MAINLY FOR WOMEN

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 October 1930, Page 3

MAINLY FOR WOMEN

ITEMS OE INTEREST

(Notes by

Marjorie)

WHY BEAUTY IS WANING.

CIGARETTES AND LATE HOURS.

PARIS, September 5

Cigarettes, cosmetics ,late hours, and, above all, avoidance of motherhood are slowly exterminating feminine beauty. This is the considered opinion of the woman doctor and gynaecologist, Dr Marcelle Peillon. She declares that modern women are consistently and continually breaking the most fundamental rules of health in their daily life. Unless a reaction comes, and comes soon, the beauty of women that has always held the world in its thrall—skins glowing with clean blood, eyes bright with vigour, lips red with health, and temperaments that are vivacious with well-being—will exist only in literature.

Dr Marcello Peillon harks back to the time when France was a nation of lovely women, when cosmetics were unknown, when medicinal baths, hot springs, and the natural curative waters and simple living were held to be the best aids to beauty. Why, she asks, should women apply paint and powder, have their faces “lifted,” and pull themselves out of shape when they must know that, what makes for clear skin and beauty is good blood circulation? The history of France’s many beautiful women, says Dr Peillon, shows that few of them were childless. Motherhood, under proper conditions, is a natural beautifier. If due care and attention are given, a woman's good looks increase and grow with the hearing of children.

KIDNAPPED AS BABY.

WOMAN NOW A HUNDRED.

Enough romance and adventure in all parts of the world to fill the pages of a. dozen novels have been crowded into the life of the wonderful old lady of Fulham. England, Mrs Birt, who celebrated her 100th birthday recently. At the age of three Mis Birt was stolen in broad daylight in one of the principal streets of Bath. She was held prisoner with her twin sister until the town crier shouted out that a reward would be paid for the children’s recovery. The next adventure came while Mrs Birt. was still a young girl in a convent school in France. The “Feb ruary Revolution” of 1848 broke out, and the sister superior took the girl to Havre and placed her on board an English-bound fishing smack. A few months later the girl's father and mother took her to Brazil, where she met Dr Birt, whom she married at the age of eighteen. She returned to England with her husband and travelled with him to the Crimea. There she met Florence Nightingale, and when her child was born it was Florence Nightingale who tended her Still, with more adventures ahead of her, Mrs Birt. went to Chili and was in the bombardment of Vai paraiso. She was placed with another woman in a wind-jammer and sailed round Cape Horn in a terrific storm. The two women took turns holding the binnacle lanterns over the compass. The vessel took three months to reach England.

COUNTESS’ DEBTS.

PRACTICALLY NO INCOME

When the creditors of the Countess of Loudoun, of Loudoun Castle, Ayrshire, met at Glasgow recently, an allowance of three guineas a week was made to her for her maintenance and assistance in clearing up the estates. Her statement, of affaiks showed an estimated surplus of £4OOO. Mr David Allen Hay, who was appointed trustee, explained that the statement of affairs had been prepared by debtor herself, and no confirmation had been obtained from outside valuers. The estimated valuation of Loudoun Castle and lands, after deducting heritable bonds, was given as £16,650. The castle was not furnished, but contained a number of heirloom pictures Furniture and silver plate was estimated at £l2OO, while mineral rents, accumulations from the English estates of Willesleyand Donington, were stated at £922. There were also certain life rent interests in English estates, but these could not be valued at the moment. The estimated assets amounted to £18,772, and after payment of preferable claims there was a. balance of £18,574. The creditors claims totalled £14,648, which left an estimated surplus of £3926. The figures given by the countess, however, were largely bound up in the estates. Lady Loudoun, Mr Hay pointed out. had practically no income, and as they could get a great deal of assistance from her in clearing up the complicated family history as regards the estate, he thought it would be in the interests of the creditors to make such an allowance.

HAPPINESS FLITCH.

FAMILY SMALL TALK.

HINTS TO PARENTS

You will find some people thinking that, school is the place for their children to acquire an interest in learning. Pool children who do not acquire it! Their parents are dissatisfied with them and with their schools; their schools are dissatisfied with them and with their homes; they are dissatisfied with themselves, their schools, and their homes. And nobody seems to know where the trouble lies. If somebody were to suggest that the trouble might lie with the Sunday dinner, that somebody would be called crazy. But let us think about it.

