THE LATEST AMERICAN CRAZE.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 5545, 24 November 1879, Page 3

THE LATEST AMERICAN CRAZE.

The San Francisco correspondent of the Otago Daily Times writes as follows regarding the latest American craze : — Socially, the Americans are as quaint as they are mechanically progressive. In North Carolina recently, a Mormon elder was killed hecanse he had been successful in making converts among the population, chiefly of the female sex. The men ol> jected to it, and killed him. But the offended morality of the the heel State was not satisfied with this. They took out the other Mormon preachers and whipped them soundly, says the local reporter, " and the converts were tickled with hickory twigs." The fact is that the men were stripped and flogged unmercifully with whips, while the women had an equally severe application of hickory switches on their naked flesh. Yet the Mormons are wrestling and prevailing, and, most remarkable of all, they find most of their converts among women, many of them married, who carry their families with them. In a New England State, the local newspapers of Somerset county announce that " hugging sociables " are to be held in various parts of that county for church and other purposes. It is proposed to charge 10 cents to hug any young lady between 15 and 20 ; 5 cents for anyone between 20 and 30 ; 25 cents for young widows ; 1 dol. to hug another man's wife ; old maids, two for a cent ; while female lecturers are free, With a chromo thrown in. There is a great deal of quaint humor about this which one cannot help enjoying, and the beauty of it is that " hugging sociables " are just what they pretend to be, and not the " holy friar," of religious meetings, whose love-feasts partake less of fun than of reality, and form the subject this season of scathing articles in the illustrated/newspapers. Anew craze has taken possession of American womankind, and that is the fashion of tatooing the limbs, breast, or shoulders in Indicin ink. Of all places, the Quaker city of Philadelphia is the most given to it. The operators, mostly female, but not always so, have their hands full of business. Monograms, devices, the names of friends, lovers, or relatives, are pricked into the skin, until . one is puzzled to think how they bear the torture. A reporter wa3 admitted to one of those operating rooms, and saw it all through a screen. One woman had no less than eight devices, including monograms, crosses, half -moons, &c, tatooed from the kneo down. The demi monde are the best customers. Lately, they have become almost crazy about it ; but respectable women are little behind them. The charges range from sdols. to 50d015., according to design. All Eastern and Southern cities are possessed with this craze, which has extended to Chicago, St. Louis, and this coast. I suppose you have not yet got to this pitch of fashionable disfiguration in New Zealand, although it was an open secret there a quarter of a century ago that tatooing was not unknown to the families of the earliest white inhabitants, especially in the far north. It may have gone out of fashion, however, and it would be well not to revive it.