Chapter XX.

Otago Witness, Issue 1911, 6 July 1888, Page 33

Chapter XX.

When I close mine aching eyes, Sweet dreams my senses fill, And from sleep when I arise, Her brigtft smile haunts me still !

author, Pierre Loti, had an audience of her, and oar elegantes adopted it at once. It would also look pretty in the palest 'blue, pink, cream, and pearl grey. Green in almost every shade is worn \ in fact, as in shape, so in colours and materials we have returned to the Direotoire and Empire fashions. Skirts, whether long or short, are mostly all .trimmed round the bottom, either with 'embroidery or bands of ribbon or metallic braid, or with a large puffing called bonillonne.

Dr Mezger, at Amsterdam, has had under treatment the Qneen of Sweden, the Empress of Austria, the ex-Empres3 Eugenic, the Queen of Roumania, the Crown Prince of Holland, the Archduchess of Austria, the ' Duke of Mecklenburg, and several Russian princes. And he is said to make £3000 a year. Dr Mezger charges his royal patients exactly the. same ' sum he exacts from plebeian patients. For three minutes of massage rubbing the patient pays five guilders —8s 4d.

One of the largest millinery ornament manufacturers in Paris states that 75 per cent, of his hands are just now solely occupied in making rosebuds and lilies to supply the demand of London wholesale bouses.

The duties of a best man at a wedding are to act in a general way as the friend and supporter, of the bridegroom, to see that the fees and gratuities are paid, and to reply to the health of the bridesmaids at the wedding breakfast. These peaceful duties differ considerably from the obligations undertaken by the gentleman from whom the best-man of to-day derives his name. In Northern Europe the olden custom was for a warrior to wait until a lady was on her way to marry the man of her choice, and then lo fall upon the wedding party with his friends and retainers, with a view to carrying her off by force and making her his bride. So it was good policy on the part of the bridegroom elect, who used to escort the lady he hoped to make his wife, to select the " best men " among his friends as his companions and possibly supporters in a fight.