MAINLY FOR WOMEN

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 April 1934, Page 9

MAINLY FOR WOMEN

ITEMS OF INTEREST

IN FROZEN NORTH. RIGOURS FACED BY WOMEN. A Yorkshire girl lay three clays on a stretcher suffering from appendicitis while a dog team rushed her over the snow and ice to a town 150 miles away. She is better' now, and wants to go back. The "Yorkshire gill is Miss Florence Hirst, a farmer’s daughter, of Treeton, Rotherham. She and four other white people have been working for four years as missionaries and teachers among the Eskimos and Red Indians at Shingle Point, on the North Canadian coast The other four are Canadians. “I never want to return to civilisation,” Miss Hirst said. “We were sent out from Toronto to open a mission post somewhere along the Mackenzie coast. We sailed down the Mackenzie River in the only few weeks of summer that exist up there, and arrived at last at Shingle Point. The long winter soon came on us. ‘•We found a group of deserted huts Yvhich had once been used by the old Hudson Bay fur traders, and we turned these into homes and schoolrooms. . On one side lay hundreds of miles of uninhabited, snowcovered land; on the other th? frozen sea. One could almost feel the White Silence. Eskimos and Indians came from as far away as 1000 miles, bringing their children to our school. They pay us in furs when the season is good. ‘■Wolves and bears trouble us little. Several times my face was frozen when 1 went outside during the winter, but I soon grew used to that. Yes, I am anxious to go back.”

TEST CRICKET. WOMEN IN NEW SPHERE. The English Women’s Cricket Association proposes to send a team to visit Australia in December, stated a member of the 1 English Association recently. “We cannot promise to send a fully representative team,” she advised the “Daily Mail.” “Every player who goes will have to pay her own. fare, as the association cannot afford to do so. That restricts the choice of players to a great extent. “Some of our best players, moreover, are school teachers, or in other professions, so that they could not get time off to make so long a journey.

“The invitation will make our match, England v. the Rest, at Old Trafford, Manchester, next summer, very important. It will be something of a trial match for the tour.

“I suppose we shall take 15 or 16 players, and if we go to Australia in the ship that takes the Australian Test players back, they may give us a hint or two.” TEA-TRAY HATS Paris had another fashion shock recently, states the ‘‘Daily Mail.” “Tea-tray” hats have appeared. These have enormously wide brims, cut perfectly square. They are worn set straight on the head, too, so that with their shallow crowns the effect is that of a tray precariously balanced. White pique is used for most of these and the borders of the brims arc folded over in hems which look like the edges of a book-binding. Another shape at this collection is likely to provoke almost as much discussion—a huge cartwlieol hat with a low crown, which is uniikc any picture hat produced up to now. The fact that all these now hats are meant to be worn straight on the brow, with perhaps only the slighto.-l tilt forward, results in the back of the head being shown, and the mannequins therefore had their hair there dressed in a mass of tiny curls. Straw materials and straw trimmings on dresses are another novelty. One chiffon evening cape had three rows of bushy straw ends trimming the edge.

LADIES’ HANDBAGS. DIVERSITY OF SHAPE. LONDON, February 23. Fashion in handbags has taken a •strange turn this season. There are practically no fashions, and any novelty will sell. One may see the diversity of ideas in shape and in matei ial. When her Majesty the Queen toured the British Industries Fair she was attracted by and bought a cork bag. The cork is made up on the same lines as a cork dish mat, but the adhesive mixture used is capable of standing the wet. The edging is of leather. Any artistic shape has an attraction. For instance, there is the irregular rectangular shape, the threequarters of a circle, the triangle with another obtruding triangle of a different colour —black and white leather.

Bags for evening use have not been so diversely developed. The simple shape remains, and the novelty is merely in the silk material, used and the ornamentation. For sports wear there are the scarves and bags in the same material of plaids or other patterned tweed. Others in soft angora, carry out a tri-colour scheme. There is the frame of wood with glass ornamentation. Then there is a new and handsome pleated design.

One firm has introduced a novel catch in the form of a. horseshoe and bar. The horseshoe is a magnet guaranteed to retain its power for four years. The metal is untarnishable and the catch is applied to a wide range of leather and fabric bags.

For the races there is a variety of bags made of hailstone calf —a new treatment of calf. The skin has an irregular surface, and there is plenty of capacity in the designs for' the pockets are numerous. The colours are good; most are dark, including brown, navy, and mahogany-red. Another novelty is the roll-top bag. The two edges of the bag have a natural roll and when in position are secured by two dome fasteners. The trade foretells that about June of this year white leather handbags will be very popular as a spring fashion, and they are manufacturing accordingly. Another very popular line is the pig-grained white or coloured leather bag. with thin black or red unsymmetrical lines drawn all over it.

It is interesting to note the trade process through which the crocodile bag has passed. There came a time when large scale crocodile skins were no longer used for travelling or' dressing cases. There was a glut in the skins and real crocodile was used for bags, which were sold last year at low prices, and the same applied to crocodile shoes.

Among the shopping bags which it is understood find their way to New Zealand there is the patchwork bag of bright leather. Some of these are circular in shape. ’Then there is the knitting bag with an eyelet in the side for. the wool to be taken through.

TO USE ROUGE WAS il SIN. Doctors stress the value of feeling well, and with this in" view the wisdom of making the best of one’s self in dress matters and general grooming comes uppermost. A Sydney doctor thinks that the use of rouge is a brightening-up medium tor eyes and cheeks and inspires a sense of greater confidence and helps very much to restore that well feeling. But there was not always this tolerance of make-up. This amusing early Victorian reticence in regard to paint, powder, and sartorial fallals was largely inspired by the fact that, about the end of the eighteenth century, when cosmetics were so generally in use among all classes of women, tho following quaintest of Parliamentary Acts was passed:

“That all women, of whatever age. rank, profession, or degree, whether virgin maid or widow, that shall from and after such Act impose upon, seduce, and betray into matrimony any of His Majesty’s subjects by means of scent, paints, cosmetic washes, artificial teeth, false hair. Spanish wool, iron stays, hoops, high-heeled shoes, or bolstered hips, shall incur the penalty of the law now in force against witchcraft and like misdemeanours, and that the marriage upon conviction shall stand null and void.” In those sad days apparently His Majesty’s subjects were mortally afraid of woman’s wily arts and terrified of matrimonial trops. PRETTY STOWAWAY. HALIFAX (Nova Scotia), March 22. Almost dead from hunger, cold and thirst, Catherine Carr, aged eighteen, was found aboard a lifeboat when the steamer Sularia arrived here. Stealing aboard at Belfast, the girl was without sustenance for eleven days. She said that she was promised a job in Toronto, and had no money to pay her passage. She was arrayed in a party dress with winter ccat and silk stockings. "1 suffered terrible agony from frost and the stiffness caused by my cramped position.” said the pretty •stowaway, who had to be carried to hospital.' Her toes may have to be amputated owing to frostbite. Spray from the cold North Atlantic gales frequently came over the lifeboat, and thirst almost drove her mad.’ The girl will be deported when she recovers sufficiently.