It is not a question of indigestion, of course. It is a question of conver sation. The conversation at the Sunday dinner of the average home centres about the high price of roast beef. It may excite Johnny’s imagination to the point of visualising the butcher at the corner store as a sort of robber, but beyond that, roast beef means only a good dinner to him. Yet, why couldn't it mean pictures of the rolling plains? Why couldn't it mean the picturesque story of herding, history of sheep and cattle, pictures of cattle shipping on the hoof, of slaughtering,. packing, wholesale and retail selling? Why couldn’t it, in other words, give Johnny an eager brain and a. vivid imagination? The second most popular subject of Sunday dinner-table conversation is spots on the tablecloth. In fact, a tablecloth, to most families, means little except a. place for spots. But once in a while there is a mother who tells her children, as she spreads the clean linen, that it was made in Ireland — an( i that may begin a hundred stories. Dishes may begin a hundred more, from the unearthing of Aztec pottery to the exquisite work of I French manufacturers who make modern dinnerware, and on still further to the ancient romantically myssterious stories of glass-making and glass-colouring. And colouring may lead to the subject of colours themselves and to a hundred stories, conjectures, and observations. How many parents send or bring their youngsters out for wild flowers for the table? How many of them know flower stories? How many even notice the water on the table enough to tell stories about the advance in water service? Most of them lived when they had to throw a bucket down the well and pull it up with a rope, or duck an oaken bucket by its pole, or at least use a pump. And don’t they suppose that the children love to hear of all that? Even the most generous parents aie apt to be somewhat stingy with their children in this matter of small talk. It. is small talk when you tell about the Jack o’ Lantern that used to shine from some unknown spot across the lake and nobody could explain it; and it. is still smaller talk when you mention the eccentric uncle who used to spend most of his time trying to invent a perpetual motion machine.

That’s all small talk, but the results arc big. They are another inch of understanding, another step toward curiosity about natural phenomena or a love for legends, another interest in tinkering, another picture of whatever the child's mind is constituted to see.

And. why arc not parents more generous in sharing real live, inter esting conversation with their children? Surely there is no better audience for wit and information than children. Nobody will listen more eagerly than they to little unusual experiences we have had in our lives. Nobody will appreciate more our attempts to entertain them, and nobody is more easily entertained. 1 say “entertained” because conversation should he conducted in the spirit of entertainment for one’s self and one’s children. If it is conducted with tho deliberate idea of instruction, it loses much of its psychological force as well as most of its pleasure. The instruction is secondary, a sort of natural result. It is a sort of contagion of interest. If one has a lively talkative interest, in things in general, one’s children will have it. And if one has not that interest, one may acquire it for the children’s sake and pass it on to them. If you will find the parents who bother to talk with their children, parents who realise that school is the least likely place for children to acquire an interest in life and learning, and that the dinner-table, the hike, the fire place, and deep armchairs are the best, you will find the children with keenest minds and most eager eyes. You will find the children who have a heritage of the ability to live fully and happily, a heritage that will last, their lives through, and touch their children’s children. —Josephine MacDonald, in “Columbia.”

ANCIENT TRIAL REVIVED.

Jealous of its ancient custom of awarding a flitch of bacon to the happiest married couple proving a claim, an example which has been copied in recent years by the larger community of Ilford, the village of Dunmow, in Essex, has revived the trial cere mony after a lapse of 17 years. The judge was Mr Geoffrey Tyndale, a Divorce Court barrister, who assumed judicial ignorance on many matters, including “curl rags.” There were two flitches awarded, the winning couples being Mr and Mrs E. W. Walker, of The Downs, Dunmow, and Mr and Mrs F. W. Goodey, of Great Easton. Mr Walker is cashier at the Dunmow bacon factory, and Mr Goodey is a postman. The domestic life of the competing couples was thoroughly probed, and such important domestic subjects as the right breakfast to give a hungry man, and whether a husband should help his wife to wash the baby, were gravely considered by the jury of six maidens and six bachelors. When one of the husbands was asked if his wife wore curl rags at breakfast, the judge wanted to know what a curl rag was. Mr Mortimer “counsel for the bacon,” obliged. “Curl rags,” he said, “are implements used by the modern young lady as part of her running repair outfit.” _