LADIES' GOSSIP.

Otago Witness, Issue 1900, 3 July 1890, Page 37

LADIES' GOSSIP.

—The name of the lady whom Mr Wm. O'Brien, the Home Rule leader, recently espoused was not disclosed in the telegram announcing the marriage, and some curiosity has been expressed on the point. Home papers ]ust to hand state that she was a Miss Eaffalovich, that she is a strong advocate of Home Eule, a Jewess by birth, and has an income of £4000 a year. It was announced that previous to her marriage she would renounce Judaism and embrace Roman Catholicism. She is said to have great linguistic attainments and rare intellectual talents. —There died recently is a quiet and humble home the unfortunate Viscountess • Kingsland, whose chequered career is stranger than any romance ever penned. Of a good though impoverished family, she married in 1819 Viscount Kingsland, the penniless representative of a title which is now extinct. On the death of her husband the poor lady sank into those " deeper depths " of indigence which are familiar to visitors in the London slums, and when her case attracted public attention some time ago, the Viscountess was living in an attic in one of the poorest quarters of Lambeth, earning 2s or 3s a week by making shirts. She was then in her 80th year, and finding her sight failing the last member of an old house put on one side the independence and dread of charity which she had hitherto maintained, and applied for help to the Universal " Benefit Society. Her condition wns urgent, and an immediate allowance of 10s a week was granted. Public interest was excited ; from the Royal Bounty Fund £100 was voted to establish the old lady in a suitable home ; and a pension cf £50 per annum was purchased on her behalf, so that the last few years of a woman who had toiled, starved, and suffered, rather than complain, were rendered comparatively comfortable ; but the story is one of the saddest of the many sad histories which are conceal from the bone-

