MAINLY FOR WOMEN

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 August 1929, Page 8

MAINLY FOR WOMEN

ITEMS OE INTEREST

(Notes by

Marjorie)

MRS HOOVER RAISES STORM. INVITATION TO NEGRO WOMAN. NEW YORK, June 15. After a fiery debate, during which the members were only prevented from indulging in fisticuffs by the Sergeant-at-Arms. the State Senate of Texas has resolved, by twenty-six votes to two, that “we bow our heads in. shame and regret, and express in the strongest and most emphatic terms ,at our command our condemnation and humiliation” at the conduct of Mrs Hoover in entertaining to tea at the White House, Washington, last Wednesday, Mrs Oscar de Priest, wife of the negro Representative from Chicago. In introducing the Bill, Senator Margie Neal, the only woman member of the Texas Senate, charged Mrs Hoover with violating “the most sacred social custom of the White House.” She declared that the. social recognition of the negro was unthinkable to her and her people. All the Southern States are report ed to be shocked over 1 the incident. On. the other hand, it is commented that since Mrs Hoover, in accordance with custom, invited to tea the wives of all Representatives in "groups, she could not discriminate against Mrs de Priest as a coloured woman, even if she had desired to do so.

For the matron is the exquisite gown in gold lace over shot gold lame. The bolero-like arrangement of lace on the bodice dips almost to the hem of the skirt at one side, while the lace over-skirt, drooping low the opposite side, gives perfect poise to the whole.

MATRIMONIAL. HAPPINESS. Two theatrical partners in the United States claim to ■ have found a method of ensuring happiness after marriage. They signed ten articles of agreement which read: Neither .shall stay away from the family fireside after 11 p.m. without the other’s consent. Neither shall drink without the other’s consent. Each shall have a, holiday of one month a year, to be passed away from the other. The first to discover that love has flown to notify the other. Lies, even white lies, are taboo. The husband shall introduce women with whom he play's on the stage to his wife. The wife shall never remove her wedding ring. Both shall try to obtain work in the same cast. The agreement shall be binding in a court of law.

MODERN WAITRESS. An up-to-date New York restaurant is searching for waitresses with red hair as an additional attraction for its customers, and girls with the right Titian hue command a higher weekly salary. Another catering firm running a chain of restaurants expects its waitresses to possess “Ziegfeld legs,” and will engage only those who might do honour to a first-class musical comedy chorus. In these cafes stockings are not permitted to hide elegant ankles. This search for pulchritude on the part of restaurant-owners has angered older waitresses, who declare sarcastically that beauty has usurped the place of brains in their profession. In the old days a waitress could remember six orders at a time, but nowadays girls are supplied with pencil and paper, or the customer’ is obliged to write down his own order. The elder women are wondering what will\ their future be now that restaurants will not have waitresses over thirty or weighing more than nine stone. MEN’S COLOURED SHOES. CHICAGO, July 19. “Since Noah donned hipboots and went sailing in the Ark, men have known no footwear except blackar known no footwear except black and tan,” says an editorial article in the “Boot and Shoe Magazine,which is advocating as many colours in shoes for men as in their neckties. Midnight blue shoes, it says, will be worn this autumn with dark grey suits.

SKIRT TOO SHORT. A JUDGE’S DECISION. Judge Moore had to decide the proper length of a skirt at Greenwich County Court recently, when Mi’s Ethel Elizabeth Carpenter, of Arran Road, Catford, sued W. Rees, a tailor, of Rushey Green, Catford, for £5/10/- the price of a costume. Mrs Carpenter said that she complained about the skirt and Rees made a. new one, which was “utterly indecent and impossible to wear.” When she sat down it was two and a-half inches above her knees. Her husband, who was outside the house when she returned with it on, called out, “Come inside at once.” She went to counsel’s robing room on the Judge’s directions and put on the skirt. When she returned Judge Moore- said: “I agree that the skirt is very short, but some people like them short.” Mrs. Carpenter: I do, but not like that. I have a child of 14. Judge Moore said that he would give the tailor an opportunity of altering it, and if the alterations were not satisfactory he would make an order for the return of the money. He would view tire costume again in his private room and decide whether the alterations were satisfactory.

