Ladies' Column.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 245, 29 July 1876, Page 3

Ladies' Column.

The Sheffield School Board at a recent meeting decided upon an elaborate scheme for giving instruction in practical cookery in the schools, and have engaged a Sheffield lady to enter the National School of Cookery at South Kensington to qualify her for giving such instruction. Mr William L. Burt, late Postmaster of Boston, employed about thirty woman as postoffice clerks. He says of them : " The women have proved far superior to the men in looking up missent and misdirected letters, and in making returns to the Dead Letter Office. They have also proved entirely reliable. There has not been a single iastance in nine years where the accounts of any woman have shown a deficiency of one dollar in the Boston Postoffice. The season of dinner parties (says Eliane de Marsy in The Queen) is in full force in Paris, and many novel arrangements have been introduced into the mater of serving. Instead of the traditional basket of flowers in the centre, we have crystal troughs filled with flowers, which describe on the white damask cloth curves and twists similar to the ribbon beds of a garden. The menu cartes are very varied and elegant ; they are printed on Chinese paper or on Japanese silk, and encircled with mandarins. The vellum menus take all sorts of eccentric forms—some are in the shape of a horse-shoe, with a miniature shoe to contain the guest's name ; others take the form of a leaf, and others of a plate, a pansy, a fern, &c. ; and these are all mounted on silver stands of eccentric form. In some houses, where the dinners are exceptionally elegant, there are menus designed expressly for every guest, and there are special artists for this purpose. An admiral's menu will have maritime attributes ; a trophy of arms will surmount a general's carte ; laurel leaves are the decorations for the poet. Some young ladies have discovered a special aptitude for this style of drawing, and a few evenings ago I was present at a dinner where every carte had been fetched by one of the daughters of the house in an exceptionally spirited manner, and every guest carried the performance off with much triumph and pleasure. Parisian Fashions. —I hoped to be able (says the Paris correspondent of The Qtcee?i) to write in detail of the first grand ball that is to be given at the Elysee this season, but at this moment workmen are busy decorating salons with flowers, and hanging the two new rooms that have been constructed in the garden, one with cerise and the other with pale blue satin. Over these hangings there is to be a trelliswork of gold, studded with camellias. M. Worth has been very busy creating novelties for this ball. He has made several of the new "habit" dresses in the Louis XIII. style, which have but one defect they are extremely costly. Only rich, splendid materials can be used for the " habits," such as brocades, Genoa, (embossed) velvet, and the satin called " ecailles de poisson." Two of these dresses, made by Worth for the Elysee ball, merit description. The first was of blue faille—the peculiar shade called " Alpine glacier blue"— and the front of the skirt was bordered with

rare old lace, sewn on in godet plaits. The habit was of " ecailles de poisson" satin—pale blue and gold. It was low and square both in front and at the back, and had a very long Marion Delorme basque, round in front, and fastened on the hips with large buttons made of dead gold and turquoises. The habit forms a train, which in this case was pale blue, hemmed with cerise satin. It was slashed up at the sides, and fastened again with cerise bows.

