LADIES' GOSSIP.

Otago Witness, Issue 2571, 24 June 1903, Page 61

LADIES' GOSSIP.

— Lady Violet writes in the Graphic that the lower-class Englishwoman used to be noted for quiet, if not very, tasteful, dressing. She seems now — as anyone may notice on public holidays — to have gone to the opposite extreme. She is overdressed, and consequently ill-dressed. She is a mass of shabby feathers, dirty chiffon-, faded flowers, common lace, imitation pearls, and showy fourth-rate finery. Girls who have, scarcely a penny to bless themselves with buy second-hand clothes so as to be in the fashion ; they wear materials which ought to be fresh and immaoulate, and are only suitable to the longest purse. They save nothing, they put by nothing, they expend all they have on finery and display, indulging themselves in a passion for dress similar to that of some mile persons for drink. — The early Edwardian era,, with its ultra-civilisation, its common sense, and ..ts delight in novelty, will be known to h'story as the period of the annimilation of ancient traditions and superstitions. ~ Through long centuries the obnoxiousneis of the mother-in-law was a firmly-cherishei article in the creed of every married man. He held it as an utter impossibility that, his wife's mother could be other than an aggressive, interfering, ill-tempered creature who cumbered the earth, and most particularly his own threshold. As late as the middle of the Victorian era the average benedict seemed under the impression that the mother-in-law was created solely to buffet and torment the husband of her daughter, and to afford a mirth-inspiring topic for the comic papers. She was' the luckless exception in the ordinary run jot mortals who had neither merits, nor charm, nor raison d'etre. But now man is inclined to regard this type of mother-in-law as a myth evolved from the imaginations of his unappreciative predecessors. The modern mother-in-law is a youthful, jolly, exquisitely-dressed woman, rather more juvenile in her tastes and appearance than her daughter. She restrains her daughter's curtain-lecture propensities, and never invites herself to the house or stays a daylonger than she is expected to. Tho mother-in-law of to-day is, in fact, almost an incentive to matrimony. To be on such confidential terms with io charming and experienced a member of her sex as the relationship ensures cannot fail to be a pleasant condition of affairs for the harassed and easily-bored modern man. The up-to-date mother-in-law is sympathetic, amusing, and. the embodiment of tact. She knows how to gloss over Enid's youthful deficiencies, and to convince Enid's husband that he has married the most charming member of a fascinating familyThe common /ense, too, of the early .Edwardian woman has taught her the ineffectiveness of ill-temper and invective in arguments' with the "mere man." The modern mother-in-law may not be less of a tyrant than her predecessor, but she has at anyrate" had the wit to change her weappns and methods of attack for the art and craft of feminine charm and persuasiveness. — A love of reading is a characteristic more or less inherent in the individual, so that in one sense the question of whether we read more or whether we read less than our grandmothers is somewhat superfluous-. If our grandmother cired for reading she would read ; if she did not, she would manage somehow or other to eyade the task of solid reading, to which it was the custom to set a young girl of that time." But systematic reading, like crewel work, has gone out of fashion. The girl of today reads when she likes and what she likes, and many seldom read at all. These say they have no time. But surely everyone can find time for what wants to do. It is often the busiest people v-fco read most. Then the girls who do read very often read rubbish. Our mothers are fiimiliar with Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot. Many elderly women in their youth were mentally fed with Carlyle, Kuskin, and the poets. How many girls to-day, after they leave school, even glance at anything "deeper" than a modem novel? We read too many novels. Nowadays tha tendency towards light fiction is demonstrated by the number of magazines filled with "short stories,'' which constitutes the only mental food the average intellect seems' able to take in any quantity. Last yea-.-) 1700 novels were published in England'

"Believe Me, if all Thoao Endearing Young Charms" which I gaze on so fondbu to-day wero disappearing, tho Oentur.'l Curlers would effecthely cause them to stay.