LADIES’ GOSSIP.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCVII, Issue 11187, 8 February 1897, Page 2

LADIES’ GOSSIP.

[“ Canterboki' Times.”] What woman of sensitive temperament does not remember the fatigue and depressed feeling consequent on doing a day’s shopping only a few years ago ? Then it was a wearisome search through a dark shop for tho special article on which one had set one’s mind, followed by visits to innumerable places where special goods only were sold until one was lit to drop with utter prostration. All this has been greatly changed for the better. We stroll now-u-days into a cheerful welllighted magazine, that contains under its roof almost every article of personal use from a yard of ribbon to a bicycle. When we are weary of bargain- hunting we step into the tea-room, and enjoy a cup of delicious tea, or if the luncheon hour strikes before we have finished making our purchases, we may enjoy that meal without having even to stop outside the door, and the shopping luncheon party is becoming almost as popular as the bicycle breakfast of last summer. Shopping has become a fine art, and though our enterprising business men have not yet included a manicure add barber .among the attractions of their establishments as at Homo, still we are fast approaching that high pitch of civilisation. In London there are large shops where one can buy absolutely everything required for a house, from groceries and fruit, Ac., to a dress-suit. Nay, if one wishes to end one’s experiences in a huge bazaar of this kind by having a shampoo and one’s portrait taken, the facilities for doing so are at hand, each in its special department of this mammoth store.

It is recorded that before the use of tea was so common as it is now, and when the proper process of making - it was as yet a matter of more or less mystery, a good lady carefully stewed the precious leaves, and having - squeezed them dry, served them as a peculiar dainty between thin slices of bread and butter. But even cookery such as this palls in fearsomenoss beside the preparation of Uefomdrler Thee, as it is styled in Germany. The recipe for this unique dish is taken from the interesting article in the Adelaide Observer, v, ritten by an Australian visitor to the Continent. She describes the life lived in a Berlin pension or high-class boarding-house, and tells how one day, iu place of the usual afternoon coffee at four o'clock, a strange and awful compound was handed round in small cups as a rare beverage. And this'is how it is made: To a litre of boiling milk add a large eoffeespoonful of line tea, some pieces of cinnamon bark and citron peel, with sugar according to taste, and let them simmer for some time. Then take live or six yolks, of eggs and beat them up well. Strain the milk through a hair sieve, and beat the yellow of the eggs into it till it foams. Then pour into a teapot and serve! But then we must remember that the Germans are a coffee-drinking nation. The same writer goes on to say that there are very few national dishes with which a foreigner would find fault, and she found the milk and fruit soups really delicious. Two dishes which she found rather unpalatable were the white-beer soup, seasoned with cinuamon and lem'ou peel, and breast of veal stuffed with some preserved fruit that tasted like green gooseberries. Otherwise there appears to be much that is exceedingly commendable in German modes of cookery, particularly the custom of not serviug vegetables “in the unsophisticated state in which they came from the hands of the Creator,” but always with their appropriate and distinctive sauces. Nor do the “large, cold joints that haunt a household for days in English and Anglo-Australian menages” appear on the well - kept table of the German frau, showing that she has provided ample compensation for even such a potion as llefovmirter Thee. At last we have the prospect of being able to enjoy a tepid’ water swim, and rejoice accordingly. For the cycliste in particular —and who is not a cycliste in these days?—-such a bath is the very thing to make riding exercise perfect, and-when to it are added the joys of a tea-room, what more can heart of woman desire ? It is quite on the cards that swimming parties for lunch or afternoon tea may become a popular feature of the coming season’s entertainments. Bad weather could not, of course, prove any hindrance to enjoyment or comfort, and would, on the contrary, only enhanco the luxury of a brisk swim in a glass-roofed bath, followed by a daintily-served cup of tea drunk among one's friends. An appallingly largo amount of slang is talked now-a-days in society by youths and maidens who might reasonably bo expected to know better. This new slang habit is something more than that reaction against the priggishness of the collegian that sets in after the days of mere school education are done with. This soon passes away, and we return to our “English undefiled” with, a sense of relief. But the modern phase which permits a lady to ask her “ chum ” if she is going to the “ gaff ” in that“touoy” evening dress of hers, without losing caste, arises from a very different cause—namely, the vulgarisation of society itself. The old order is changing in very truth, and the new one, built as it is on tlie questionable merit of mere wealth, without the addition of worth, is fast giving tone to the whole atmosphere of what we call society. We revel in being vulgar, refinement we scarcely know the meaning of, and we glory in being outspoken enough to “ call a spade a spade.” As for reticence, it is fast disappearing out of the land, and the result is a want of fine feeling that becomes at once apparent in our habits and speech. The young girl talks sagely about " having a bit on,” giving “ the straight tip,” “rigging the market,” and so on. Of course she always “ bikes,” and “ slogs ” through a head-wind. You need a compendious glossary or an interpreter to enable you to understand her, but instead of being abashed, she looks scornfully on you as being an “ old fogey,” and plumes herself on her up-to-date chic — to her the most valuable accomplishment of the modern society woman. But it is not the young woman alone who has made herself so objectionable. Her mother is often a great deal worse, as may he gathered from the following letter, which was sent by its recipient to the editor of an English weekly paper. It had been written by a lady in London society;— “Dear Lord ,—Pray consider this as being strictly private and confidential, I have reason to believe that the beauty of my daughter, together with the admirable qualities which she possesses, have made a serious impression upon your heart. If you are inclined to proceed further in the matter, I am prepared to assist you; but business is business. My terms are five hundred guineas upon completion of the transaction.” The average match-making mamma who sells her daughter to the highest bidder would blush at the mere thought of making a cold-blooded bargain of such a kind, and certainly, if the letter is genuine, as there is every reason to suppose, we can no longer wonder at the vulgarity of young people, but rather that they are not worse than they are. It looks very like an anachronisln that in this nineteenth century we should hear of a Bill for the Regulation of Women’s dress, which has just been introduced before the State Assembly of Alabama. No such thing has been attempted in the legislation of Great Britain since the Scottish sumptuary laws were passed in 1621. These were aimed quite as much against costly cookery as against extravagant dress. Before that date similar laws had been passed at different periods, and the writers of the Middle Ages are full of allusions to the fantastic extravagancies of dress indulged iu during those days. Even among the ancient Greeks, the same spirit of lavish expenditure made Lycurgus forbid women to wear costly ornaments or dresses; while the Oppian law, passed 215 n.c., enacted that no woman should wear gold ornaments of more than half-an-ounce in weight, or permit her dress to show more than one colour in its material. To-day, the fashionable dame cannot wear too much gold or jewellery for good taste, and as for colour—she walks a veritable rainbow. The Alabama sumptuary laws, how-

