WOMAN'S WORLD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15613, 20 May 1914, Page 12

WOMAN'S WORLD.

THOSE LHTLE THOBHS.

THINGS THAT MADDEN.

It is quite absurd, isn't it, to think how little things can ruffle our tempers and upset m more than a re*s calamity will? We aw often told", .that the way we meet trifles is the test of character and that we should cultivate a serenity of spirit that cannot be overthrown, by mere outside disturbances. Let anyone who believes this try and accomplish some exacting mental task in any office facing Queen Street, whilo a tin whistle, or barrel-organ, or phonograph artist performs beneath the window. ...■•.. Only those who endure this test of character day after day, month after month, know precisely the effect it actually has on one's serenity of spirit, how the tin whistle victim will raise his head and wait, every nerve aquiver, for the high note in "The Minstrel Boy." Will the whistler reach it or will he net? He

reaches it. perhaps cracks, and flies off at a tangent, and a cold shudder runs down the listener's spine. Then there- is the dreary monotony of ."Killaxney" on a decrepit barrel-organ. Theoretically, these distressing noises should rouse all our humanitarian instincts. The instincts they

actually 60 rouse, however, are not the kind that result in any special sympathy for suffering humanity—except as represented by ourselves. Women's Worries:

There are few things more maddening to a woman, than the discovery that she has left home without her handkerchief! Tho moment its loss is detected she is taken with a violent attack of sneezing, usually in church or in the middle of Queen Street. A little later on she spills tea down the front of her best skirt, and almost inevitably gets a smut on her nose or a cinder in her eye before she reaches home. There is a small, malignant Fate that attends very capably to matters of this kind!

The Straight-eyed Fiend. To some people, the sight of anything hun* crooked on a wall is almost torture. In one's own home this particular thorn can be easily eliminated, but it is in other folk's homes that the ordeal is most trying. 'A woman, writing of character\building trifles, confesses to a very embarrassing experience during a call on a new friend. " I had to wait in the drawing-room quite a lon* time," she says, "and there was one picture that almost drove mo mad, it was hung so crooked. At last I could stand it no longer, and got on a chair to set it straight. And at that very moment my hostess came into the room. Her face was a study I shall never forget. I tried to explain as well as I could, but she never returned my call! Human Thorns.

Among the human thorns that are an irritation' to the flesh are those absentminded people who ask the same question over and over again in conversation, and those who perpetually hum fragments of song under their breath. " I remember," writes a sufferer, "some years ago sharing a room with a girl who used to hum 'The Rosary.' It is a very pretty song, but after you've had about a month, day by day, of 'memories that bless and burn,' in a monotonous undertone, you begin to think unprintable things about that song! I spoke to her about it, at last. She was very apologetic, but said 6he couldn't help it, as she didn't even know she was doing it! I really wonder now," ends this sorely-tried sod, "that I didn't hurl a book at her head, or smother her with.a i duster!"

These are but a few of the many little testa of character that come to cheer us on our way. Your own experience will doubtless suggest • many other little helps to serenity of mind. "It isn't trifles, but tho way we meet them that counts," once said some philosopher. How do you meet yours!

EVERY CURL A WORKER.

DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH.

As in all democratic countries, the New Zealand girl is essentially a working girl. She doesn't work because her parents cannot afford to keep her ; but because she likes the idea of financial independence. Such girls, of course, form a class apart from these to whom work is a grim necessity, who work to eat, whose ability to toil alone stands between them and perils of which the home-protected girl knows nothing. Work is good for every human being, and tho daughter of rich parents who has nothing moro to occupy her mind than tho inevitable round of social trivialities often longs to escape, the boredom of it all. and stand on her own two feet in the world of workers, . ! . ' A rather unusual bit of advice is given b'- a well-known writer, to girls of well-to-do families. It is unusual because where young women are not advised to enter some profession to make it a definite career, they are usually advised to take up'some of the unpaid work open to women of leisure and "which really forwards tho welfare of humanity quite as definitely as professional or paid work docs. This writer seems to think that for the sake of her own training a girl should, on leaving school, choose some definite kind of paid employment and submit herself to the routine and rules that govern labour. She is not to dabble in anything as an amateur, nor be merely a delightful social butterfly, nor evon a Lady Bountiful. She is to. choose for her own sake the daily drill of office Qr other industry where she will have to stand or fall by her actual usefulness. This test of her capacity is seen to be as useful to. the woman who hopes eventually to be at the head of a home as it is held to be for boys. It is a wellknown piece of parental tactics to send even sons of rich men to the very foot of the ladder, whence they are expected to climb by hard work. It is rather a new idea to set girls on the same path of industrial training for its own sake. At the same time, it is one that cannot but bo an influence for good in the widening of the girl's outside interests, and in opportunity for development of character that the daughters of the rich are usually denied.

BOOKS FOR GIRLS.

CHOICE OF READING MATTER,

Tho question of the most jiutablp_ literature for young people is one that is constantlv cropping up, and one th.vi forms the basis of an interesting article in a recent copy of Everylady's Journal. The writer points out that Australasians, after Americans, consume a greater quantity of reading matter per year than any other people under the sun. "But while this may a manv respects be regarded as a most excellent trait," tho writer continues, "there is an underlying danger. The immature mind is not prepared to receive and assimilate the .advanced products of the modern literary world, to plunge an undeveloped mind" headlong into the abysmal depths of Guy do Maupassant-perhaps the 3 'wonderful short-story, writer the 3 has ever produced-might have the most dire results, for, with a mind untrained, tho literary and artistic men might be passed by unheeded, and the Sal sublet seized upon with avidity.

' Disturbing influences, let loose upon tho unformed mind, might, and often do/ lead to. unfortunate consequences, and it U therefore a question well worthy of consideration whether the disturbing influences of the kind which have their origin in books, should not be zealously regulated as far as the reading of young girls is concerned. Strict ecusorship is frequently suggested as the onlv; remedy for this, but to censor the rc\ia ing of any individual, however young, is a difficult' and delicate matter. Kes'd lor Censorship. This question of censorship, for son) 9 reason, always arises in connection _ with girls' reading matter. _ Possibly this is because the average girls' book is such a, tedious, sickly product that she reads very little 01 it and turns to other sources. There are, of course, shining exceptions— where is the girl who does not treasure " Little Women " and the story of "The Seven Little Australians?" But as a General thing, the girl will turn rc.dily to her brother's bookenso in preference to her own, the healthy mind receiving mora stimulus from the spice of adventure than from the trashy sentimentality oi so-called "girls"- books. When there aire so many delightful and wholesome books, that girls might read, it is deplorable tha.t so many of then waste time and eve-sight on reading the books they do. Take the " modern " novel, for example, with its suggestion of loosening the bonds of convention, every woman free to lead her own life in her own way, and the continual harping- on thy irksome drag of the marriage tie. How can such books possibly elevate the mind of the reader, who is yet too young to be ab!o to reach any logical conclusion for herself?

A Plea for "Happy Endings." A well-known author, a man of exceptional breadth of intellect, has expressed the following views in regard to tho choice of girl'.', reading. " 1 think the evil that undesirable books may cause is difficult to eradicate, especially from tho mind of a young girl, which lacks the control of maturity: A girl's mmd should be fed with, first, fairy stones such £.8 those of Hans.Anderson, Grimm. E.Nesbitt, and the* gradually supplied with romance with "happy endings." There is quite enough misery to be encountered later on in real life. I think cleanliness of outlook and purity of mind are the greatest assets a young girl can jossess.