LADIES' GOSSIP.

Otago Witness, Issue 1891, 17 February 1888, Page 33

LADIES' GOSSIP.

—It is a sad commentary on American society and American manners (says a writer in an American paper) that so many bright and otherwise charming young girls are allowed to tyrannise over their fathers and mothers, and that the parents seem to feel a sort of servile pride in being eclipsed by their offspring. I know an almost innumerable number of girls still under 20 who monopolise the conversation, reprove their parents publicly for any careless or oldfashioned form of speech, and whose opinions are law and gospel in the household ; while the parents stand humbly in the background, gazing, half in awe and half in wondering admiration, upon the brilliancy of their own progeny. This thoroughly American system o£ educating young girls does not conduce to their early wisdom or discretion. It permits them to gain a sort of premature, chaotic idea of the surface things of life far beyond their years, and gives them an exaggerated impression of their own importance. It requires time and experience to enable them to rightly estimate their own worth or understand their own needs.

— It, is difficult nowadays to form a conception of the enthusiasm with which Jenny Lincl was greeted at her first appearance in Berlin in December 1844. The notoriously severe critics in that city simply went into raptures, and' the public followed suit. She was serenaded, poems of every degree of excellence were composed in her honour, and Professor Wichmann prepared a model of her hand of which thousands of plaster casts were taken and sold to her numerous admirers. At first only three copies of the model were taken, one of which was put up in a raffle for a charitable purpose, and from this the other casts were taken. A letter addressed by Jenny Lind to Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer, was exhibited in a glass frame and the proceeds also devoted to charitable purposes. From Berlin she went to Hamburg, where she appeared as Norma, on the 29th March 1845. Here an enthusiastic admirer presented her with a silver cup filled with mealworms, the favourite food of the nightingale.

— Miss Purnell, a Baltimore heiress, and Dr Elgin Gould, a leading Washington phy sician, were married recently under condi tions and with a mise-en-sccne which seem to have been suggested by the open-air performances of Shakespeare, first attempted in this country some time ago and since largely imitated in America. The wedding took place in the open air in the grounds of the residence of the bride's father. A carpeted platform was laid for the ceremony in .the centre of a noble grove of forest trees. In the middle of the platform stood an altar covered with roses and lilies of the valley, while over it, suspended from mighty trees by ropes of smilax, was a canopy shaped, like a cottage roof, and composed of flowers of brightest hue. All round the platform ran a deep edging of cut flowers, doubled at some distance back by a still deeper fringe of graceful foliage plants of fine proportions. All through the park and on the velvety sward were scattered choice hothouse plants, and altogether the display seems to have been in the highest degree artistic and effective.

— The King of Dahomey is described as " a tall, well-built negro of about 40, dressed in a blue silk gown reaching nearly his knees, covered with silver half-moons, stars, and quaint-shaped spangles about the size of half dollars. On his head he had a cap of red velvet with gold lace, and the figures of a skull and cross-bones in front. On his feet were gold-laced sandals. In his hand he held a sceptre of solid gold surmounted by a red skull."

— In an American family the girl of tho house is the important person, and the father and mother practically nowhere ; even when they are above the average in ability or position they always, more or less, yield the pas to the daughter, a place that she, with a mixture ofg common sense and calculation, takes and keeps as long as possible. She seems to grasp the idea that youth and goods looks are fleeting possessions, and that she must make as much of them as possible. Le jour est aux jeitnes, indeed, in America. This spirit of calculation \sas amusingly displayed by a lovely little American girl, who was seen by her friends to devote herself day after day to the study of a very dry and learned book, "History of the Early Popes" ; on being asked if she was really interested in what she read, she laughed at the very idea, and said : " You know while lam young and pretty no one cares whether I know anything or not, but the day will come when I shall neither be one nor the other, and then I shall have something to fall back on, and people will be very glad to discuss all about the Popes with me then. The same little lady would neither sew because it spoilt her hands, or walk any distance for fear it might make her feet large ; and she owned to these ideas so naively, that, whereas in an English girl it would have appeared the most foolish vanity, in her it only seemed a rather calculating prudence, and a desire to make the best of herself.

