THE INGENUITY OF CUBAN WOMEN.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CIII, Issue 12159, 24 March 1900, Page 4

THE INGENUITY OF CUBAN WOMEN.

(Mioisci/’s Magazine.) The expedients of the women of Cuba are varied, and as curious as they are varied. In the woods, without training, without tools, with only the coarsest materials at hand, many of them have made their own shoes. Few families could be found in the interior of the island whose w_men had bought shoes for three years. They had made their own, and in many cases had also made them for their husbands, fathers, sons and sweethearts. When thread gave out they used the fibre of the “ mnjagua leaf instead, and when the shoe was finished they made strings out of the same ” majagna ” for lacing. They had no stockings, with the exception of the one white cotton pair the Cuban woman invariably has for State occasions, but they did not have to go barefoot. Woman's ingenuity had triumphed over the fortunes of war. With regard to their substitutes for hairpins one cannot say so much, altliongn it was not their fault 1 hat Nature failed to pv- - vide ua efficient substitute. With the inherent depravity of hairpins, the stock on hand so n failed, and early in the war the Cuban woman was reduced to letting her hair hang down her hack. Most of them have iU t peculiar beauty of the Latin races, a fine head of hair, and with their inborn love of the refinements of the toilet they cast about for means to avert this. A means was soon found. A barbed-wire fence has never no t.; the present time been suspected of being a friend to woman’s wardrobe, and even its most ardent advocates have not claimed that it was susceptible of adaptation to toilet purposes ; but war changes all conditions, and the barbed wire fence must go down in history as having divided its uses in Cuba between tire Spanish trochas and the natives’ dressing table. One day a ’woman cut off. a piece of wire a fence, made it the proper length, bent it, patiently ground 'the ends between tw> Aonee on the highway, and the hairpin of the Chilian revolution was accomplished. These hairpins arc used throughout the interior of Cuba, and there is not one using them but longs with all her soul for a box of American hairpins. The effect of those blunt, coarse wires on the hair can readily be imagined. They send little cold chills down the spine of one not accustomed to them, nor have the women themselves ever become used to them. They wear them simply because even a woman who is used to being hungry, who may have but cue dress to her name, and who would be barefoot if she did not make her own shoes, may have a lover, and when that lover comes a courting, ihe object of his attentions likes to have her dark tresses properly done up.' It may seem like a little thing, perhaps it may not seem apropos to mention it with such matters as starvation, nakedness, and death, yet the lack of these trifles—pins, hairuins, buttons, the thousand and cne things that any woman considers indispensable to her toliet —has added a real bitterness to the sufferings pf the women of Cuba. No amount of privation can rob the Cuban i woman of her desire for every adjunct that could possibly add to her attractiveness. She is more or less of a coquette by nature, and three years of war have not exterminated her feminine instincts. She is addicted to the powder box even moie tEan her AngloAmerican sister, and she does not .always exhibit as much artistic discretion in distributing the powder on her face as she should. ° It is but natural that in the course of the events of the past three years face I powder should disappear from the interior of the island. Now,-the Cuban woman may go hungry uncomplainingly, but to go with-out"-face powder was not to be thought of. Hence a substitute. This time the modest and unpretentious hen came nobly to the rescue. The Cuban woman took some egg- | shells, pounded them, aftw carefully tearing j out the inner lining of the shell, and laid j them out in the sun to dry. The next day j they were pounded again, ground up as fine j as possible between two stones, and once , more laid out in the sun. The third clay they were again carefully ground, this time with the addition of a little water, making it into a thin paste, as by this time the powder was quite fine. When this was once more dried in the sun it .was ready to use. ■ Thus surprising expedient was not an entire | failure. I can testify that in the absence I of the regulation Paris product powdered eggshells will produce certain results, albeit said results are better adapted for us'e i behind the footlights than in the broad day-