Floral Decorations.—A recent work on this subject is thus noticed in The Queen : This will be found an extremely useful little volume to housewives with elegant tastes and artistic and refined ideas. From its clear and concise directions for making even the most elaborate table decorations, it is well calculated to serve as a guide to amateurs and novices in the fascinating task of arranging flowers and ferns. Miss Hassard evinces great taste in the choice of the coloring, and of the ornaments which she advocates for the embellishment of dinner and breakfast tables, and also of the houses we inhabit. Having been a successful competitor in many floral exhibitions, she speaks as one with authority upon the most effective modes of preparing flowers for decoration, of keeping them fresh and bright, and of disposing them to the best advantage. Minute directions are given for the construction and arrangement of floral arches and dainty hanging baskets filled with moag and pendent flowers, but perhaps the most interesting, and certainly the most original chapter of the book is devoted to the method of inserting, or rather raising, plants through the dinner table so as to produce a most artistic decoration, without detriment to the mahogany or the damask tablecloth. Our authoress throws out some valuable hints as to the grouping of plants, and the arrangement of flowers in vases ; and, in an endless variety of ways, encourages ladies to beautify and adorn their rooms, while even the ticklish operation of wiring and gumming flowers appears to be an easy process, as described in her simple, straightforward directions. Some of her devices are indeed beyond the range of numbers of housewives, especially of such as live in London and do not possess the luxurious appliances of conservatories or greenhouses ; but in the country, where flowers and ferns are not at such a premium, young ladies may find an unceasing and charming scope for the display of their ingenuity in following out and in supplementing the rules laid down in the work before us. We confess we have failed to discover the raison d'Stre of a chapter on button-hole bouquets in a book devoted to the decoration of the house, except perhaps on the theory that in a properly and harmoniously decorated house the due ornamentation of its male inmates should not be overlooked. We at once reject the suggestion that Miss Hassard has been spurred by ambition to fulfil the broken pledge of the author of " Tristram Shandy," and give to the world that " Chapter on Buttonholes" which, though promised, he did not live to complete. But this is a minor consideration, and does not m any way detract from the steiiing merits of the work. We will only add that the volume, on the contents of which we have but briefly touched, is prettily got up and plentifully interspei\sed with well-executed illustrations, and that it may be considered in all respects as well worthy the attention of the readers of The Queen. PJSCIPES. Puddings.—An excellent way of using stale biscuits or cakes is to pound them fine in a mortar, then mix with them two eggs with their weight in butter, beat all to a cream, pour into a mould, and steam. This is excellent cold with fruit, such as stewed prunes or damsons. " Abington."—Pour a pint of boiling milk, flavored with lemon juice, on four or five sponge cakes ; when cold, add three eggs well beaten, with a heaped tablespoonful of flour. Put it into a mould, boil half-an-hour. Serve hot with wine sauce, or cold with whipped cream and jam. Buns. —Take 1 oz. of German yeast and mix it with one pint of warm milk, and sufficient flour and a little salt to make a thick batter ; cover up the basin, and leave it to rise in a warm- place ; when it has risen, take another pound of flour, stir it into the sponge, and knead it well, add 3 ozs. of sifted sugar, lb. currants, some grated nutmeg and powdered cinnamon, 3 ozs. of fresh butter beaten to a cream, and two fresh eggs, also well beaten ; let it rise again, divide it into cakes, sprinkle the top with currants, glaze with a beaten egg, and bake quickly in the oven.

Puff Paste as Used by the Nuns.—Take li lb. of flour, reserve a small quantity wherewith to dredge the pastry, break into it the yolks of two eggs and one white, add half-a-glass of tepid water, and a spoonful of butter. Knead the paste well, and roll it lightly out several times. Divide it into two or three parts ; roll each piece out quite thin. Butter a tart mould, and put in the paste in layers, with butter between each layer. Cut off the edo-es all round the mould, and then with a sharp knife mark around the size of the cover you wish to take off, leaving the bottom intact. Bake, and then remove the cover. Pill the tart with whatever you like, put on the cover again, and serve hot or cold.

Orange Tartlets. Make a short paste with one white and three yolks of egg, an ounce of sugar, a little milk, an ounce of butter, a pinch of salt, and flour quantum suff. Work it lightly, roll it out to the thickness of a quarter of an inch, line some small pattypans with it, fill them with uncooked rice, to keep their shape, and bake them in a moderate oven till done. Peel off the thin rind from a number of oranges, make a thick syrup, boiling some loaf sugar in a little water ; let the orange rind infuse in this for a little time, but not boil in it. With a sharp knife remove from the oranges every vestige of any kind of rind, core them as you would apples so as to get rid of the pips, cut them in half lengthwise, lay them in a tin, pour the syrup over them, and