—In a select reunion, at which the Emperor Dom. Pedro was present, allusion wa

made to the Caffarel case, and the scandalous traffic in decorations, and Dom Pedro remarked : "In Brazil we always sell decorations, but charging a very heavy price, and the proceeds go to the support of our lunatic asylum. Thanks to human vanity, this establishment is probably the most flourishing in the world. It does not receive a penny from the State, and its income increases every year." He then added, with a touch of irony: "This ingenious arrangement possesses the further advantage of enabling us to recognise by the bit of ribbon the lunatics that are still at large."— La Famille. —What a lot of gentlefolk have taken to shopkeeping of late 1 The latest additions to their ranks are Mrs Wheeler and Mrs Hussey-Vivian, who have set up a bric-a-brac shop near Berkeley square. But of all funny things, a gentleman has taken to dressmaking, and (says a writer in a Home paper), I am told, is making a very good thing of it. His firm has a great name both for the perfection of the fit and the beautiful finish of its work. The only dress of theirs I have seen, to my knowledge, was a black satin, and the fit and style were certainly too lovely for anything. A peculiar divorce tale comes from Kansas City, Mobile, under date November 25. Thirty-four years ago Clark Cleveland, then 3G years old, married Marion Clinton, aged 19. The couple lived together for nearly 14 years, when they became estranged, and finally— 2l years ago— were divorced. Recently the two, who had all the time been living in the city named, and neither of whom had remarried, met accidently at a mutual friend's house. The ex-husband, now aged 70, fell in love again with his former wife, proposed, and was accepted. The couple, next day, went quietly to Wyandotte and were married by the Probate Judge there. During one of Jenny Lind's visits to New York a Swede, a native of Stockholm, called at her residence and sent up a note in his native language, requesting to see her. She did not remember the name as she read it ; but, when the young man entered her presence, she immediately remembered his face —an old playfellow when they were children together at school. She inquired his circumstances. He was a cabinetmaker, residing with his wife and children at Brooklyn. The next day Jenny Lind drove over and made the wife of her old schoolfellow a long visit. Again, the next day, she visited her. The husband was not at home. She gave to the wife a note for him. He opened it on his return. It contained a sweetly worded request that he would allow her to give his children a memento of their father's school friendship with Jenny Lind. The "memento" was a cheque for 10,000dol. —Baroness D'Argusson, whose husband died 25 years ago, and who is well-known in Paris for her eccentricities, lately sent out a a few hundred notes of invitation to the following effect : "On All Souls Day I shall receive visits of condolence at tiie grave of my husband from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Owing to the inclement weather, I have arranged that all who may favour me with their company shall be supplied with tea and other warm beverages." The clergy, to mark their disapproval of such proceedings, formally protested against the holding of a sort of soiree on consecrated ground. However, the managing committee of the Pere la Chaise cemetery were of opinion that the owner of a vault has a perfect right to deal with it as with another piece of ground property.— Le Pays. . A pretty girl friend of mine was making 1 , the other day, what I supposed were the skirt 9of dolls' dresses. " Dressing dolls for a fair 7" I asked. " No," she replied, "I am making covers for the gas shades." The advantage is that in this way one can have different coloured shades whenever she pleases. They were made of a straight piece of thinnest China silk, a quarter of a yard wide and half a yard long. After being sewed together there was a hem put in each edge, through which an elastic was run ; in this way they would fit any shaped or sized globe, and the elastic also served to keep them in place. My friend had a set of yellow, blue, pale green, and those she was making were pink. When placed upon the globe and the gas turned on, the effect was a soft-coloured light, very pretty to look at, and very becoming. Yet He Loves Her. Man finds any amount of fault with a woman, yet works tooth and nail to get her. He calls her extravagant, yet yearns to pay her bills. She's heartless, but he devotes months to finding the spot where that heart should be. She's fickle, yet he struggles for a place in her. affections. She's timid, but he noble creature, has courage for two. She's a fraud, but a darling. She's a goose, but a duck. She's snippy, and sweet. In fact, she's a chameleon, in the very latest style of spots and dots and feathers and fixings She's a lithe and graceful and dainty dear— and changeable as the wind. Yet she's a most desirable article of household furnishing, and there are mighty few men who want to get along without her, chameleon—in a bustle— though she be.— San Francisco Report. Parasites on Cage Birds. To free canaries and other cage birds from the insects which infest them, the following method is recoinnieuded by one who has successfully practised it for years. Every night just at dusk the cage or aviary is covered with a white cloth. During the night the parasites will crawl from off the birds on to the cloth, where they may be seen running about when the cloth is removed at daybreak. The insects may be killed by putting the cloth into boiling water. A repetition of the process will soon clear away the pests without injuring the birds. Insect powders will, no doubt, kill parasites, but the birds as well. Women witli Tempcrg. Sarah, first Duchess of Maiiborough, had the good quality of loving her husband, the famous general, and thinking him the foremost of men. But to every one else she could be a shrew on occasion. Poor Queen Anne was afraid of her. She bullied her as if she were a nobody. And in the manuscript-room at the British Museum much contemporary light is thrown on this subject by a remarkable letter to be seen there, written at the time and describing an order sent to the duke and duoke^f to give up their insignia of office

without notice, and telling the latter she was not to come to the Queen, who, no doubt, was afraid of her.

