NOTES FOR THE LADIES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1155, 17 January 1874, Page 10

NOTES FOR THE LADIES.

A " honeymoon car " is now run on the Pacific Railroad for the accommodation of bridal parties. Girton College, Cambridge, a new institution founded to promote the higher education of women, is now open. One Albert" Dilger has been fined 10s and costs for kissing a married woman in a railway carriage between Radcliffe and Bury. Four ladies recently laid the foundation stone of a new Wesleyan chapel at New-castle-on-Tyne. Each lady laid a corner stone.

A lady in Edinburgh wears a moleskin mantle, manufactured from the coats of nearly 600 moles captured on her own property. It is stated in the American papers that Mrs Brigham Young No. 17 intends to mount the lecture platform, and tell what she knows about Morrnonism.

The Derry Sentinel records the elopement of a Roman Catholic curate with a daughter of a county inspector of consta bulary. The- bride, who was a Protestant, is very plain, and has seen full forty summers. The bridegroom is also plain, but much younger. A young married man applied to the Islington guardians for admission into the workhouse on the ground that his wife had deserted him. On being asked how many children he had, he said there was only one child whom his wife had taken with her. He was admitted to the house.

Among some of the aboriginal hill tribes of India the missionaries have made it one of the teats of the sincerity of femile converts that they must lay aside all their trinkots. This condition is readily acquiesced in, and native female converts look with astonishment at the jewellery displayed on the persons of European ladies even in church, and, wondering, ask — " Have they been baptised ?"

At an assurance office in Ludgate Hill, London, there are at the present time empbyed thirty-six young ladies (the daugiters of professional men) in the capadty of clerks, under a lady superintenient. The hours of duty are from 10 tii! 5, and the salary progressive, commencing at £32 per annum, the maxinum being £00. So far the experiment, it is said, has been thoroughly successful.

" A Lady School Manager," in a letter to the [limes, says :—": — " Schoolmistresses almost always marry. One rarely ever meets with a middle-aged one, and few managers can expect to retain a female teacher very long. On the other hand, among governesses marriage is the exception. To till up tie vacancies, five training colleges were applied to without success, though the salaries offered were good."

A coriespondent, writing from Berlin, says : — "The babies of Germany are not allowed argo liberty. They are, in the bettor pxrt of the first year .of their earthly pilgrimage, tightly bound up in swaddlin; clothes, with both legs and arms pinpned, and carried about on a pillow especially made for tho purpose. After thd escape from their wrappings, a bag of feathers is tied on their backs, so that whea they tumblo over, they have something to fall back upon. " A correspondent of the New York Mail says : — "Tho Princess of Wales ia one of the lovelijst looking women I ever saw. She is tajl and perfectly formed. Her manners ire winsome and wholly unaffected, and her very movement graceful. Her 'ace is all sunshine and sweetness, and ne never to be forgotten. Her popularity is very great, all classes regarding her with peculiar affection, not more for rar peerless beauty than for her faultless character as a wife and mother."

A novel [wedding lately took place at Mounton, iear Chepstow. The contract-

ing parties were a deaf and dumb man and a young girl not similarly afflicted. Previous to the ceremony commencing, the officiating clergyman asked the bride if she was willing to have such a man for her husband, when she quite indignantly answered, " If you do not marry us at once, 1 will get a special license. " The ceremony then commenced, the rev. gentleman writing his questions on a slate, and the bridegroom answering in the aame way.

The Graphic says: — "The mania for buttons and buckles is remarkable ; in fact the first thing to be considered when ordering a costume is, ' What s f yle of, and huw many dozen, button? shall I haye 1 ?' For a- serge costume anchors in oxidised silver are quite the rage ; some of them displayed' in our shop windows are large enough to secure a small yacht ! No objection on the score of non-dura-bility can be raised to these ornaments, but when they are made in cut-steel one day will suffice to rust them, as was the case recently at Brighton, when a very expensive set of buttons was spoiled in an hour."

The Swiss Times gives the following amusing story of "impecunious Royalty:" — "A lady and an Austrian officer, shopping in the Vienna Exhibition, were very much struck with some statuettes in the French Annexe, and were choosing some, when the lady suddenly said to her companion, ' But we have spent all our money.' The exhibitor offered to send the statuettes to her address, when she could pay for them then, and lent her a pencil to write down her name. The lady wrote ' Olga, Reine dcs Hellenes,' while h6r companion was the Crown Prince of Hanover."

In the department Dv Nord there exists an old belief that, when two marriages take place at the same time, the bride who leaves the church before the other will have a boy for her first child. Two weddings were lately celebrated simultaneously at Archies, iv that department. The qei*emony over, the two couples with their friends hastened to reach the door, and arrived there just at the same time. The situation became embarrassing, for the two parties had stopped and exchanged looks of defiance. Fortunately, the Mayor was a man of resources, for he stejjped forward, and, giving an arm to each of the young wives, took them out together, to the great relief of all the friends on both sides.

The fashion of wearing paper articles is coming up again in London. Paper fraises in great variety are being worn ; some of them are edged with most deli-cate-looking lace, and have the appearance of very costly work. Perhaps the oddest things in the way of paper articles are the jupons, which may be worn on a fine day, without the slightest risk of detection, and look like fine calico and pretty embroidery. What would our great-grandmothers have thought of paper petticoats ? The paper bed-quilts are marvels of imitation. In appearance they exactly resemble a Marsella counterpane of a handsome pattern. The tablecloths, which may be bought for sixpenca a piece, are not so successful ; they lack the smoothness of damask, and being rough, they catch the dirt very easily Short lace curtains for windows, made of paper cut into extremely delicate lace patterns, are very pretty, and if not pulled about, will last clean a long time, and the cost of them is very little more than the price of washing the heavier and uglier muslin and leno ones.

The lady correspondent, in London, of the Glasgow Weekly Mail writes :—: — " The Princess of Wales looks better than she has done for some time, and her familiar face is already seen almost daily in hor usual resorts. At the theatre the other night she had adopted a very pretty style of headdress. The hair was rolled up from her face in large, careless-looking rolls, sufficiently waved to save them from looking stiff, and tiny diamond Marguerites glittered here and there amongst them. From the back it all fell upon her shoulders in curls, not the small corkscrew ringlets we have had so much of lately, but large heavy curls, each one well defined and beautifully soft looking. At the left side above the ear a pale pink rose was worn. The wholo effect was very pretty, though very foreign looking. Indeed, the whole appearance of Her Royal Highness, with the Elizabethan frill standing up round her dress, and tho glittering fan she carriod, was rather like a gay picture of some bygone period. She looks pretty in everything, but I think the simpler her costume the more lovely she is. We are going back to tho Elizabethan era in our costumes. The modistes say that very long waists, even approaching tlia deformity of the Virgin Queen in that respect, are to be introduced and rigidly enforced by the costumiers ; let us hope they won't insist on the farthingales and monstrous skirts as well."

A set of musical bells is to be placed in Si Paul's Cathedral.