put them in the oven to get quite warm. Empty the tartlets Of the rice, put a half orange into each, pour a little of the syrup over, and put them again into the oven to keep hot till the time of serving. Swiss Poll.—Take the weight of three or four eggs, in their shells, of finely powdered sugar, and the same weight of butter and flour. Melt the butter, add the sugar and the yolks of the eggs (freed from the specks) ; beat the mixture well, add the beaten-up whites of half the eggs, then half the flour, the rest of the whites (also beaten up), and the flour. When quite smooth spread it out, about half-an-inch thick, over a well-buttered tin, and bake it for fifteen or twenty minutes in a moderate oven, spread it all over equally with jam, roll it up, and put it into the oven again for a short time, sprinkle with powdered sugar, and serve cold ; if liked, with a custard round it. THE MODERN HUSBAND. A CHARITABLE VIEW FOR DISSATISFIED WIVES. He is not unsympathetic and hard. His business tends to make him somewhat harsh and rough. Contact with the world rubs the poetic bloom from his mind, and dries his sentiments, and unfits his tongue for the utterance of the sweet and dainty nothings which occupy so large a place in the vocabulary of woman's expectations. He is decidedly matter-of-fact. He takes a great deal for granted, and wants his wife to assume something, and not look for vain repetitions when words are worth so much. The wear and tear of life tell on his nerves and sensibilities, and take the sentiment, the poetry, the gallantry, out of him, insensibly but effectually, and he appears indifferent without knowing it. He is absorbed in his business plans and ambitious, and cannot pretend to the least enthusiasm in his wife's ruffles and laces and lawns, and his enjoyment of her new set of jewels is materially abated by the prospective raid upon his bank accotmt. In modern life the differentiations are vastly greater than in the older days, when husband and wife worked together behind the counter and on the farm, each understanding the labor of the other, and joining as a true yoke fellow in drawing the mutual load. The modern husband earns for his wife to spend ; and he earns in methods and under conditions she does not understand, so that her advice is worthless, and even her sympathy exhales of ten times without his notice. The new conditions under which we live and labor affect domestic habits, and insensibly, reaction, disposition, and character. Once husband and wife spent most of their time together ; now they spend most of it apart, and cannot follow each other through the transactions of the day even in imagination ; they are less mutually dependent than when each was all the world to the other, and their lives were one.

The modern husband is not so lovable nor attractive in some respects as he might be, and as his wife would like to have him. He has not kept his first estate. He is a harder, drier, more wordly creature than she took him to be. He thinks more of soup than of sentiment, and digestion occupies a larger place than music or society in the economy of his life. But, in spite of all abatements, he is essentially true and prevailingly kind. He thinks more than he says, and feels deeply oftentimes when he says nothing. He puts his love into labor, and expresses his confidence and tenderness in wise provisions and unsentimental bank notes. He prays less than his grandfather, but he pays better and is less of a tyrant. The word " obey " has dropped out of his spoken dialect. If he gives less attention, he exacts less service in return. The wife in the old days had a hard lot. She was the silent member of the matrimonial firm. Most of her nature was suppressed. She was under bonds. Her lord commanded, and she obeyed, in fear and trembling oftentimes. In most cases she wrought more like a slave than a wife, and as no slave would. In a cemetery not a thousand miles from here stand six black stones in a row, marking the grave of a husband and his five wives. " Yes," said our guide, "Dea Smith had five wives, 250 acres, twentyeight children, the forehandest man in town, and had a famous funeral." An intelligent coroner's jury might discover a visible connection between the aches of the women and the acres of the farm, and attribute their mortality to something other than the mysterious dispensation of Providence. The modern husband does not wear his wife out in buttermaking and child-bearing. She never weaves nor spins, and the tailor makes his coat if he does not sew on his shirt buttons. He treats his wife more as a companion than a drudge. He takes pride in her wit, enjoys her singing, admires her taste, and is pleased with the society she draws around their fireside. The old ardor is not utterly gone, though it no longer flashes into exclamations of endearment ; and it only needs the breath of a real occasion to blow what seemed the dead embers of affection into a brilliant flame. Scarcely a day passes that we do not hear of some beautiful instances of devotion and self-sacrifice on the part of those whom it is too much the fashion to ridicule for selfishness, and accuse of infidelity. The steady toil and devotion of a life time are a thousand times more precious than gallant protestations, and the husbands who stood with folded arms on the deck of the sinking steamship, choosing to go down in death with their wives rather than escape and leave them to their fate, illustrate in a picturesque and thrilling way what thousands of modern husbands are doing every day.