LADIES' COLUMN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7567, 20 February 1886, Page 4 (Supplement)

LADIES' COLUMN.

f ; FASHION NOTES. • Maltese laoe is again in fashion, and the English Honiton is first in favour. ' Ruches are made of chenille and iriclesoent beads, and worn in vertical or horizontal bands. lts •'•" • • ! ; "" ' Fronts for gowns in out beads of many kinds, are made and sold with epaulettes of bead-work to correspond. * » ; Chenille fringe with satin drops from one to ten inches deep is a very fashionable trimming. r ?> V r Pearls and shaded chenilles are favourites for flowers and foliage to be embroidered on ball dresses.• Chinchilla fur is again used profusely as a garniture for children, young ladies, matrons, and grandmammas. ~ . , Glass and metal beads are blended in the fronts for dresses. One, embroidered in bronze shades, was worn over pink satin, with bronze velvet, for a dinner gown ; long, square trains. '*, For evening, gloves are worn long, coming up above the elbow, with the bracelets worn over them. White satin slippers are worn with coloured silk hose to match the dress or its trimmings. • Nearly all of the best dresses have from one to three rows of very narrow sideplaiting at the bottom of the skirt. No trimming is provided for the waist or sleeves in the most expensive goods. Jewelled or Rhine stone side combs and hairpins are stuck about capriciously in the coiffure, perhaps diagonally on the right of the front, in the middle of the hair turned up from the nape of the neck. Blaok silk hose and fine French kid black slippers, either beaded with black jets sewn on to the kid or line cut steel beads, are always in good taste for old, young, or uncertain aged ladies with a full-dress toilet. Scandinavian blue is of the tint of snow reflecting a full moon : this shade of colour is suitable only to ladies of the most pronounced type of blonde or brunette, and may be worn in combination with all goldenbronze tints. Waistcoats are being superseded by poltrinals, or breastplates; the poitrinal is embroidered on satic moire or velvet, with coloured beads in various designs, flowers, pheasants' feathers, and other bright effects are produced; it is bordered with rich gold braid. These are worn on high dresses, with collar and cuffs to match. For evening wear with low bodices, poitrinals are worn with ribbons to match, which are carried round the back. Black jet on black velvet has an elegant effect.

JAPANESE ETIQUETTE. The usual dinner hours (says the Cook) are four, six, and seven. As soon as the guests are seated on the mats, two and sometimes three, small, low lacquered tables, are brought to each. On that one immediatly in front of him the guest finds seven little covered bowls, with, next his left hand, rice; next bis right, fermented bean soup the others containing roast fish, roast fowl, boiled meat, raw fish in vinegar, and a stew of vegetables. On the second table will be five other bowls, consisting of two soups (one of carp), more raw fish, fowl, and kurage, a kind of jelly. The third, a very small table, should hold three bowls of baked shell fish, lobster, and fish soup. Except at great set feasts, a beginning is made with the rice ; and here the etiquette is very strict, and as complicated as the old forfeit game. 4 * Here's the health to Cardinal Puff." Take up the chopsticks with the right hand, remove the cover of the rice bowl with the same hand ; transfer it to the left, and place it to the left of the table. Then remove the cover of the bean soup, and place it on the rice-cover. Next take up the rice bowl with the right hand, pass it to the left, and eat two mouthfills with the chop-sticks, and then drink (the word drink must be used here) once from the soup bowl. And so on with the other dishes, never omitting to eat some rice between eaoh mouthful of meat, fish, vegetables, or soup. Rice wine goes round from the beginning of the meal. The" most trivial breaches of etiquette are unpardonable sins, and they are all gibbeted by certain names. One is drinking soup immediately on receiving a bowl of it without first depositing it on the table; another is hesitating whether to drink soup or eat something else; a third is, after eating of one dish, to begin on another without going back to the rice. For cakes the guests must be provided with pieces of paper ad noo. He should pick up a cake with the chop sticks, place it in a piece of paper, break it in two, and eat the right piece first. These minutiae are nothing to those of tea drinking, or cha no yu, which properly takes place at noon, and the ritual of which was fixed by a master of the art, who flourished in the middle of the fifteenth century. It is far too serious a matter for the tail of an article. Indeed, one sosho, or master in the polite arts, goes so far as to lay down, as the essential of a tea-party, purity, peace, reverence, and detachment from all earthly cares. "Without these," said this sage, " we can never hope to have a perfect teaparty."

CHIT-CHAT. The pay of ladies in waiting to the Queen iB £700 a year; that of lords is £1120. A Boston schoolma'am pasted paper over the mouth of a little girl who so far forgot the rules as to sing during school hours. Washington fashion allows ladies to use perfume about their persons concealed in sachets, etc., but forbids them to saturate their handkerchiefs with it. A London belle appeared in public recently with a muff made of a tiger's head, teeth and all, the same ornamented with olaws. This opens a vast field for fashion in the zoological line. Mary who " had a little lamb" in the immortal poem is still living in the person of Mrs. Mary Tyler, of Somerville, Mass. The whereabouts of the author, John Roulstone, are unknown. An Anti-Plumage League has been formed in London with the object of stopping the slaughter of birds for the adornment of hats and bonnets. This league is engaged in a good work, and it ought to succeed. This astute proverb comes from India :— "It must always be the women who are in the wrong, and not the men, because men have reserved to themselves the right to decide what is right and what wrong." A mantel clock with boldly-framed dial mounted on the face of a brass tower, narrowing as it ascends, is finished off at summit, has a revolving Tresdel lantern at top, the polished prisms of which reflects the light in broken hues. ■

Jam pots on the breakfast table are now roughly painted with the fruit of which the jam is composed. A cluster of cherries, a spray of raspberries, etc., are laid on with a few touches. The painting is in oils, afterward varnished. Novels effects can be produced in the use of flowers for adornment of rooms by simply soaking their stems in a weak dye solution, when their leaves will take the dye, and this without injuring their appearance or destroying the perfume. A Chicago clergyman said in a recent sermon, " It requires a lesss cientifio test to demonstrate the intimate relations between domestic extravagance and forgery, bad cooking and inebriety,, than between the electric currents and the circulation of the blood." " . The Queen did a kindly act the other day when, as she was driving through Windsor, she observed a cabhorne fall down. An outrider was sent to make inquiries, and, on learning the nature of the accident, Her Majesty caused an intimation to be conveyed to the lamenting owner that he should be presented with another horse from, the Royal stables. Two French women entered into a contest to determine whioh of them could talk fastest. A mutual friend was appointed umpire, and the sum of £40 was to go to the victor. For three hours they -read from Eugene Sue's feuilleton, and during th>\t time the viotor succeeded in pronouncing 296,311 words. Her adversary came in a bad second with 203,560 words. Men should remember that a woman cannot be always smiling who hat: to cook the dinner, answer the doorbell half a dozen times, and get rid of a neighbour who has dropped in, tend a sick baby, tie up the cut finger of a two-year-old child, tie up the head of a six-year-old on skates, and get an eight-year-old ready for school, to say nothing of sweeping, cleaning, dusting, etc. The foolish mother who beats the floor or wall against which her child has struck himself is giving him a practical lesson in revenge which she need not be surprised to be reaoting upon herself in time. A more sensible, by so much as it .was a prettier practice, was that of a baby who was taught to pat and kiss the. " poor" thing that had i brought him to grief.