NOTES FOR LADIES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 3570, 27 June 1872, Page 3

NOTES FOR LADIES.

{Culled hy the Otago Daily Times.)

A Minnesota paper prints a list of 103 old maids and widows who wish to change their state.

Twenty thousand women gain a living in Switzerland by working in the watch factories.

It is said that the style of the Spanish ladies’ dresses has not materially changed for 200 years. The French dressmakers say that an American customer is worth more to them than three of their own countrywomen. The Baroness Rothschild is said to take absorbing interest in a Jewish girls’ school, established by herself at Jerusalem. It is said that the Marquise de Caux (Adelina Patti) owns more diamonds and handsomer jewelry than any lady of the nobility in Europe. The ex-Empress Eugenie still seems anxious to turn all her effects into hard cash; she is not only selling her jewels, but all her Spanish estates. A New York wedding-cake weighed 40lbs. It was in the form of a three-storey house, with a sugar bride and groom coming out of the front door. Several Rhode Island women voted at a recent election in that State when disguised in the habiliments of fathers and brothers who were beyond the seas. Rosseau said that to write a good loveletter you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and finish without knowing what you have written. All save one of Queen Victoria’s ladies m waiting are widows, her choice since Prince Albert died. They receive £BOO per annum, and are the widows of deceased peers. Two of the foremost leaders of the lean monde in Paris recently appeared at a fashionable ball without chignons. It is said an effort is being made in Paris to do away with these unnatural appendages. The building for women students at Cornell University will be commenced this year, and is to cost about 130,000d015., with a gift of lOOjOOOdols besides. Women will probably be admitted next September. A young lady in a Massachusetts town has taken up dentistry for a living. All the gentlemen patronise her. One young man has become hopelessly infatuated with her consequently he has not a tooth in his head. The largeatvpnd heaviest woman m Pans died recently, her weight was 36 stone lOlbs. She was named Geniot, and in 1848 appeared at a national fete as the Goddoes of Liberty, at which time her figure was quite slim. Gothenburg, Sweden, is to bo the seat of a medical college, which will afford a threefears’course of study to ladies over seventeen years old. After receiving diplomas, they can practise in any part of Sweden as Pl Tho ia wife of Senator Sprague, of Rhode Island, U. 8., paid 18,000 dollars in gold for six and a half yards of point lace winch the Queen of England and the Empress of France hud both admired but refused to buy as too expensive for them. _ The latest fashion at American weddings is for a geiikeman to present his daughter with a cheque (not marked) for a large amount, which is displayed with the other presents, but taken buck by the indulgent papa at the close of the reception. ' . „ . One hundred thousand persons m Cashmere are employed in the shawl manufacture A female spinner cams the munificent compensation of three shillings a month. Some shawls of elaborate pattern occupy these weavers twelve or fifteen months. The hair in Paris this spnng is combed back and nut up in the style of Louis AV. that is all the hair is thrown back from the forehead. Look at the old portraits painted a hundred years ago in England, and you will see this “ high front poke" to perfection. InNewYork, ladies, -(ear a belt of leather round the waist, to Which is fastened a clasp which holds an umbrella of brown, purple, or blue silk on one rid<V*o that a lady may awry an umbrella

without being Obliged to take her hands out of her muff.

Some of tho banking and insurance conipanics in, England are beginning to employ women as clerks. The Prudential Assurance Company, which has tho largest staff of clerks of any London office, has created a department for female service, for which only tho daughters and widows of professional men, merchants, and gentlemen engaged in public offices are eligible. Heretofore 90 per cent, of the telegraphic operators in tho Grand Duchy of Baden have been women. Hereafter tho working of tho wires is to.be in'tho hands of tho Imperial authorities, who think that tho women’s propensity to gossip has too wide a range with tho telegraph in their possession, and accordingly measures arc being taken to provide the dismissed operators with a husband and a home.

A lady school-teacher in Omaha,' having an inordinate dread of the smallpox, sent home a little girl because she said her mother was sick and had marks on her face. The next day the girl presented herself at the schoolhouse, with her finger in her mouth and her little bonnet swinging by the strings, and said to the teacher; —“Mias , we’ve got a leetle baby at our house; but mother told me to tell you that it isn’t catchin’.” The teacher said she was vety glad, and told her pupil to take her seat.

