ITEMS OF SOCIAL NEWS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 9452, 24 August 1889, Page 3 (Supplement)

ITEMS OF SOCIAL NEWS.

[from the society papers.]

A society story is just going the round of the papers. At the Court ball the Prince of Wales asked a girl to dance with him — a great honour, by the way, and one eagerly desired by most ladies. It was therefore matter for amazement when the lady declined on a plea of weariness. Tight shoes are said to have prompted the refusal; but the Prince's wish is really tantamount to a command, and Albert Edward Prince of Wales, though most kind-hearted, will will not tolerate breach of etiquette where himself is concerned, so he refused to notice the denial, and took summary possession of the unwilling girl. The Prince waltzed twice round the room with this distressed victim of fashion and her own folly.Adelaide Advertiser. Miss Violet Lane-Fox, one of the very handsomest of the many pretty girls now to be seen in society, has made a good match by her engagement with Lord Burghersh, eldest son of the Earl of Westmoreland. His lordship will no doubt effectually protect her from the fellow who, some little time ago, so pressed his unwelcome attentions upon her that she had to prosecute him in a police court. What are the best books for dinner reading? The question is suggested (remarks the Pall Mall Gazette) by the story of Lord Beaconsfield which Dr. Kidd tells |in the new number of the Nineteenth Century. Dr. Kidd was visiting his patient at Hughenden, when Lord Beaconsheld one evening tool: up a rare old copy of Virgil, and opened its treasures till I began to share his enthusiasm. "Dining here often alone," he said to me, "I have an understanding with my cook that there is to be 10 minutes' interval between one course and the next. That 10 minutes ] invariably devote to reading one of the great authors of antiquity ; and I can say that for many years I "have listened to many of the greatest wits and orators oJ the age, but I have derived more pleasure from Homer, Virgil, and Horace than from all the living celebrities I have met in my life." It would be interesting to knew how many other distinguished men follow Lord Beaconsfield's recipe, and what authors they thus invite to their dinner table. It is said, indeed, that reading at meals is a bad thing, as interfering with digestion. But is this really so? At any rate it prevents you bolting your food. Indeed, for all we know, it may have been the company of Homer, Virgil, and Dante that taught Mr. Gladstone his great secret of 36 (or was it 40 ?) bites as the sovereign rule of health ?

| What a brilliant scene it was that met I the Persian visitor's eye as he entered the ' gardens where the Prince and Princess of Wale« were receiving their guests 1 The lovely Princess stood near the entrance, dressed to perfection in a grey brocade, the bodice embroidered with silver, while a knowing little white lace bonnet set off the shape of her graceful head. Grouped round her, or scattered far and wide over the lawns and walks, were the literal crane dela creme of London society, all that is best born, cleverest, and most worth meeting in the aristocratic circles that gather round the Court. And what a medley it was! Archbishops Benson and Manning, each making himself agreeable to the Greek Archbishop of Cyprus, Lord and Lady Salisbury elbowing Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone in the throng, the Provost of Eton rubbing shoulders with Miss Rhoda Broughton and Mr. Toole, and the Dean of Windsor talking gaily to princesses, while the Rev. Arthur Robins picked up the crumbs of conversation hard by, and the Infanta Eulalia of Spain unbending from her stiff Spanish dignity to chat with the newlyaffianced Princess Louise of Wales.

The "literary fad" is spreading among society ladies. Lady Verney specialises on allotment';, Lady Catherine Milne Gaskell on model farming, Lady Pollock on the drama, while among those who now jostle with the common herd of journalists and magazine writers are the Countesses of Meath, Munster, Zetland, and Portsmouth, Lady Wentworth, and Lady Dorothy Neville.

The late Mr. Whyte Melville, the novelist's father, during the rinderpest year, had his patience sorely tried. The farmers took a notion that hounds carried infection, and that, therefore, the pack ought to be stopped for the season. Mr. Melville heard them out, and then said that if fox-hunting was to be put down for reasons so imaginary, he would leave the county and never enter it again. After that no more was heard of stopping fox-hunting in Fifeshire. Just as Dr. Chambers clung to the golf, so Mr. Whyte Melville held to his saddle to the last. " Tiresome " about either pursuit will not do.

_ Who would have thought that there's a time when dogs are cheap, and that they go up regularly like other securities, only with more certainty. They're cheap just now. The scare about rabies makes purchasers wary, and fox-terriers are a drug. They're cheap also in January. People have to the end of the month to take out their licenses, and so sellers, with whom a good home is not so much an object as a good price, have to take what they can get. January and June are the seasons' for buying. They rise in autumn for a singular reason. The American"! go home in the fall, and they like to take a dog with them.

Nothing has happened this year more re- ' markable than the curtailment of the Parliamentary reports in the daily papers. Half or three-quarters of a column is usually the utmost that is allowed to the poor snuffed out debaters in the House of Commons while the speeches of the hereditary legislators are squeezed up into half-a-dozen lines. Society and the London season nave he»d the field, and of course the doings of the Persian monarch are now the leading' topics of the hour. Indeed, it semms surprising that a certain morning paper has not established as a standing heading, " The Shah Day by Day."

Onion parties are, according to an American paper, fashionable in Nebraska. Six girls stand in a row, while one takes a bite out of an onion, and a young man pays ten cents for a guess as to which one it was. If he guesses right, lie gets permission to kiss the other five, bub if he doesn't, he is only allowed to kiss the oue that bit the onion. This amusement is highly popular with Nebraska youugfffUw.-