from coaches to two-seaters, from cigars to Virginian cigarettes. Let. the student, of manners, therefore, observe the lizard with understanding and match him with his predecessors, for, though, he and his kind may not. head the chapters, their names are illuminating footnotos to history.