volent; while the inpostor, too lazy to work, revels in the misplaced bounty of the charitably disposed. —We are going to try (writes " Florence," in Figaro) the last new v> ay of cooking an egg. I had a foolish sort of idea that because a plain boiled egg was such a very simple thing, there could be only one way of boiling it, and it is quite strange to think of being able to try a new experiment on the subject. Not that cooks do not often make experiments, but then theirs are not always in the right direction, and generally consist in trying how underdone master will eat his egg, or how hard boiled it must be before mistress complains vigorously. But I have been told that such little accidents as these simply occur because the kitchen clcck is never quite right, so perhaps I ought to have said nothing. However, the newest thing in bailing an egg is to boil it away from the fire. Take a saucepan of boiling water— be suie it is boiling— place the eggs in it, immediately take it off the fire and stand it on the hearth. The eggs, it is maintained, are much more creamy and much more digestible if done this way, and though the time taken is about double, five minutes to seven minutes— a sometimes serious matter when waiting for breakfast — it is said to be worth the extra few minutes, the taste is so superior. The right allowance of water is about half a pint to each egg, when six minutes will suffice to perform the feat to perfection. —Why is it that a levee takes a much shorter time than a drawing room? Men going to a levee never seem to find it necessary to take up their position outside the palace for hours beforehand, as the ladies invariably do for their function, nor do the men quarrel and fight like cats in the anterooms, nor does the actual ceremony of presentation ever occupy proportionately so long a time as do the kindred performances for the ladies at Buckingham Palace. The longest levee is usually over in an hour, or at most an hour and-half, while it is a comparatively small drawing room, like the first of this year, which has any chance of being finished in two hours at the very least. The fact is that the men do not care a bit for the levee. They go because other men go, but not from any pleasure in it. The ladies, on the other hand, take the keenest interest in a drawing room, and thoroughly enjoy the process of swaggering in their best attire before their Queen and fellow subjects. The men, moreover, do not hamper themselves with such an amplitude of dress, as do their mothers, wives, and sisters. Be he ever so great a swell, the man is always satisfied with simple uniform or court dress, and would very gladly go in a frock coat if there were chance of being admitted in that costume. He never dreams of dragging a six-foot tail of satin, plush, lace, and ribbons behind him, nor does he load his hands with a huge bouquet, an immense fan, scent bottle, and handkerchief until he is as helpless as a trussed fowl. The natural result is that he is much more easily marshalled through the simple performance of presentation, and that some half a dozen men can be polished off in the time that it takes one lady to get her sails spread to the full, and make her curtsey to the Queen and the Princesses. — The Duke of Fife has a splendid collectian of flowers made in china, which are invariably placed on the table on the occasion of a dinner party instead of the natural ones. But a pleasant surprise awaited his Grace's guests a few nights ago. The china flowers were cast aside, and the table was so covered with the purest and most beautiful of white camellias that it was almost impossible to see the tablecloth. — April showers are welcomed by one special class of Parisians— the vendors of old umbrellas, who make their chief harvest during this month. Worn-out umbrellas, which have been thrown away, are carefullymended up by some old women at Belleville at the cost of 2d apiece, and the sellers then establish themselves with their stock near the gates of the various cemeteries and on the outer boulevards. Mourners in their new attire, and lovers of the poorer classes on a holiday outing, are generally unprovided with any protection against a passing shower, and the vendors will then, for a small sum, furnish them with quite respectable umbrellas. — A pretty story (says a writer in a Home paper) is told of some public ceremony in Berlin the other day, when abunch of violets was offered to good Vicky, who was presiding over the celebration. "Ah ! " she said, " how I wish I could give them to my husband I he was always so fond of violets ! " and then she burst into tears. Courage, brave and sweet lady ! the " white flower of your blameless life," and the fragrance of your charitable deeds are verily a memorial gift to the great isoul who has gone from your side ; and T?ho shall say that their perfume'has not power to mount up even to the celestial bowers where rest the spirits of the heroic dead? At any rate, they are the veritable continuance of his own life of good works on earth. — A lady in India has been trying another new pursuit, but one which I hope, for the honour of our sex, is not likely to be popular. A lady who for amusement will go out tiger-* hunting and coolly shoot a furious tigress ■who was within a few yards of her (elephant, and which neither her husband nor the other men present had been able to despatch, may be spoken of as " fearless " and " dauntless," and as having compassed "abrilliant achieve- J ment ; " but surely tiger-killing is not a profession that our fathers, husbands, and brothers would like us to take up. I fancy most of us will be content, even should our future lot lay in India or elsewhere, to allow Mrs Evans Gordon to hold her proud position as queen of the tiger killers. — Protestant England is at a decided disadvantage at the season of high festivities, our poor little Maundy distribution of royal charities being a very shabby ani meagre affair by the side of the gorgeous Continental ceremonies. The scones in R^me, Madrid, Vienna, and St. PetPrsbuig on Maunday Tnursday nre interesting from an rcsthetic and an archaeological point of view; and even the fiercest of Evangelical?, if he couldwitness them, would find little to attack in the quaint other-worklishness of the custom that, commands on one day in the year the proudest sovereigns in Europe to kneel in the midst of heir courtiers and wash the feet of beggars. he Empress of Austria has always tried to