Madame deVervius, in the seventeenth century, was a fine specimen of the species. She told her servants to kill those of a lady whom her lackeys insulted for venturing to defend their mistress. She bullied her husband incessantly, and on one occasion in a quarrel used her riding whip as an argument. She habitually beat her servants violently. She scolded her acquaintances for the least difference of opinion, unfavourable criticism, or most minute slight offered to her or fancied by her, and plotted their assassination if they opposed her imperious and arbitrary nature. Madame d'Orgeval, in the seventeenth century, gave great entertainments, but she and her daughter, according to the French memoirs, chiefly loved doing insolent things , in a'polite manner. On all occasions Madame d'Orgeval's temper was furious if any lady danced better or oftener than her daughter. In one instance of this she told the lady who offended her that if she continued dancing she would stop the ball. She bullied her guests with vigour, and demanded her own way in everything. Queen Elizabeth, great as she was, exhibits herself in some of her letters and actions, as when she boxed Essex's ears, as a right royal shrew. So was Catherine de Medici. So emphatically was Christina of Sweden, who caused her chamberlain, Monaldeschi, in right of her prerogative, to be strangled in a palace of the King of France. So was Catherine of Russia a shrew, whq had absolute power to back her shrewishness. Lady Coke, in James I's reign, drove her husband, the terrible chief justice (of whom James himself said "Nay, mon, if Coke sends for me I must go "), nearly frantic. The subject was their daughter's marriage. Lady Coke was furious, indefatigable, resolute and a most accomplished scold. In Henry VIII's reign, Lady More, wife of the great and good Sir Thomas, stands out as a very definite shrew, who ruled her husband and children alike with much austerity. Matilda, empress and claimant against King Stephen for the Crown of England, has left a fair claim to a masterful temperament. The Bright Girls are Best. A woman is none the less attractive or feminine — in the right sense — for having her intellect trained, and her brain set to do come work. She is a little less kittenish and silly, perhaps, but then silly women are no longer fashionable. Even the most vacuous-brained of men admire a bright girl, and the man who prefers a fool— well, there is something radically wrong about him, and it would be well for the bright girls to beware of him— either insanity runs in the family somewhere, or his brain has begun to soften, and the malady will prove fatal. Providence mercifully provides a mate for the fool. The empty-headed will always find one of his ilk with which to be happy, hence the species is not likely to vanish from the face of the earth. It is not, then, necessary for any woman to feel it her duty to help swell the number of the insane. The woman who is afraid to have it known that she uses her brains either for money or the pleasure of it, is very old-fashioned. She belongs to the days before there were any railroads or telegraph, and went out with patches and farthingales. What woman wishes to be thought unfashionable 7— Detroit Tribune. Babies of the Antipodes as Seen From a Bicycle, One day when travelling through China on my bicycle tour around the world, I came upon a very novel and interesting sight. It is the first thing of the kind I ever saw or heard about. My overland journey led me through many out-of-the-way districts where the people are primitive and curious in many respects. In one of these obscure communities in the foothills of the Mac-Ling Mountains, I saw about twenty Chinese infants tethered to stakes on a patch of greensward, like so many goats or pet lambs. The length of each baby's tether was about 10ft, and the bamboo stakes were set far enough apart so that the babies wouldn't get all tangled up. Each baby had a sort of girdle or Kammerbund around its waist, and the end of the tether string was tied to the back of this. Some of the little Celestials were crawling about on all-fours; others were taking their first lessons in the feat of standing upright by steadying themselves against the stake they were tied to. What queer little Chinese mortals they all looked, to be sure, picketed out on the grassland like a lot of young calves whose mothers were away for the day 1 In this respect they did, indeed, resemble young calves, for I could see their mothers at work in a rice field a few hundred yards away. All the babies seemed quite contented with their treatment. I stood and looked at them for several minutes from pure amusement at their unique position; but although they regarded me with wide-eyed curiosity, I never heard a whimper from any of them. Nobody was paying the slightest attention to them, and from appearances I should conclude that they were most likely picketed out in this manner every fine day while their mothers worked in the neighboring fields. Very probably these Chinese babies soon come to regard their daily outing at the stake with the same degree of satisfaction that every Young American derives from his perambulator ride on sunny afternoons in the park.— Thomas Stevens, in " Babyhood."