OVER THE TEACUPS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2675, 21 June 1905, Page 73

OVER THE TEACUPS.

My Dear Readers, — Personally I really think I should rather like to talk dress and fashion, bric-a-brac, pictures, supper dishes, table decoration's, and all sorts of irresponsible fripperies this afternoon. The day is so grey, the earth so sodden, the hills so wrapped about with mist, the ' long roll of the incoming tide colourless beneath the colourless sky, so dull and. yet relentless. The pleasant crackling of the logs upon the hearth, the ruddy glow of firelight upon the tawny red and deep unscrutable yellow of late" chrysanthemums — all conduce to that pleasant idleness in which mere chit-chat, dropping into friendly silence, seems so alluring. _ But each magazine or paper as I take it up has its word of "What is worn," from the Illustrated London News to the Saturday supplement of the "Beaconsfield Rag,"' each little journal its column of "Useful Hints," "What To Do and How To Do It," "Something Out of Nothing," the "World of Society," or some such collection of small change in what are considered essentially feminine topics that I really haven't the heart to flood you with more. With Spartan resolution I leave my easy chair, settle myself at my writing table, and with a pile of magazines beside me try to realise which of all my notes and marked margins will interest you most ; and first, of all it really will be a question of dress. An amusing little interlude in a recent article on Siberia pointed out how the completion of the railway had already revolutionised dress — at anyrate on the line of route. It is only five or six years

since the uncouth-looking Siberian, untrimmed beard and clumsily-cut hair, considered himself well dressed in a red shirt worn outside his waistcoat, and his trousers tucked into his boots. Women had no ideas in toilette beyond a nondescript skirt, an ill-fitting bodice, and the universal black shawl covering the head and pinned beneath the chin.

The wave of emulation and the desire to express outwardly their kinship with ' civilisation which has been borne along 1 the railway route has already altered all l this. At Irkutsk, Tomsk, Omsk, all the Siberian towns, you find to-day the men clad in orthodox Western garb — dustcoats, , felt hats, gloves, with a correctly-swung walking stick to emphasise matters. Women wear hats as fearful and wonderful, blouses as bright, and "tailor-made" costumes as natty as one sees in any ordinary English or Continental crowd. The description given of a Russian lady's taste in dress amuses one : "The Russian lady always travels as though she were going to a garden party. She usually has a light-coloured skirt which sweeps the ground ... a brilliant blouse and a hat that is a perfect flower bed for gaiety. When she wants to be very stylish she has an ulster of red- or green plush. "When I was tired and wanted distraction I would work out how many sixpenny plush photograph frames the ulster of a Russian lady -would cover." Tli& mind at the present juncture travels easily on to Korea, and "in the matter of dress," says a recent writer, "no other I people compare with the Koreans. There are scores of varieties of hats, but they are all worn by the men. The women are contented with a cloth wrapped around the head, but the men's headgear is wonderful. The hair itself is carefully prepared. An unmarried man or a, boy wears 1 his in a jet black plaid. A married man | has his hair put up in a top-knot, seme- ' times in two top-knots. Over this topknot a horsehair covering of various shapes is worn, and the h~t over tms. ( "There is a form of adress and speech j for boys different from that for adults,

and the juvenile forms nre used to every man, however old, who has not attained to the dignity of marriage and a topknot."

I have often heard the remark that married men, no less than married women, should wear some outward and unmistakeable sign of their no longer coming within the range of eligibles— the Koreans are before us here. My next note is a sadder one, and begins with a quotation : "In every 12 women who die after the age of 45 there is one who dies of cancer. In every 21 men who die after Itie same age there is also one who dies of cancer. . . Everyone in tms community, it has been estimated, of 40 millions, either in his own person or in the person of those dear to him, has this ghost in his cupboard." With such a statement as this the Pall Mall Magazine ushers in an article on "Cancer and Its Cure," and gives the interesting details of an interview with Dr Doyen, who claims to have discovered the cancer microbe. Since 1880 Dr Doyen has been patiently prosecuting his researches in the direction of that cancer microbe which he is convinced he has now discovered, and has named "Microbe Neoformous." Not to enter into detail, it may be briefly staled that the method of cure for cancer evolved from Dr Doyen's discovery is that of "vaccinating with toxines and vaccines obtained from cultures of M. Neoformous." The disease is one which is so repugnant to the imagination, is invested with such a subtle dread and horror, especially to women that a very current of good wishes for his success will be wafted to Dr Doyen from this antipodean speck, I know. And he has such a nice face 1 One sentence in the article re-

the old stone floor, worn and hollowed with the tread of many generations ; winding steps leading to the dark organ gallery : grotesque carvings and quaint finials of black oak, memorial tablets, and sculptured urns. Amidst these memorials of generations of worshippers whose modes and manners, in prayer as in all else, have passed with them, shines "a great circle of blinding white, set in a halo of blue, in which danced and swam the rays from a powerful lantern."

The evening service began. "Books were not needed. The white circle was the book, and upon its surface a^neared the ever-shifting words, those beautiful solemn admonitions, the old, old pleas for mercy and forgiveness, the old, old prayers which we have all lisped in our childhood. . . I have heard them in school chapels, in churches all over the world, in vast cathedrals, in diggers* camps, aboard ships in lonely oceans ; but they never impressed me more deeply than on this Sunday evening, in this old church, imbedded in the very heart of London."

