Gossip.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 998, 17 April 1891, Page 6

Gossip.

Celar is a very fashionable colour for both evening and day toilettes.

Kid gloves are more fashionable than auede tor evening wear. Indeed, suede gloves are now superseded by kid on all occasions.

The chiffon fans are novel, though costly and fragile. They can be made to match any evening gown, but in white they We very dainty.

Shirts are narrow and fiat, and as loDg as the long coat bodices are in vogue they will continue to he the same as they are, as they sit so much better.

Plain kid gloves are decorated by being cut in long holes at the elbows, and also ac the top, and then run ribbon through the holes as if they were an insertion.

Long jackets are more fashionable than popular ; still, many ladies, while protesting against them, adopt them for want of another style equally neiv and more becoming.

Wreaths of bright coloured leaves such as Virginia creeper, 4c., are a beautiful trimming for the bodices of elderly Indies’ dresses, similar leaves are, together with one or two large bright butterflies, arranged for the ooifiure.

Baby clothes in Paris every year grow more and more elaborate. A new fashion is to make the little shirts of the finest cambric, embroidered in colors, and bearing a text instead of the initial letter. i

White handkerchiefs round tha throat aud white gloves are well worn with dark blue or black coats and gowns. They are usually of knitted worsted, but some women who are fastidious wear white doeskin, with white worsted muffatees over them.

Silver kid shoes are considered to increase the size of the foot, and are., therefore, not in favour with coquettish ladies. In fast, the plainer the shoe is the smaller the foot always looks.

That most adventurous of lady travellers, who is known to the reading public as Miss Isabella Bird, aud to her friends as Mrs Bishop, has just returned to England after safely accomplishing a most difficult and dangerous journey, a record of which will shortly be published by Mr John Murray. The immediate object of the journey was to carry out a bequest of her late husband—an Edinburgh gentleman —who left funds for the establishment of a hospital in ono of the remote corners of the globe. The place was not specified, and Mr Bishop’a object was to secure the establishment of a hospital in one of the outlying parts of civilisation, where the need for such an institution would be most severely felt. Cashmere was the local* ity selected by his widow, and there Mrs Bishop has suoceded in carrying out her husband’s wishes.

A contributor to a ladies’ journal writes that American ladies have given up wearing any jewellery just now. But though they do not don their diamonds they lavish them upon the small articles with which a fashionable woman equips herself. The purse and card-case have a fly or flower in diamonds. The bracelet watch i 3 set in diamonds. The old fashioned knitted silk parses have diamond rings instead of the steel or gilt ones that used to be considered good enough. The pocket mirror is framed in gold and has a large diamond on its sliding cover. Gold walnut sheila are carried in the pocket, the contents being a tiny powder puff on one side with a rack for pins and small viniagrotte on the other. Rings are in great favour, though necklets and bracelets are in temporary eclipse. Turquoise is the favourite stone, but it must consort with diamonds.

« Presented to the Prince Imperial by the ladies ot Chislehurst, March 26th, 1874.’ This is the inscription on a large silver cup exposed for sale—as an unredeemed pledge, we suppose—in a Melbourne pawnbroker’s shop. On the date in question His Imperial Highness was just 20 years old— a dashing and gallant young fellow. Whether he ever showed tha cup to his mother, the ex-Empress Eugenie, is open to doubt; otherwise she might have asked the why and wherefore, and kept an eye upon it. In that case it would never have reached Australia. The Prince ultimately bestowed the cup upon a charming actress. She afterwards came to Melbourne, married and died. Later a sale of her effects was held, and amongst them the cup was disposed of. The purchaser must have fallen upon evil days, and sought the aid of bis ‘ uncle,’ otherwise at this moment it would not be onwiew.

« Can nothing be done,’ plaintively inquires Miranda, ‘to facilitate the afternoon call system? Alaß ! The question is one which has long vexed the soul of the weary caller, and and as yet no satisfactory solution has occurred to me, nor to anyone else that I am aware, of the social problem, how best to reconcile ‘days’ with distance. We need not to be told in the daily paper that dwellers in the same and contiguous neighbourhoods are driven to consort with each other simply because they find it impossible to raoe backwards and forwards to districts miles from their homes in order to pay calls. It has been suggested that each suburb or neighbourhood should have its day, Kenaingtonians being ot home on Mondays, Hampsteadians on Tuesday, and so on. The drawbacks to this arrangement are obviouß. Such a suggestion could never be put into practice, and so we remain as far as ever from any satisfactory answer to our appeal. 1 think, however, we might individually simplify the calling difficulty by arranging our own districts, and paying systematic calls. If we each drew up a little plan of our friends’ days and their districts we might surely manage our times and distances better than we do,’