Ladies' Column.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 241, 1 July 1876, Page 3

Ladies' Column.

PARIS FASHIONS.

A variety of charming fabrics have appeared —different sorts of soft Oriental silks, gauzes, and mixed fancy materials. The stripe being the most favored design, and particularly that combination of narrow stripes varying in width, called rayures roseau. All these striped tissues, as well as the light summer damasks, and the gauzes of all sorts, must be mixed with silk. Even the cambric dresses are combined with faille and foulard, and the white muslin polonaises, plentifully ornamented with lace, are made with block pieces or waistcoats of silk. The rayures roseau contain many tints, but the effect is by no means brilliant, and when applied to ribbons scarcely enough so, unless it is enlivened by some three lines of cardinal or strawberry. Though very new, and therefore to a certain extent admired, these ribbons are really not very pretty ; the wider stripes are preferable, positive colors alternating with white or cream-color. Thick ribbed faille is still a good deal used, and it is supplied in every shade to suit all the spring costumes. There is also a wonderful assortment of fancy ribbons, which are used for the trimming of dresses, for chapeaux, and neckties; ribbon neckties being preferred to others. All these are soft and pliable, though many are almost as thick as braids. The granite ribbon is very pretty with its speckled grain—grey, buff, and drab. Ribbons made of silk erdpon are very elegant ; these are sometimes plain and sometimes have wide shaded stripes upon them, the ground being merely tinted and the stripes either of a deeper shade or quite another color. This crepon is also interwoven with silver and gold threads ; natte ribbons of all sorts, and especially an unpretending sheperd’s plaid, rather ugly than otherwise, is quite the vogue. Gauze ribbons will be very much worn for summer in all sorts of patterns woven in the material. Four inches is the width most commonly worn for dresses, but half that width is also used, the new ribbons being generally only made in these two breadths, and much wider for sashes. Some of the new sash ribbons are very beautiful : one design particularly I noted ; the ground was either white or maize, brocaded with large arabesques looking like Persian writing, a portion being of the same tint as the ground, and the rest cardinal red, bright blue, or black. Silk gauze is largely used in the composition of spring dinner dresses and evening toilettes. Later on it will be the elegant material for the casino ; in the meanwhile let us hope there will be plenty of opportunities for it to be worn in town. Black gauze with fine lines or stripes of color and woven with silver and gold thread is now considered applicable for out-of-doors. Metal is no longer banished from the sun’s rays, as it used to be. Colored gauzes are very convenient to give a combination of textures as well as tints. Pale-tinted gauze may be mixed with silk to match it in shade, and with another and a darker color. For instance ; A toilette composed of spring green faille, cream-colored natte gauze, and silk to match. The skirt is of green faille, and has a wide flounce of the same at the bottom, plaited in small triple box-plaits, fastened down at intervals. The train, which is formed of two breadths of the same silk, forming a Bulgare plait, is plain. Over the front is a long tunic of cream-colored gauze, which is sewn beneath the Bulgare plait of the train. This tunic is plaited, in horizontal plaits on the left side and plain on the right, a coquille of cream-colored lace intermixed with bows running down the centre of the front where the tunic is joined. The plaits on the left side of the tunic, of which there are nine, are ornamented with