over, do not attack such extravagancies as these, but, curiously enough, it is the plain and economical form of women’s garb that is to be quenched out of existence by tho American statesman. It is the “ bloomer ” or knickerboeker costume that meets with his disfavour, and tho provisions of this famous Act make it unlawful for women to wear “shirt fronts, tightfitting jerseys, bloomers, divided skirls, or stockings which visibly fasten above the knee ! ” What will rational dress advocates say to this f One of the most frequent objections i mu used to be made by the opposers of womanhood suffrage was tho fear that husband and wife would not always be able to agree on political matters, and thus dissension might be bred in the homo. Wo have proved since then that diversity oi opinion has left our homes quite as; peaceful as they were before we obtained tho franchise, but surprising as this may appear to some, the Americans have done better still, for a wife has actually contested a,;i election on perfectly amicable lenim against her own husband. This extraordinary woman is one of the four wives of a, loading older of tho Mormon Church in Utah. This lady, who maintains herself by practicing medicine, was elected a State Senator by a majority of 4000 votes over those polled I»y her husband! .Utah, it has lemaio suffrage, over (it) per cent of its voters being worn on. Mrs Cannon, who has long taken part in the politics of her State, held views diametrically opposed to those of her husband, and to her is attributed the snyitnr that “if a woman quarrels with her husband over politics, she would quarrel with him over the question whether he liked bread or biscuits, or any other subject that came handy.”