WOMANS WORLD.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCIII, Issue 10599, 7 March 1895, Page 6

WOMANS WORLD.

In spite of her advancing years. Queen Victoria is able to hear as well now as she could as a girl of twenty. The first duty of woman (says the Pall Mall Gazette) is to look as consistently attractive as her physical circumstaricaa will allow, be she young or old, fair or hard-featured, stately or insignificant. The growth of the Omaha (United States) WOman’s Club is phenomenal. Organized in May, 1893, at the end of the first year it had over B£o members, and bae now over 450, with applications constantly pouring in. ■ A young English artist. Miss M. Merrick, is undertaking a work hitherto not attempted—the painting of the 'women of the Zsnanaa. She finds great difficulty in coaxing them to pose in their graceful native costumes, mestof them imfiaUng on ugly attempts at Baris gowns.

Tha Ne w Woman, like Mrs Senior’s pauper girls (writes Frances Power Cobbe) wants “mothering;” not stern repression or contemptuous rebuke. She wants sympathy; and the guiding, helping hand along her dim and perilous way, which motherly and fatherly sympathy ought to afford.

Lady Clifford is the first lady in England who Has ever obtained tie Hoard of Trade certificate for proficiency in, navigation. With- a • good sailing-master under her orders,she navigated?. 350-ton yacht in the Channel and Mediterranean with such success that she proposes shortly to visit the East in the sama manner. Mrs'.W. J. Baird, the famous chessproblem woman of Loudon, recommends the game for women on tho grounds that it is a useful corrective to the tendency to jump to conclusions, which most of the eex have. “ Besides,” she says, “itis a home accomplishment: no woman is compelled to leave ha? own fireside for the sake of chess; and, lastly, it produces no flirting and general frivolity. According to the British Medical Journal, which has been considering the matter of beards, woman is placed at a serious disadvantage by her lack of the facial protection that nature reserves for man alone. She is, it asems, much more liable thau her brother, not only to toothache and neuralgia, but even to certain forms of facial paralysis, on account of her want of this natural covering. Lady Florence Dizie has a little house by the Thames at Windsor, which is described aa'n curiosity. It is very small; in ' fact, tho stables, ia which she keeps a number of little ponies, arc quico twice ac large as the house, and are very beautifully built. L.idy Florence keeps about fifty doge, and is always either walking about with her dogs or galloping along the roads on one of the little ponies.

Ail her life tlie Queen o£ Denmark has been troubled "with deafness, bub, thia affliction has not prevented her from being a woman o? quick intelligence, seen sympathy, and extreme energy. Nob only ia ehc sm accomplished musician, hut a clever aitisi, and sincerely denoted to jiaiutiug. In many simple Danish churches the village prieafc points with prido’to the picture - over - the-altar which |

has been painted and presented by tha Queen. Her Majesty is also a patron of the drama.

Mre Henry Wood wrote scarcely anything before she was forty years old. “ Baaesbury House,” which appeared a year before “ East Lynne,” was written to secure a prize of one hundred pounds offered by tha Scottish Temperance League. Her success stimulated her to further work and when she died in 1887 aha left behind her nearly forty volumes of popular fiction. In appearance she was very beautiful but extremely delicate. Her husband was a wealthy man of position, ability, and character.

Mra Law Wallace, wife of the famous American writer, says that Miss Florence Nightingale at the time of the Crimean War was a Blender woman of graceful figure and great dignity of manner. She exhibited remarkable fortitude at all times, and especially when present at surgical operations. Once, when the agonies of a patient in the hands of the surgeons put to flight all the asoistante. Miss Nightingale turned and called after them, angrily : “ Come back! Shame on you as Christiana! Shame on you ae women!” A timely comment on Christmas-giving is found in a paragraph in a letter which Bismarck, the “ Iron Chancellor,” hut most tender and devoted husband, wrote to hia sister asking her to buy some presents for hia wife. The first suggestion was a piece of jewellery, and he says of it:— “Princess Bismarck wishes for an opal heart like the one you have, and a person’s desire is hia paradise. lam prepared to pay about £4O for it,” No more apt Christmas hint than this could be found: “ A person’s desire is his paradise.” Miss Ellen Terry is" an economical lady, and contrives to dress very prettily at no great expense. “My expenditure on stage drosses in usually represented as immense,” uhe said tho other day to.a lady interviewer, “ but if people only knew how far a little money and a great deal of art and skill in manipulation will' go in stage dressing, they would alter their opinions. Of course, all my gowns are specially designed for me, but! frequently the material is of the very cheapest. This gauze, for instance,”, eho .continued, taking up the black and gold wrap she wears in “ Backet,” “ cost a yard, and tho tinsel butterflies were sewn on' afterwards. Not very serious, that—ia it ?” When a woman’ talks slang, smokes tobacco, drinks “ nips,” shoots, hots, and calls her male acquaintances Tom ” and “Jack,” I think (write's Frances Rower Cobbe) she exhibits very bsd taste, and fails ia those “ manners ” which * mate ” woman, even more decidedly than they make “man.” Bat when a woman paints her face and dyes her hair, bares her neck and arms outrageously, sticks a murdered bird for ornament on, her empty head, and makes it the ambition of her life to see her toilet described in the society papers, I think she is guilty of something worse than bad taste. I think Jezebel is much more objectionable, and, in the truest sense, much more unwomanly than the Amazon. Mrs Henrotin, the President of the General Federation of Woman’s Clubs, sad an influential member of the Chicago Woman's Club, is strongly ia favour of admitting to membership tho coloured woman who is knocking at its door. According to report she has one disability, that of race, but her proposed membership is raising a quarrel of dimensions in tha club. In taking this liberal stand, Mra Honrotin rebukes the narrow - minded deters, who, last May, in Philadelphia, opposed her candidacy for the firat office of the federation because she is a Roman Catholic. This, too, in the face of tho most strongly donned rules of meat women’s clubs that religion and politics shall invariably bo tabooed subjects.