three bands of beautiful embroidery, put on every third plait. This work is done on gauze, with green, white, aud yellow floss silk, and represents a garland of large white daisies with leaves. The bodice is a plain cuirass of green silk ; the two back centre pieces are in one with a long cross-cut frill which is gathered pretty freely, and runs down each side of the plaited train, which it half conceals. This frill, narrow at the top and about eight inches broad at the bottom, is lined with creamcolored faille. The sleeves are plain at the top, with a draped cuff of gauze secured by a band of embroidery. Damask is not to be put aside for early summer, the new brocades being purposely thin and light. For rich toilettes no material has such an effect, and in reality, with the narrow skirt now worn, but a small quantity is wanted, by far the larger portion being furnished by the plain silk ; in fact, there is some skill wanted in not putting too much, for heaviness must be particularly avoided.—Paris correspondent of the Warehousemen and Drapers' Journal. MILLINERY AND DRESSMAKING. The benefit of inspection has been the cause of untold improvements in this branch of employment throughout London and the provinces, by means of the Workshops Act, or rather, I should say, by the better cai'rying out of this Act. The first law for the regulation of workshops, as differing from factories, was passed in 1867, though it was not till 1871 that any real good was done, the inspection previous to that year having been placed in the hands of the' local authorities, and after that date transferred to the Factory Inspectors, by whom, as may easily be imagined, the supervision was carried on much more systematically and thoroughly. By this Act all establishments not employing fifty hands in any handici’aft (which did not come under the old Factory Acts) were jdaced under inspection, and certain rules came into force, limiting the time of labor to six and a half per day for children, and twelve for young persons and women, with intervals for meals and rest, which really reduced the working hours to ten and a half. Saturday was a half holiday, though workshops employing five hands and under were exempted from this clause. If, however, the time of employment required to be extended or altered to suit particular circumstances, this might be done by making a special application and gaining jiermission. This then is the gist of the present legislation, which applies to such establishments as millinery and dressmaking rooms, though it must be mentioned that, according to the report of the Factory Commissioners of 1875 there seems to be a strong probability that the Workshop and Factory Acts will be amalgamated, and that the differences between the two will cease. During the investigations which preceded all these legislative Acts many incidents came to light showing an amount of callousness and disregard to all feelings of humanity on the part of customers which was almost incredible ; but there is now, happily, an evident improvement in the fashionable world in this respect, added to which the workers are also tolerably well protected by the law from the whims and fancies of the selfish portion of society. While on this part of my subject, it will not be out of place to call attention to a notorious difficulty that besets the employers of labor, and which, to a certain extent, must also affect the employed. It is the irregularity with which some people habitually pay their milliners’ bills. This is the bete noir of all large dressmakers’ establishments, and is in a great measure the secret of the high prices charged for dress. The evidence given at the time of the Children’s Employment Commission, although now a few years old, is, I suspect, just as applicable at the present time as then, and will certainly bear repeating. “I know,” says a large employer of London labor, “ that one lady of title has owed her general dressmaker—not her Court or fashionable dressmaker £7 O for three years, and has not given her a single order for the whole of last year. POOR WOMEN AGAIN. By a Woman. “ ’Tis true that men have many faults ; Poor women have but two : Nothing that they say is right, And nothing that they do." Upon my word this would seem to be the case. For some years past women have been making an ado about their rights, and taking upon themselves to have opinions of their own. This has not been by any means approved of by their lords and masters, who have shown their disapproval either by satire and ridicule in the Saturday Review style, or by seriously remonstrating, pointing out that women are the weaker vessels, and by nature intended to sit at the feet of men. Now, I have no complaint to make against these remonstrances, feeling, as I do, their justice ; but when, on the other hand, a man writes an essay entitled “ The Great Drawback to Our Civilisation,” and explains that this is women, I feel that it is time to take up my pen. Although this essay was published some time ago, I chanced to overlook it, and only read it the other day in an old number (February 5) of the Australasian. Notwithstanding that it is rather late in the day, I can no longer permit the remarks of an “ Ungallant Man” to remain unchallenged, and allow that superior gentleman without any protest to hug himself in the belief that, but for what he pleases to term that arch-enemy of progress, womankind, he and his fellow-men would be sitting on the heights of civilisation as very gods. Though regretting that no “ intellectual giant” has thought it worth his while to contradict the gross misstatements of this misogynist” it is some consolation to feel that this is owing, at any rate in part, to their palpable absurdity. Perhaps, too, there lurks in the breasts of these aforesaid “ giants of intellect,” a secret satisfaction in the broadly implied flattery to themselves, which they hardly feel called upon to relinquish. But I am a woman, and though burning with indignation at the insults heaped

upon our sex, I wish calmly, and as logically as a woman can, to expose the undoubted onesideness of his remarks. Furthermore, I believe myself to be a creature such as he has never met, and such as even his vivid imagination has failed to picture—a woman “ with a sense of the all-importance of truth ; ” and; therefore it is that I feel called upon to do so. Although the “ Ungallant Man” knows as a fact that women “ contribute nothing to the work of human progress in art, science, invention, or in any of the forms of civilisation,” he makes very light of this, and frankly takes all the work of the world on his own shoulders. With a kindred frankness, I hasten to assure him that I believe, him tobe, at any fate; partially cdrrect in this statement—that is to say, with regard to science and invention ; though, to adopt his own style of argument, it must be apparent to every ohe, on the siightconsideration, that women do contribute something to art, and some other forms of Civilisation!

