WOMEN’S TOPICS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1095, 24 February 1893, Page 14

WOMEN’S TOPICS.

For the last four or five weeks a short story has occupied the place of honour in the Ladies’ Pages. This week, as there are two complete stories in another part of the paper, we will, if you please, have a look through a few English and American magazines, and see what is doing in Woman’s World as recorded in periodical literature.

Many of my readers will remember Lady Meath, who not long ago visited the Colony. Both she and her husband are great on social reforms, and I am not surprised to find Lord Meath, in an article on ‘ Open Spaces ’ in The New Review, advocating CHILDREN’S PLAYGROUNDS.

‘ To my mind,’ he says, ‘ the ideal town should be possessed of children’s playgrounds, to which no boy should be admitted over ten or twelve years of age, and which should be placed under the charge of an able-bodied woman, and be situated within a quarter of a mile of every working man’s house. These playgrounds should be provided with shelter in case of rain, and with swings, see-saws, and games. It should be possible for every woman on fine days to bring her children with their mid-day meal to one of these grounds, and leave them there under the charge of the caretaker until she fetched them away in the evening. It would be an immense boon to many an over-worked mother to be able to bring her children for a certain number of hours in the day to a place where she would feel assured that they would be happy and cared for.’

OUIDA ON SOCIETY,

< Ouida,’ that very clever but very eccentric lady, has a very biting and bitter article on modern society in the Fortnightly Review. Here is what the author of ‘ Under Two Flags ’ has to say about modern funerals and weddings : —‘ Of all spectacles which society flocks to see, it may certainly be said that the funeral and the wedding are the most intolerably coarse and clumsy. There is, indeed, a curious and comical likeness between these two. The roughest and rudest marriage forms of savage nations are less offensive than those which are the received and admired custom of the civilised world. There cannot be a more Philistian jumble of greed, show, indecency, and extravagance than are compressed into the marriage festivities of the cities of Europe and America. In all the annals of the social

life of the world there has not been anything so atrocious in vulgarity as a fashionable wedding, whether viewed in its greedy pillaging of friends and acquaintances or in its theatrical pomp of costume, of procession, and of banquet. It is the very apogee of bad taste, incongruity, and indecency, from the coarse words of its rites to its sputtering champagne, its unvaried orations, and its idiotic expenditure.’ OUIDA ON MEN’S DRESS. ‘ Ouida ’ is also very severe on the ‘ sterner sex ’ and their costume. What will her gentlemen admirers say when they read this ‘ The attire of the men is the most frightful, grotesque, and disgraceful male costume which the world has ever seen. When the archaeologists of the future dig up one of our bronze statues in trousers, they will have no need to go further for evidence of the ineptitude and idiotcy of the age. A man who cannot clothe his own person reasonably is surely a man incapable of legislating for himself and for his kind. This rule, however, if acted, on, would disfranchise Europe and the United States.’ I should very much like to know what ‘ Ouida’s ’ ideal costume for the men would be like. THE LATE M. RENAN ON WOMEN. In the Review of the Churches the wellknown London clergyman, the Rev Mr Haweis, has an article on the late M. Renan, the great French philosopher. Quoting from Renan’s ‘ Memoirs,’ in which he says:—‘ I have loved four women tenderly—my mother, my. sister, my wife, and my daughter. I think the judgment at the great day for men will be none other than the women they have known, countersigned by God Almighty,’ Mr Haweis says:—‘l think these are very remarkable words. I think every man in this church would be better for laying them to heart. Renan does not say that he wishes to be judged by any one woman that he has loved. Some one woman might be blinded and partial. But he talks calmly at the close of his life, and in public, in that fierce light which beats about the intellectual throne of a great spirit: at the close of his life he takes this survey, and he says : I will be judged by my conversation and intercourse with the women who have known me best and whom I have loved. I think that is not an indulgent tribunal. I think that is about the most inexorably severe, but also the most inexorably just tribunal that a man can ever expect to stand before—- ‘ the judgment of the Avomen I have knoAvn and loved, countersigned by Almighty God.” ’ In the Sunday at Home for December there is a charming article called ‘ MAIDEN AUNTIES,’ in Avliich justice is done to old maids. The title comes from America, Avhere the old maids, if they are of an amiable, kind disposition, are called maiden aunties. I quote the following passage :—There are those Avho remain single because they are faithful to some memory. All honour to such. One of the most cheerful, unselfish, and Christian Avomen I ever kneAV, one Avho from her gentleness and beautiful expression had doubtless won many a heart, yet refused all comers. She said: ‘ I could not admit anyone to the place in my heart sacred to the memory of him I lost. A fell disease struck him down very suddenly, and I never forget him. lam waiting, for I shall see him again.’ She remained to be a great comfort to an aged parent, and felt that she fulfilled her mission in being a help to one whose infirmities only seemed to emphasise the claim of nature. What an amount of sorroAV patiently borne was carried in that one heart. Yet I have seen her the most active in any good Avork. She loved to be on the trot to benefit anyone having trouble. The Avorld owes much to the ‘unappropriated blessings.’ The Americans, Avith great tenderness, call them ‘ the aunties.’ They may have to keep a boarding-house, take in lodgers, try to get a living by painting pictures, decorating Christmas and Easter cards, by even going out as lady helps, mother helps, or even as domestic servants, but they will generally be found most unselfish and most successful in lifting burdens from other hearts. The Avorld would be less bright to many if the 1 aunties ’ Avero out of it. They are often as district visitors our ministers’ best helpers; they are the comforters in trouble, they are nurses in sickness and Avatchers by the dying.

