LADIES' GOSSIP.

Otago Witness, Issue 2782, 10 July 1907, Page 73

LADIES' GOSSIP.

— Lady Gertrude Crawford, who has ' received the freedom of the Turners' ComI pany, is a daughter of the late Earl of Sefton and the wife of Captain John H. , Crawford. Lady Gertrude, whose skill and i originality as a designer have won her , this distinction, modiestly attributed her I proficiency to her father, who was greatly interested in the products of the lathe. — The determination of the young [ Queen of Spain to nurse her own infant i breaks through a law enforced for several ; centuru*. Only a bright English girl with an adoring husband couldi have made such | an innovation. How Queen Christina must envy the situation. King Alfonso's nurse was a young peasant woman from the 1 city of Toledo. She was strictly under the superintendence of the old duennas of the palace, one of whom caught the Ama in the act of kissing the royal infant, quite as if he had been her own. The flagrant breach of etiquette was reported to her Majesty, who quite unexpectedly took the part of the weeping Ama, scared for grief of dismissal. In Spain it is the custom to present the wet nurse with the first tooth her nursling loses, mounted as a piece of jewellery. The King's nuree has a ring with the tooth set as a pearl, and inscribed with the name and date. The liberality of the Queen at the close of the year of office spoilt the Toledo peasants, and unfitted th-em for any futuie labour of any kind. Tliey live in Madrid, and the foster fiLster of the King has been educated as if she were a woman of high rank. Places behind a street barrier were provided for the nurse Ama and her family on the wedding day of the King and Queen. — How glad a woman is when she can escape from her sex 5 How flattered ehc is when she is told that she writes or paints or plays like a man ! How often she hides herself behind a man's name! What man, on the oth-^r hand, would not feel insulted to have his masculine work compared to a woman's? Does that not prove which standard is thp higher and more universally accepted? Which means, the sooner we cease to differentiate in work the sooner tvill women do infin'tely b?tter. And many of us protest against a standaid which women are creating for them^elvc-s, ar.d permitting the world to accept. — Mrs John Lane, in the Westminster Gazette. —In is iiiteieMins: to le-.rn that Lady Henry Someipet is in favour of women's bufira^e, bemuse nothing: could conduce so much to temperance reform as the inclusion of women in the suffrage. As to thf> recent '" militant " demonstrations on behalf of women's suffrage, she thought that "moie exccPt-nt ways"' might be discovered. Lidy Henry said she did not wish to blame the methods of any who v<.re so sincere in their desire to obtain n end and were prepared to suffer so much for It. " But personally I have always felt that the one effectual and dignified method for women to adopt uoula* be unanimously to retire from doing any political work until their fitnass for

political equality . was recognised*. For instance, now, instead of opposing Liberal members, it strikes me that all Liberal women ought to be on strike, and in future elections candidates should not be helped by women writing or canvassing or doing any of the thousand-and-one duties laid upon them at suck times. If Conservative women lik? to go on working for the Conservative party and doing what I may call the ' charing work ' for their political side, let them. I believe that many Liberal members would soon find how necessary women were, and would! reconsider their position." —If you 6tudy men, if you watch their foolish, pleased, ridiculous expression as they study their faces and try to pretend that they are fixing their neckties, "you will soon realise that vanity's name is man, and not woman. There is nothing very puzzling about this. Men are not far removed from the animal kingdom, and throughout the animal kingdom the male animal is the handsome one. The male lion has the fine, big mane that makes him look beautiful, and he has the roar. The peacock has the terrific tail with all ita beauty, whereas his wife lookb like a homely little chicken. And so it goes all the way through. ( The stag has the wonderful horns ; his' wife is without them. In very old times the men wore tbeir hair long, they had all the ornaments ; the women were muscular, hard workers, struggling to keep themselves and the babies alive. That old vanity still survives in man. Woman has wisely taught him to go and do the work that she used to do. He now carries the load, and does the hard labour. But deep in his 6oul the primitive vanity is still alive. — Lady writer in Home paper. In these days of mouthful independence (writes "Yetta" in the Liverpool Mercury) it seems both inconsistent and preposterous to raise the question as to what girls 6hould or should not read. Cheap books and free libraries provide a wide choice of literature/ good, bad, and indifferent, from which young folk as well as thetr elders can . and do supply themselves according to their taste. It would be a difficult matter to lay any restriction upon the choice of books, because it would be an impossibility to put them out of the reach of any person determined to read them. And yet this question of "what girls should read" has been raised almost entirely in modern times. The girl of a. century or less ago may not have read so univeisally, but when she did read at all, no limits were placed on her choice of books. She wandered at will upon th"? wholesome pasturage-of old Eng'ish literature, and the outspokenness of some of the authors probably did not shock her in the least. We all know there are books and books — books that are good, ani books that are good until their badness is explained and pointed out. Forbidden fruit has, and always has had, greater sweetness to the human mind than that which may be freely partaken of. For this reason restriction is not always good. From the point of view of policy, too, it is sometimes unwise to lav a prohibition on certain books and w"arn girls of -them. If left alone it is a hundred chances to. one that the girls will leave the books alone. A taste for good literature would be more effectually instilled by the commendation and recommendation of profitable works rather than the condemnation of those less worthy.