NEWS AND VIEWS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1204, 29 March 1895, Page 11

NEWS AND VIEWS.

•;' ; • By " Aunt Ellen." CONCERNING SHOPPING. Whatever new pastimes may come temporarily into favour with the vast majority of women, I venture to say that shopping holds first place in our affections. Even if one's purse is light and ones . real ■ requirements very limited, a walk round the shops is generally attractive, although it may lead to those dreadful ■vices covetousness and envy. Lady Jeune, who last year was writing so pleasantly in the English magazines on society questions, has now, I notice, been discussing what might be called the ethics of shopping. She says that the English women spend more in the shops than they Used to doV (I'm afraid we don't in New Zealand in these hard times), and one reason is, she thinks, because salesmen ■ have been largely superseded by sales- ' wßnien. Lady Jeune evidently prefers to see her sex behind a draper's counter. She says:—Women are much quicker I than men, and they understand so much more readily what other women want; they can enter into the little troubles of their customers; they can fathom the agony of despair as to the arrangement of colours, the alternative trimmings, tbe , duration of a fashion, the depths of a woman's purse, and, more important than all, the question as to the becomingness of a dress, or the combination of material to the would-be wearer. No man .can understand all these little refinements; his is too gross, too material." But if women are taking the places of the men in : the London shops they, the women, have to work terribly long hours—Bl -J hburs a wsek in sonie cases—so Lady : /\ Jeune says, and she very properly calls for reform.

• r V A MARRIAGE DOWRY ';•;,; ;/. \- insurance. • There are so many new papers/ and • magazines nowadays that competition forces their conductors to be ever on the -look-out for some distinctly novel and attractive, feature by which their venture 'shall jump into popularity. The latest new: /comer, the Windsor Magazine, which is mainly oh the lines of the Strand and is ; really a wonderful " sixpennorth," con- ,; tains a'decidedly original feature—it • provides, or promises to provide —dowries forTlhmarried women. This is what the editor has to say in his preliminary remarks upon the subject:—" We propose, in /conjunction with the Norwich Union ■ Life Insurance Company, one of the oldest ani'most soundly established life offices in the world, to start a grand marriage insurance scheme, whereby parents will be enabled by easy payments to secure for their girls a portion on marriage, or, if „ihey do not marry, with an annuity beginning, as may be arranged, at the age the entire sum to be returnable in case of death before marriage or the age selected. We propose that this may be absolutely secured to the daughter in question, so that it may be ; for "her/sole use and benefit, and cannot 'possibly be mortgaged nor otherwise alienated. If a girl does not touch her marriage, but prefers to let it . remain out at interest without further payments until she is fifty,, she may then be in such circumstances that the pound, / two pounds, three pounds, or more a Week, absolutely secured to her like a Government pension, an annuity over which a drunken, gambling, or spendthrift husband has no control, may be the salvation ,of herself and her children. The development of this scheme will be watched with much interest and curiosity.

WOMEN'S RIGHTS.

The following paragraph which appears Benfeathappears in the English magazine All the Year Bound. I don't agree with the contentions of the writer, but the article expresses so well the prejudices arid ignorance with which some people regard the question of women's right that I print it here as a sort of "awful example "*•— . When a woman is happy with the man she loves she cares nothing about " women's rights." It is when a . woman is without her man, or if not happy with the man she has, that the trouble begins. Happy wives and mothers know—with sure and certain reasons for their knowledge—that men are the best and truest friends women can have. It is women who, for any cause whatever, are without men who are against men, and those women onlv. Whenever I read one of the novels of a certain sort, written by married women, which just now are in " demand at all the libraries," I ask myself what the trouble has been with the woman who wrote it. There has been trouble you may be sure, matrimonial trouble in which, there have been faults on both sides. These women

are not the martyred paragons, of sound mind and sound body, which they would have us suppose. It must be remembered that there can scarcely be a sound mind without a sound bddy. Ansemie women, for instance, not seldom are unfitted, both mentally and physically, to be either wives or mothers. When they discover the fact, too late, they are apt, in their bitterness, to lay the blame upon their husbands—who are, in truth, themselves the victims —and to raise a hue and cry. FALLING IN LOVE. . Men are supposed to get nearest to perfection at 40. There can be no doubt that the whole question of marriage, looked at as determining the character of the next generation, is largely complicated and obscured by the question of love. Now we are very far from accepting the position of Count Tolstoi, that the passion of love should have nothing to do with marriage, which he thinks should be founded on mutual esteem and tried friendship alone ; but, on the other hand, we do not see why educated Anglo-Saxons should allow love to override, as it often does, every other consideration of health and suitability, and should talk of falling in love with a helpless fatalism worthy of the most dreamy of Orientals. A loveless marriage can never be a true union, but, on the other hand, a marriage which uses love to defy other important considerations of health and suitability can never be a fully blessed one.— Leisure Hour.

OUGHT CHAPERONS TO DANCE. Mrs Humphreys, the witty writer of the " Madge * letters in London Times discusses the question—a very important one many of my younger readers will no doubt consider it —as to whether " chaperones ought to dance." She writes: „_« What do you think about the question of chaperons dancing ? You know there are partners from whom a girl has no wish to return to her friends, and with whom she goes off to have an ice, and, perhaps, to sit on the stairs during the next item on the programme, when some other man is vainly searching everywhere for her and losing his dance. But, then, there are other partners who are less interesting, men who either cannot-flirt at all, or fail to do it agreeably; or whose appearance does not fit the ideal that some girls cherish for a few years, and then, failing to realise it, usually abandon it in favour of something in direct contrast with it. An immediate return to the chaperon after a dance is the quickest method of getting rid of a partner who has not recommended himself, and if the matron in charge is away, somewhere, pursuing her own diversions, the girl is placed in an awkward fix. The man has to remain in attendance, and she feels that she is keeping him from his next partner. So, ought chaperons to dance ? Our decision either way will not affect the matter, for they do dance, and will dance until they assume the cumbrous proportions that distinguish fort? out of fifty British matrons. Don't you think it would be a good plan to have a small committee of ladies deputed to take up their stand at one end of the dancing - room, for the express purpose of receiving girls from their partners? They could relieve each other from time 'to time, spending the intervals in the refreshmentroom, or in those absorbing flirtations with middle-aged men that seem to hold such a charm for ladies who are no longer young. ' How blessings brighten as they take their flight 1'"