A TOUCHING POEM. The Duchess of Sutherland in BlackAvood for December Avrites a brief poem, dedicated ‘ to those Avho mourn their dead in the Avreck of the Bokhara, Roumania, and Scotch Express.’ It begins ‘ Peace ! < Still thy sobbing.’ The conclusion is as folloAVS: — ]>ok up ! thy darlings live! for while they part With trembling hisses, c.inging heart to heart, Their piteous callsby storm and fire defied. Death's sable mantle, Pflin, hath fallen wide, And lo ! an angel stands with loveliest eyes, Turns night to glory, Earth to Paradise ! MISS ELLEN TERRY ON THE STAGE. The Strand Magazine contains an illustrated intervieAV Avith Miss Ellen Terry, Avith no feAver than twenty portraits of the popular actress in various characters. Speaking of the stage Miss Terry says ‘ I feel very strongly about girls going on to the stage. They talk so glibly about it —but they don’t understand it a bit.. I look upon going on the stage as a divine mission—a mission intended for the few and not the many. You can’t teach acting. It is the same as everything else —acting is a gift, a precious gift, which must be highly cultivated, and those Avho possess it can’t go and tie their talent up in a napkin and bury it in the ground. It must—it Avill come out. I examine lots of girls in elocution—how feAV of them possess the one thing needful 1’ POOR MRS LYNN LINTON! Sir Herbert MaxAvell in an article on Mrs Lynn Linton in Blackwood’s deals tenderly, as if he loved her, Avith her Avholesale denunciation of her sex. His reply to her libels is very quiet but very effective. He says that the lamenting Mrs Lynn Linton class made the same kind of complaints as to the degeneracy of the younger generation 100 years ago. He sets against Mrs Lynn Linton’s idyllic picture of the young ladies of the good old times, Avho, she says, never strayed beyond very close set limits —an incident in the life of one of throe daughters of a country squire, about the year of grace 1770. One of the most beautiful girls of that day, aftenvards Jane, Duchess of Gordon, undertook for a Avager to ride doAvn the High street of Edinburgh, in broad daylight, on the back of a pig, and Avon her bet! Methinks such a feat Avould create some stir in Piccadilly nowadays. Sir Herbert MaxAvell says : ‘ Mrs Linton’s paper has been read by thousands, who have risen from its perusal with the conviction that “ every pretty girl Avith decent clothes on her back is a microcosm of deadly sins and corrupt habits.’ Here, hoAvever (says a writer in the RevieAV of RevieAvs) Sir Herbert makes a mistake. No one rises from Mrs Lynn Linton’s papers Avitliout feeling that a somewhat soured and unpleasant-minded old lady has been making a literary guy of herself. A writer in the Daily Graphic s*ys : Unusually pretty and simple are tho pro sent styles of children’s frocks in vogue, and for very small children the new ‘ lace pinafore ’ garment is quite delightful. Over a foundation dress of surah, or any soft material in dainty colouring, is arranged from the yoke-piece a full covering of lace flouncing reaching nearly to the hem, while puffings of tho transparent fabric protect the sleeves a 3 far as the elbow. For older girl 3 tho same style is being adopted, and in rich brocade this has a charming old-world effect, though with any make this material would be far too heavy for childish wear. Less elaborate frocks are made of veile or light crepon, but the ‘ grown up ’ admiration which exists at the moment for silk or lace-frilled petticoats is extending downwards to these more juvenile wearers. The future abode of Prince George at St. James’s Palace, will (says the London correspondent of the Manchester Courier) have a distinctive title. When the Duke of Clarence was about to enter into the occupancy of the suite of apartments, the question arose as to whether it would not be possible to name tho apartments af'er the Prince, Clarence House. Tho Princess of Wales would certainly have desired that her son’s house should have had this title. However, this was impossible, for the title had already been appropriated for the residence of the Duke of Edinburgh. Fortunately no difficulty arises in the case of the Duke of York. We have had, of course, a York House, but it exists no longer ; and York House will thus be the designation given to the splendid home to which it is now no secret that the Prince will take his bride ere the year 1893 has run its course,