After thus calmly condemning worrien as utterly useless, our traducer goes on to inquire in what way the mental life of a woman is influenced by any great discovery in science, oV by any great revolution of intellectual thought? The answer is, “ that anything of the kind does not influence the mind of women one iota, that for them it has no existence.” I suppose as I cannot understand anything about it, and do not even know what I miss by my ignorance, that it would be simple impertinence for me to put the same question with regard to the mental life of an average man just picked promiscuous-like, let us say from Collins-street. But I must own to the belief that it is an entirely unfounded supposition of the “ Ungallant Man” to imagine that in the mental life of a large proportion of even this noble sex, a discovery in the intellectual world is any very remarkable era ; though, true it is, as he goes on to say, that these results of the work of master minds “ are ever transforming our intellectual life, which is influenced by the thoughts of ever thinker that ever lived.” I wish it to be understood, however, that I am far from claiming for women an intellectual equality with the lords of creation. I humbly and gladly confess these to be the head, as every true woman must, and sure I am that such never feels the slightest sense of satisfaction in any mental superiority to her husband. Still, I think a professed “lover of truth,” as is the “ Ungallant Man,” might have shown a little more justice than in pitting a most commonplace sample of womanhood against one of his “giants of intellect,” who are not by by any means common ; or, if he has done it unwittingly, I pity the poor man whose intimate acquaintance with womenkind seems to be limited to such. Has he known nothing of a mother’s noble ambition for her boy ? of a sister’s glory and pride in a brother’s intellectual attainments ? or a wife’s loving sympathy and encouragement in her husband’s upward progress ? Alas ! for the unfortunate creature whose only female associates have been women in whom “ the barbarian love of finery is the ruling, all-absorbing passion.” Our misogynist makes a great deal out of ear-rings. “ They are,” he tells us, “an outward and visible sign of the incurable, unimprovable condition of womankind.” (Shall I be at once stamped as beneath the notice of intellectual beings, if I confess to following the degrading custom of wearing them ?) For my part, I consider them as an outward and visible sign of women’s wish to please and gratify the taste of men, who, notwithstanding their “ spiritual heavings and stirrings,” continue to have a very sensual appreciation of women’s outward adornment ; and, as advancing civilisation has not succeeded in eradicating from man this primary cause of ear-rings, it is hardly fair to take exception at the effect being still apparent in woman.

• But now we come to the most serious charge against us. It is, that while men are sifting the grounds of their beliefs and testing them by reason, we care not whether ours be true or untrue. This slur, I take it, is intended to be cast on our religious faith. Being only a woman, in all simplicity I say it, I am totally unfit to cope with men in argument respecting Reason and Revelation (though, thank God, there are men who use their intellect to His glory). But surrounded as we are by mystery upon mystery, it is necessary to believe some things which our finite minds cannot fathom, and is it not more worthy an intellectual being to believe in a God and Creator infinitely superior to. himself, than to make a god of his own reasoning powers ? To accept the Bible as God’s inspired Word must have been in gone-by ages an act of faith, but in these latter days, we, who are witnesses of its triumphs and achievements in the past history of the world, can surely “ give a reason for the faith that is in us.” THE HOUSEHOLD. Orange Liqueur. —Take 1 doz. Seville oranges, wipe them quite clean and see that they are not bruised; place them whole in a stone jar (be careful not to squeeze them) ■with lib. of sugar candy; pour over them 1 gallon of pale French brandy, cover the jar with a bladder, shake it well once a week for two months. Then strain the brandy off and bottle it. Celery Puree. —Boil two heads of celery in salted water, with an onion, a blade of mace some whole pepper, and salt to taste. When done strain off the water and pass the celery through a hair sieve. Moisten the pulp with a little white stock free from fat. Put a piece of butter in a saucepan, mix a little flour, then the celery pulp ; stir on the fire till quite hot, then stir in, off the fire, a small quantity of cream or milk, beaten up with the yolk of an egg. Welsh Rarebit. —Make some slices of toast about a quarter of an inch thick, trim off the crusts, and spread them with butter. Slice very thinly some rich cheese (about into a stewpan, add a small teaspoonful of flour of mustard, a little salt and cayenne, §oz. of butter, and pour over it a little ale and porter, let it simmer until quite hot, pour it on toast, and serve immediately. A.