Speaking of the Dolly Yarden costume, the Philadelphia Ledger says “ Our fashionable belies have scarcely recovered from the “ Grecian bend)” and the luxuriance of their present Pompadour over-dresses makes the transition to the tight bodice, low bosom and bare anus of Dolly Yarden very sudden, Yery young ladies will doubtless expect to double their attractions*—if such a thing be possible —in their Dolly Varden costume. And ladies of more mature .age, who retain their youthful appearance, as many do, may also appear to advantage-in it— at home.” A lady correspondent of an American journal, writing from Home regarding a ball given them during the Carnival, says : —“ The Duchess Teato wore laces that are of fabulous value. The Duchess Rignano, as a Marquise Of the Maintenon epoch, was literally blazing in diamonds. . The young Princess Marie Bariatinsky had on a costume ordered expressly for the occasion from Worth, and said to have cost 3000 francs [£l2o.] It was a shepherdess dress. She looked like an animated bit of old Saxony china, just as if one of the figures from a Dresden china epergne of fabulous price had stepped out on to the floor. I remarked how apropos were the pink coral ornaments she wore. ‘They are not coral,’ exclaimed a friend, ‘ they are the wonderful and unique pink pearls of her mother, the Princess Bariatinsky.’ The mother, by the way, had on a set of emeralds which are as remarkable as the pink pearls. They are very large and uncut, surrounded by fine diamonds.”

A Texas paper reports a curious trial arising out of the loss of a chignon. A lady went to a ball, and when preparing to return to her home in the evening, before going to her carriage, took off her coiffure and tied it up in her handkerchief to keep it fresh for a party she was to attend the following night, and that she might the more conveniently put warmer wraps on her head, the evening being cold. When she reached her dwelling the coiffure was not in the carriage. She despatched a messenger for it, but it could not be found. Some days after she had met an acquaintance, whose hair was the same colour as her own—rather a peculiar hue—and was satisfied she wore her coiffure. She taxed her with it. Of course ft was indignantly denied. St» certain was the lady that the hair the other was wearing was the article she lost at the ball, she sued her for it. When the trial came on the defendant struck the prosecutor dumb, and convinced the court, by letting down her tresses and showing they were her own, thereby procuring a judgment in her favour. Subsequently she quarrelled with her hairdresser, when it came out that the hair she had so dexterously exhibited as having grown on her own head, had grown on some other head, but had been' artfully and artistically arranged for the pulling down process by the hairdresser. The correspondent at Rome of' the Swiss Times writes ;—Under the title of Earl and Countess of Chester the .Prince and .Princess of Wales are living at the Hotel des lies Britanniques in Piazza del Popolo; the whole first floor being occupied by themselves and suite, consisting of Colonel Ellis, Mr and Mrs Harding, Sir Knollys, and Mi’s Grey, and twelve servants. Their Royal Highnesses came to the eleven o’clock service yesterday at the English Chapel outside the gate. A very fashionable congregation was assembled there for morning service. A gentleman of the committee preceded the princess to the seats prepared for the Royal party in the front row, opposite the altar. Her Royal Highness was dressed in a dark violet merino costume, trimmed with velvet of the same colour, a velvet bonnet of the same shade with a sea-blue feather, and it was remarked that no huge projection of false hair and padding concealed the back of her neck. In the language of a century or so ago, the Princess ‘ wore her own hair.’ The Prince looks very well, and has so little the habits of a convalescent, that after church he returned to the hotel on foot. Prince . Humbert and Princess Margherita visited the Prince and Princess of Wales in great state in the afternoon in their grand carriages with the scarlet liveries and wigs. Princess Margherita wore the Italian colours in her dress—green velvet, a white bonnet, with a rose on one side.” Ladies who wear dyed hair which does not belong, except by purchase, to them, will find (the Pall Mall Gazette says) some interesting information respecting the manufacture of artificial tresses in a report to the Holborn District Board of Works by Dr Gibbons, which lately came under consideration of that body. Dr Gibbons’s attention has, he says been called to an alleged nuisance arising from the process of hair dyeing at a house in South-ampton-buildings, where the business is carried on on a small scale. Some of the hair which is very clean, is boiled in a small saucepan or fish-kettle with a solution of logwood and copperas over the sitting-room fire, and when the solution is poured away, and the hair left to dry, as it occasionally is, in the backyard, it is alleged that the liquor and the hair together emit an offensive odour. Dr Gibbons has, however, twice watched the process, but was unable to detect either noxious or offensive smells. There is certainly, he adds, nothing injurious or offensive about logwood and copperas, either separately or combined. In fact, copperas is used as a powerful deodoriser. At times other dyes are used. He proposes, therefore, to watch the premises, and, if necessary, to compel the owner to take the best practical means to abate the nuisance.