Reading the description of how the service is illustrated, and bearing in mind that the vast congregation is composed of London poor, dwarfed with city life and toil, dulled with the everlasting struggle for a mere existence, it is not wonderful to find that the writer was impressed. The credo begins. " The church is in darkness ; the words appear in big letters on the white circle : ' I believe in God the Father,' and an aweinspiring figure in white robes, the embodiment of strength, justice, and universal power, illustrates the solemn words. It is but a man's poor ideal of the Almighty ; but the figure springs up so suddenly and softly that the mind is transfixed, and it is as though each one of us had' been haled into the Dread Presence. And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our

"There is a movement as of phantoms on the circle, and we see before us the benign features of the Saviour, every line and lineament instinct with mercy and pity ineffable/ with Divine compassion . . . so real that it seems to live. Then followed scene after scene in the drama, which has so moved the world, generation after generation — crucifixion, death and burial, resurrection, the ascent into heaven. It was like some old miracle play of mediaeval times. One by one the scenes melt away like visions . . the pictures surely stir the dazed and misty brains of those whose week-day outlook is an endless perspective of grey gloom of body and soul. Often during the service I looked at the rapt faces as they were half-revealed in the dim shadowy old church, and wondered what thoughts were conjured up by these pictures — Christ, His disciples, choirs of cherubim and seraphim, pensioned messengers • of heaven." It is a strangely incongruous combination, as you see — these modern methods installed in the stately old church : themegahpone beside the old carved and canopied pulpit ; the lantern pictures punctuating the eenturies'-old credo ; band, choir, solo singers, all pressed into the service, which is thought out to its smallest detail by the man whose portrait in brief touches we must look at before we leave: "It is the head of the Church. Army — Mr Carlile, — lithe, ashen, with a vibrant voice ; a restless, watchful man,who moves as though about to spring; a man of audacity . . with a quiverful of quips, jests, and retorts, such as are likely to appeal to the people— a man with a shrewd eye for human foibles. "The service is near its end, the preacher has talked to his vast congregation — first in easy familiar strains, moving in the roomy old pulpit with the ease of one in a beloved and accustome-d room ; then, more deeply warming to his ijObject, touching with sure firm hand the evils and temptations of that daily life he knows so well, for he has fathomed, as head of the Church Army, tlie truth of Bunyan's words :

ferred to seemed to me quite gruesome. It seems so disquieting for the outsider to read science scraps —when you know all I suppose it is~ consoling and hopeful, j But listen to this. Dr Doyen remarks to ' his interviewer: ''Don't we find the bacil- ! lus of pneumonia in the mouth of one out of every four or five people who Lave never had the disease, and that of tuberculosis in the expectoration of perfectly healthy subjects?" Well, it may be either comfort or disquiet, just whichever way you look at it, like most other things. A recent series of articles in the Pall Mall Magazine, entitled ''London at Prayer," has been well worth, reading, The* first, "A Light in the Dark City," gives a graphic sketch of the work carried on by Mr Carlile, head of the Church Army. The service chosen to illustrate methods as daring as they are successful ! is the ordinary Sunday night's service. in ,St Marv's-at-Hill East Oh pan T1 1P ' in &c. Marys at-mu, jiast Oneap. ihe { church, difficult to find by a stranger "is approached by a narrow lane running between high, bulging warehouses, bent by age, exhaling ancient and fish-like odours." I From the lull commonplace of its surroundings to the interior of St. Mary's is so sharp a contrast as to strike with dramatic force ; for the aim light shows

Fish there be that neither hooks nor line. Nor snare, nor any net, nor engine can niake 1 thine. They must be groped for, and be tickled, too Or tne J wiU llot be catched, whate'er you c^°" "And now upon the great white circle are thrown the words of the closing hymn —a quaint measure which we can all recall —emotional, appealing. The band does justice to the changeful music ; yet sets free the beautiful words soaring high' above the surging melody beneath. A wave of repentant yearning may well pass over worn hearts, and again, as the time changes, clumsy feet shuffle and beat marching rythm, every voice forms the chorus: Knocking, knocking, what! still there? Waiting, waiting, grand and fair; Yes. this -pierced hand still knocketh, Aud beneath the crowned hair Skme the Patient eyes so tend * 0£ th Saviour siting there." *. , , if .... *„ . . And with the thrilling of that strangs. sweet sound following him the write* PP assed out into the narrow lanes, and, lingering, is overtaken by a little group fr°m St. Mary s, who, clad in white and gathered under a flaming cresset, pass on singing, down the

*iver. The chill, damp wind blows back jhe sound of their music, mingled with the raucous noises of the syrens and tooters of ships coming up with the tide, where Hie black, soundless river flows »nder the black starless sky— and the Work of the Church Army goes on in its Uracojiventional way. .

So it was better to break away from the soft charm of fireside idleness, was it not? — the austere, straight-backed chair by the writing table leads to better company. — Your affectionate EMMELIXE.