AN ENTERPRISING WOMAN.

Any number of English women have proved that they can hold their own in business in London and the provinces, but I know of only one who is the pioneer of a successful industry in a foreign country (states a London writer).

She is a Scotswoman —Miss McLean. better known as “Bunnie” to the followers of the Whaddon Chase, and equally well-known to big game hunters in British East Africa, where she shot one of the finest lions that ever fell to a woman’s rifle. “Bunnie” McLean has just gone back to her orange fazenda not many miles from Rio de Janeiro.

Two years ago this attractive and wealthy young woman, who hails from Breda, in Aberdeenshire, originated and managed the first company to ship oranges from Brazil to England. Now she has set up in business for herself. With independence typical of the modern British women she has bought her own plantation, has built her own house, and herself grows, packs, and ships the oranges, which find a ready market at Covent Garden. She lives alone, and employs and manages all her own native labour. She tells me she has never had a strike or even the slightest difficulty with her Brazilian employees. Before going to Brazil, Miss McLean and her brother, Major Godfrey McLean, late Gordon Highlanders, built a big refrigerating plant near Budapest for shipping Hungarian poultry to England.

A WONDERFUL EXHIBIT.

“In spite of the fact that thousands of people can. for the moment, give no attention to anything but politics, the regular events of the season are taking place as usual,” says a London writer. “The Chelsea Flower Show opened to-day, arid even the most enthusiastic political worker. will,. I think, try and take just a little time off to visit Chelsea, for there is nothing quite like the flower show, everything is arranged so beautifully, and the masses of flowers are so extraordinarily lovely. One of the most interesting features this year is the exhibit arranged by Mrs Sherman Hoyt, a rich American. She. is chairwoman of the Californian section of the Garden Club of America, and she has brought over, at her own expense, an exhibit which takes up a whole tent to itself, and which represents a stretch of the Californian desert near Pasadena. Mrs. Hoyt, as the only American exhibitor, has been especially privileged, for she has been allowed to include birds and insects with real flowers, to lend a truly realistic air to this desert scene. Packages of undergrowth from the redwood forests arrived only, just in time; they were sent by air from California to New York, where they were put on the steamer for England at the last possible moment. Stones and hundreds of different cacti provide a further touch of realism, and a backcloth has been specially painted by Mr M’Nally, the State artist of California.”

WHY HAIR TURNS GREY.

Each of our hairs is fitted into a tiny sheath or pit in our skin; In this pit grows a small bulb, which is really the root of the hair, the bulb drawing on a network of minute blood-vessels which maintain it. The hair itself is in the form of a little tube, the shell being covered with tiny scales and the tube being filled with a colouring matter which is nourished by the blood drawn up from the bulb below. When the system becomes enfeebled either by age, by illness, or by intense nervous strain, it follows sometimes either that the bulb actually dies (in which case no hair can grow in that particular “pit” again), or the blood vessels can no longer keep up the supply of nourishment for the colouring matter in the tube of the hair, in which case the person becomes grey. It. happens, too, that tiny cells from other parts of the body will sometimes grow into the hair, driving out the colouringmatter and replacing it with a little bubble of air, which has the effect of turning the hair grey while it is still perfectly healthy. HEIRESS’ BRIDEGROOM. x CALCUTTA, July 19. By the decision of the Allahabad High Court, a prospective bridegroom, his two brothers, and his father must be medically examined by two doctors and declared fit before his marriage with a young girl will be permitted. The girl, who is only 15 years of age, recently inherited 60,000 rupees (£4500). A friend of the girl’s family is opposing the marriage on the ground that the bridegroom’s father is a leper.