WOMAN'S WORLD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13435, 13 March 1907, Page 9

WOMAN'S WORLD.

A RUSSIAN BRIDAL. A Russian bride has not to submit to the trying ordeal for her beauty of appearing in white attire in the cold light of day. The wedding takes place by candle light in the drawingroom of the bride's mother. After the ceremony there is a banquet, followed by a ball, and after that there is a supper, after which a new satin slipper is filled with wine and passed round to the bridegroom's friends, who drink from it to the health of the bride. FASHION NOTES FOR LADIES. The magical effects upon the complexion of rain-water and dew are known to every woman who cares about her looks. To ail such Young Moore commends the new miikpail hat, which is made by knocking out the bottom of a small, low-sided, wooden milk pail, so that it can be pressed down closely over the hair and temples. The dew and rain-water which you will collect (without hindrance to your other pursuits) in this way will be so much cleaner and more lanciuble than the roof-stained liquor from the water-butt in the yard that you will not mind the envious jesters who will say that you are going about with water on the brain. Mr. A. Beakelcy Bvlle, lion, secretary of the Ostriches' Self-Protection and .Mutual Defence league, writes to Young Moore, from Higieatuer Farm, HaltloiHein, S.A., to point out that cheap and stylish hats can be trimmed from the bristles of old brooms and scrubbing brushes oeturu throwing them into the dustbin. A toque of these materials, livened up by a few splashes of Judson's dye, and fastened to the coiffure with a galvanised-wire meatskewer, will give pleasure to many a wayfarer upon whom your five-guinea Parts models are simply thrown away.—Young Moore's Almanack, 1907. HALF-LOVED: WIVES WHO SHOULD BE PITIED. There is a story about a girl who found out the day before her wedding that her sweetheart had jilted another girl for her, and so she invited the jilted girl to the wedding and made the bridegroom marry the girl he was trying to,forget instead of the one who had made him do the forgetting. Nice story, isn't it? Everyone seems to be feeling sorry for the girl who gave up her own marriage for the sake of the jilted rival. I don't (writes Winifred Black). I'm sorry for the girl the unwilling man married. When I hear of a man who marries a woman because he thinks he has to marry her, I don't waste a minute's time being sorry for him. I'm sorry for the woman who marries him. Wouldn't you love to marry a man who made you his wife because someone made him do it or because he thought you'd die if he didn't?

Wouldn't it be fun to go to the theatre with such a husband and see him grow reminiscent over the love scenes and restless during the " For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer" dialogue. Wouldn't it be comfortable to feel that everything you did and said or didn't do and didn't say were being compared to the sayings and doings or the unsayings and undoings of the girl who so generously gave you the man arid kept his heart? Of course, if you were clever enough and patient enough and determined' enough, you could plot and plan and scheme him into loving you—after a fashion. Oh, yes, I've seen it done.

The plainest woman in the world can make herself so useful, so indispensable, to her husband that he'll wonder how in the world he ever dreamed of getting along without her.

And at the end of a few years of absolute self-repression, absolute surrender of her brain and soul and heart and very life itself, he will give her, if he is even half a man, a kind of grudging gratitude which he may call love, but is it all worth while, I wonder?

Why, the woman who is married to a man who only half loves her is only half alive.

AMERICAN WOMEN DENOUNCED.

Few popular institutions in America have escaped violent attacks by muck-raking reformers, and now the American woman, after being accustomed for generations to extravagant adulation on the part of her countrymen, finds herself the object of fierce denunciation by scientists, philosophers, and divines. At a great congress of the leading Presbyterian ministers at Cincinnati she is being savagely criticised as lazy, luxurious, selfish, loud, assertive, and useless.

Professor Selby F. Vance, the occupant of the cnair of theology at the Lane Seminary, the oldest theological institution in the West, said: "The American woman of the present day is like those women of Bible times who crushed the life and soul of their men to get more jewels and raiment to decorate their persons and gratify expensive and worse than useless tastes."

Scientists bring even more injurious accusations against the sex. Speaking at a conference at the University of Chicago, Professor J. Laurence Laughlin, lecturer on political economy, accused the American woman of "wiggling." He said that the absence of the sense of form manifested itself in general " slouchiness,' not only in dress and manner, but in the study, the intellect, the language, and the thought of the nation at large. Particularly noticeable was the American woman's manner of walking. Her wiggling," swaying movements, said the lecturer, made her the laughing-stock of Europe. New York ladies indignantly deny the accusation that they are " wigglers,' but profess the utmost unconcern as to the opinions of tne political economist of Chicago. Leaders of society have been interviewed, and cite Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, who has recently returned from Europe, and who declares that American women have the best figures of any women in the world, and are, therefore, entitled to wear the best costumes. In respect both of style and fashion of dress, and the manner of wearing it. Mrs. _• ish says that her American countrywomen surpass all-other women in the world, including even the.Parisiennes. So economists and divines do not matter. MRS. LANGTRY'S SUCCESS ON THE TURF. The number of ladies who race their own horses now is- comparatively small. The most successful of all is Mrs. Langtrv, who still prefers to be designated on race cards as Mr. Jersey." Her pretty colours— and fawn hoops are* sported at nearly every flat race meeting throughout the season, and this year, at any rate, they have been seen in front with a frequency that must have been a source of delight to their owner, who, for season or two before the las#, was pursued by an irritating run of bad luck. Mrs. Langtry's greatest success this year was when her lightly-weighted filly Aurina won the valuable Prince Edward Handicap, at Manchester, beating Polymeltis, who soon after took the Duke of York Stakes and the .Cambridgeshire. The day Aurina Avon Mrs. Langtry had sailed for America, but she had made special arrangements to be informed by wireless telegraphy of the result of the rage which she had set her heart on winning. In the course of her career as an owner of racehorses many of the most valuable and coveted prizes of the turf have fallen to the Jersey Lily. Her greatest champion, Merman, which she imported specially from Australia, won for her the Cesarewitch, the greatest long-distance handicap of the year, and the following season took the Gold Cup at Ascot. Greater, success than this no owner could wish, for to win the Gold Cup on the most brilliant day of the Ascot meeting, with all the representatives of the fashion ami wealth of England looking oh. is accounted the climax of turf success.—From P.T.O.