MAKING THE MOST OF A HOLIDAY

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4259, 19 January 1901, Page 8 (Supplement)

MAKING THE MOST OF A HOLIDAY

To a recent number of the “Young Woman” Madame Sarah Grand contributes an article on “How to Make the Most of a Holiday." She points out that some holidays only add one fatigue to another. ‘Tt is said that a change of work is as good as a rest. It may he. But it is always well to bring such assertions down from the general to the particular. On this principle of a change of work the girl whose brain is already exhausted goes _olf on her bicycle in the hope of relieving her nerves by trying her muscles. It does not occur to her that the expenditure of nerve power is still going on while she is taking exercise. What she requires is rest. Children suffering from headache, and urgently in need of repose, are often cruelly sent out to play, when every step is a pang to them. ‘ What, headache again?’ says the thoughtless parent or teacher. ‘Well, go out. That will do you good. H’s only stomach,’ —as if anything could be worse than stomach, or more significant of loss of nerve power. And the poor lit tie sufferer drags herself out. anil hangs about in misery, matting a long chronic, business of what should have been a temporary trouble. The com-mon-sense treatment of those early symptoms is to make the child lie down in a nice cool, quiet room, well covered up, with the windows wide open and flic blinds drawn. A few hours of lhaf sort of holiday would suffice to restore her. Modern medical science takes rest very much into account as well as exercise.”

Madame Sarah Grand points out the difficulty which many overworked mothers have in getting a holiday. "Her daughters,” she says, "as flier grow up, should obviously come to tHe rescue with tho necessary help in household matters; but this is the last thing the modern girl, as a rule, thinks of doing. In the classes where the girls are not made to work, the great business of their lives is their own amusement. It is not an uncommon thing in a middle-class household to see the mother making and mantling the daughter’s clothes, while that young lady herself is deep in a penny novelette. One cannot sav that the mothers are to blame either. Tho fault is in the wretched system which has deprived women ol any true sense of responsibility, and mndegentlehood a matter of idleness and luxury rather than of character and conduct. ‘A real lady, in the estimation oi more classes, than the one which gives ns the expression. is a person who ‘never soils her hands,’ and mothers sacrifice themselves in order that their daughters may live up to that paltry ideal.

“AGONY COLUMN” TRAGEDIES

STERN RUSSIAN LAW THAT COST TWO LIVES. ST. PETERSBURG, Nor-. 10. Few foreigners are aware that the insertion of “personals” or “agony eioumn” advertisements in Russian newspapers is strictly forbidden by law. This regulation has just led to a love tragedy involving the loss of two lives. The lovers were a Mine. Oskaia and an engineer named Finkelstoin. Their romance lasted for a considerable time, until rumours reached Finkclstein which excited his jealousy. He picked a quarrel with Mine Oskaia, which caused an immediate rupture, and the engineer left Russia to seek forgetfulness and quiet abroad. After rambling through various parts of Europe ho began to feel the loss of the lady’s society. Accordingly ho wrote to her asking her forgiveness and imploring her to let him know through the medium of one of' the St. Petersburg dailies whether he woulci bo allowed to return. The widow, who had equally regretted the rupture, went to the office of the “Novoe Vnfmya” and banded in an advertisement assuring Finkelstoin of her forgiveness and asking him to telegraph his address. The advertisement, however, was curtly refused, and a few days after the un-V fortunate engineer, tailing the silence of his beloved for a refusal, committed suicide Nice. Unaware of the tragedy, Mmc. Oskaia, aioer much effort, succeeded in getting the advertisement inserted, but on the very day it appeared she heard the nows of her lover’s death. Broken, hearted at this calamity, she also took her life by swallowing poison.

LUCK IN KLONDYKE ■EiSH JEW EMIGRANTS STRIKE GOLD. DAWSON CITY (2ukon), Oct. 11. A family of poor Polish Jews who in 1898 emigrated via Liverpool, travelling steerage on the Gailia, have had the reward of their toil. After working on an unprospectod piece of ground in the Klondyko for some Mme, they have struck an old river-bed, and are taking out gold to the value of £4OO or £SOO a day by the primitive method of “rocking.” The lucky folk, whose name is Gunzberg, have refused an offer of £50,000 for their property. There are other people in Klondy'ke who are not doing so well. The Indians along the Yukon arc dying in great numbers. Prospectors have found whole villages depopulated. \ As for Dawson City, although the number of steamboats visiting here with merchandise is five times as many as last year, provisions axe almost as dear. Potatoes are Is per lb, sugar Is per lb, butter 4s, milk 2s‘per tin, and eggs 6s per dozen. The barber still charges 2s for a shave, 4s for a hair-cuf. and the same for a bath. The Canadian Government has at last ordered the gambling house to close. It is quite a cqmmon sight to see several thousand 1 dollars won or lost—generally lost—in an hour. One, prominent official lost £SOOO one night last week. The gambling saloons will be closed next spring.

AN ANARCHIST REGIMENT ROME, Nov. 12. The Italian Government recently ordered investigations to be made as to the extent to which Anarchism had developed in the army. The result was sufficiently serious, but hardly unexpected perhaps, seeing that Bresci, Luocheni, Angiolillo, Caserio Santi, and numerous other Italian Anarchists of sinister celebrity had all served their time in the ranks. The inquiry showed that a considerable number of soldiers professed Anarchist ideas. In order to put a stop to the revolutionary propaganda in the army, all these men were taken froin their corps and formed into .a special regiment, which is 2500 strong and has already become known as the “Anarchist Regiment.” , Tins singular cohort has been placed under special and rigorous , discipline, but whether this will succeed iu,weaning its members from their dangerous opinions may well bo doubted.