shirk this, as all her other duties ; but the Emperor for 40 years now ha 3 sturdily played his part in what in Austria is held to be a great historical and religious pageant. Tha Czar and Czarina throw deep religious enthusiasm into the function ; and the Queenregent of Spain performs It with quite exemplary fervour. Not that she can enter into the ceremony with the hearty zeal of her mother-in-law, Queen Isabella, who to this day mourns more for the loss of the right of playing the leading role in the Maundy pageant than she does her crown. — Ninepins for children are no longer the ugly wooden things, resembling a badly shaped bottle, which sufficed to please us in the days of our youth. They are now made with a wooden stand only, upon which is placed a well-modelled animal. One of the most comical which I have seen was a set of bears, j black, woolly fellows with open mouths and red tongues, all standing on their hind legs ready to fight. Almost as funny were their brothers, a regiment of greys, each bear apsuch a tribe, covered with soft grey astrakan. They were such jolly little specimens, I should think the children would be almost sorry when they found they had knocked one of the poor fellows over. — "A Dressy Girl" writes in aLondon paper: — " I have been to both Berlin and Vienna, and agree most cordially with your opinion about the "bourgeois appearance of Berlin ladies, and the difference in the two capitals strikes one very much, especially as they are such close neighbours. In Vienna, where I had ample time and opportunities of studying the people during a nine months' visit, girls are brought up to consider their appearpearingtobeof the Astrakan tribe, if there is ance even too carefully ; and Ido not think that in any capital one would find so many well-dressed nice-looking women ; both among the working-classes and the aristocracy, trim, well-corseted figures/good complexions, neatly-shod feet, and well-kept and wellgloved hands are to be met with as a general rule. An Austrian mother, even if she were only a well-to-do shopkeeper's wife, would be ashamed of people seeing her daughters unless they had a well turned-out appearance, and did some credit; to her bringing up. Among the Germans the young school girls, of 13 to 16, are really the only good-looking type ; they have fresh complexions, long fair hair plaited in one or two tails, neat figures and white skins, but by the time they reach 22 or 23, they have expanded only too often into coarse, thick-waisted women, which their backwardness in the art of dress and the toilet generally prevents them hiding or mitigating in any way. German officers look just as smart as Austrians, so it is odd they do not impress on their female relations the difference between dowdiness and neatness." — There is a custom spreading with regard to weddings in the States which has far more significance than the toying with candied orange-blossom at a marriage feast. For some months past it has been the fashion for dress rehearsals of the wedding ceremony to be held the day before the marriage, in order to see that the bridegroom and his " best friend " and the bride and her bridesmaids are all well up in the parts they have to play. But fortunately, perhaps, one of these rehearsals has resulted in so disastrous a way at Baltimore that mothers and engaged daughters are likely to intervene and to sternly put their faces against the hitherto growing popularity of the terrible innovation. At the city referred to an eligible young bridegroom, who had been induced, in spite of his great basbfulness, to go through the dress rehearsal of bis wedding ceremony, was so utterly unmanned at the notion of having to pass a second time through the trying ordeal, that on the eve of his real wedding day he incontinently fled, leaving only a short letter for his intended bride. In this letter he explained that even his love for her was not enough to induce him to again go through the scene in which he had just taken so leading a part. HOME INIF-BEBTS. Endcltpfb Buns. — Take 18oz flour, 6oz sugar, 4oz butter, baking powder, one egg, 6oz currants, and half a pint of new milk. Rub the powder into the flower, then rub in the butter, adding the sugar and currants, the egg well beaten, and the milk. Mix all together and bake in tins in a rather hot oven, first sifting over the buns a little powdered sugar. Watercress Butter. — Pick the leaves of a quantity of watercress and mince them as fine as you can ; then dry them in a cloth, mince them still more and dry them again ; then knead them with as much fresh butter as they will take up, adding a very little salt and white pepper, and with a couple of butterman's pats shape your watercress butter into as many pats of as niauy shapes as you are able to work out. Spiced Fish. — Butter the bottom of a stone jar, put in a layer of fish, then a small quantity of mace and whole allspice. Repeat the layers until within 2in of the top of the jar, add salt as liked, coeer with vinegar, place a plate over the jar and put into the oven with a slow fire for six hours. Fish so prepared makes a convenient and acceptable relish for tea or breakfast. It will keep good for a long time, Any fish may be cooked in this way. Lemon Cheesecakes.— Line any small tins with puff paste and fill with the following mixture : — Three lemons, three eggs, £lb white sugar pounded, 3oz butter. Grate two lemons;, add the juice of three, yolk of three pggs and white of one. Mix well, put into a jug, and place in a saucepan of boiling water. Ftir one way until the mixture is a paste. When quite cold cover closely if it is to be kept for a day or two before it is used. Sufficient for a dozen cheesecakes. Beep Stew.— Cut thin slices of cold roast beef and lay them in a tin saucepan set in a pot of boiling water. Cover them with a vy made of three tablesponnfuls of melted butter, one of walnut ketchup, a teaspoonful of vinegar, a little salt and pepper, a spoonful of currant jelly, a teaspuonful of me de mustacd, and some warm water. Cover tightly and steam for half an hour, keeping the water in the outer vessel on a hard boil. If the meat be underdone this is particularly nice, Adelaide Pudding.— Four large apples, four eggs, 6oz currants, Goz breadcrumbs, 6oz lump sugar, one lemon rind, one wineglassful brandy, a pinch of salt. Pare the apples thinly, core them and chop them very finely ;

place them in a basin and add the breadcrumbs and sugar. Wash and dry well the currants, add them, also the salt and lemon rind, which ought to be grated. In a separate basin beat the eggs till very light, add them to the other ingredients, pour over the brandy, mix all very thoroughly together. Grease well a mould, pour in this mixture. Tie over the top a pudding cloth. Place the mould in a large saucepan of boiling water, and let it boil two hours and a-half. Turn it hot out on a hot dish, and pour round a brandy sauce.