THE INGENUITY OF CUBAN WOMEN.

Otago Witness, Issue 2401, 8 March 1900, Page 60

THE INGENUITY OF CUBAN WOMEN.

(Munsey's Magazine, U.S.) The expedients of the women of Cuba are varied "and as curious as they are varied. In the woods, without, training, -without tools, with only the coarsest materials at hand, many of tli3in have made their own shoes Few families could be found in the interior of the island whose women had bought shoes for three years. They had made their own, and in many cases had also made them for their husbands, fathers, sons, and sweethearts. When thread gave out they used the fibre of the "majagua" le«i instead, and when the shoe was finished they made strings out of the same "majagua" for lacing. They had no stockings, with the exception of one white cotton pair the Cuban woman invariably has for state occasions, but they did not have to go barefoot. Woman's ingenuity had triumphed over the fortunes of war.

With regard to their substitutes for hairpins one cannot say so much, although it was not their fault that Nature failed to provide an efficient substitute. With the inherent depravity of hairpins, the stock on hand soon failed, and early in the war the Cuban woman was reduced to letting her hah 1 hang down her back. Most of them have thai peculiar beauty of the Latin trees, a fine head of hair, and with their inborn Icve of the refinements of tha toilet iliej car ; i about for means to avert this. A means was soon found. A barbed wire fence has never up to the present time been .suspdcU'd of being a friend to a v. Oman's wiirdrobe, and even its most ardem advocates have noi claimed that it v>\:s susceptible of adaptation to toilet purposes ; but war changes all conditions, and the barbed wire fence must go down in history as having divided its uses in Cuba between the Spphish Irochas and the natives' dicssing-table. One day a woman cut ofi." a piece of wire from a fence, made in I lie proper length, bent it, patiently ground the ends between two stones on the highway, and the hfirpin of the Cuban re-volution was accomplished. These hairpins are used throughout the interior of Cuba, and thare is not one us-hig them but longs with all her soul for a box of American hairpins. The effect of these blunt, coarse wiies on the hair can readily be imagined. They send little cold chills down the spine of one not accustomed to them, nor have the women themselves ever become used to them. They wear them simply because even a woman who is used to being hungry, who may have but one dress to her name, and who would be barefoot if she did not make her own shoes, may have a lover, and when that lever comes a courting, the object of his attention likes to have her dark tresses properly done up. It may seem like a little thing, perhaps it may not seem apropos to mention it with such matters as starvation, nakedness, and death, yet the lack of these triiies — pins, hairpins, buttons, the thousand and one tilings that any woman considers indispensable to her toilet — has added

a real bitterness to the sufferings of the women of Cuba.

Mo amount of privation can rob the Cuban woman of her desire for every adjunct that could possibly add to her attractiveness. She is more or less of a coquette by nature, and three years of war have not exterminated her feminine instincts. She is addicted to the powder box even more than her Anglo-American sister, and she does not always exhibit as much artistic discretion in distributing the powder on her face as she should. , . . It was but natural that in the course of the events of the past three years face powder should disappear from the interior of the island. Now, the Cuban woman may go hungry uncomplainingly, but to go without face powder; was not to be thought of. Hence a substitute. This time the modest and unpretentious hen came nobly to the resaie. The Cuban woman took come eggshells, pounded them, after carefully tearing out the inner lining of the shell, and laid them cmt in the sun to dry. The next day they were pounded again, ground up as fine as possible between two stones, and once more laid out in the sun. Tne third day they were again carefully ground, this time with the addition, of a little water, making it into a thin paste, as by. tin's time the powder was quite fine. When this was once more dried in the sun it was ready for use. This surprising expedient was not an entire failure. I can testify that in the absence of the regulation Paris product powdered eggshells will produce certain results, albeit said results are better adapted for use behind "the footlights than in the broad daylight.