LADIES' GOSSIP.

Otago Witness, Issue 2985, 31 May 1911, Page 73

LADIES' GOSSIP.

Miss Florence Taylor Ward, of New York, whose father was a pioneer diamond miner in South Africa, has had one _of the family -jewels—a diamond weighing nearly three-quarters of a carat set in one of her front teeth.

Mrs Carry Nation, whose death took place recently, told an interviewer when she was in England two years ago that often when she was refreshing herself during her speeches with a glass of water she gave the following toast:—"Here js the drink that God gave to the human family. And in that glass are no .sorrows, no woes, no tears, no blows —nothing that suggests a widow's moan, or an orphan's cry. How cooling to the fevered brow, how healthful to -the parched body! May you always drink as Adam drank before there was any curse!" When told that "you oan't get everybody to believe" in the wholesomeness of pure cold water Miss Nation remarked, "Can't get them? I don't belong to the 'can't' crowd. You know my name and my initials, ' Carry A. Nation.' It wasn't for nothing I w given that name." During cold, dry wintry weather when east winds prevail, cracked fingers are a source of annoyance. The skin on the end of the fingers, or, more commonly, the thumb, becomes rough and then cracks, sometimes forming a deep cut-like fissure with hard edges. These edges are liable to be caught and torn still farther open in the course of work, and certain occupations such as sewing may be rendered impossible. These cracks are difficult to heal, and the best way to prevent them is to apply a few drops of glycerine daily after washing all through the cold weather. Where the skin is miich hardened it should be rubbed with pumice-stone, as they will render it leas liable to crack. When the trouble has already made its appearance glycerine, lanoline, or ordinary mutton fat should be well rubbed in, and a fingerstall should be worn. The hands should' -be well dried after washing.

Miss Edith Searle Grossmann was born in Victoria, but came to New Zealand with her parents during her girlhood. She attended the Invercargill Grammar School, ajid was also taught privately by her father, the late Mr George Smaks Searle, who was a classical scholar, and otherwise a man of much learning. From school she. went to Canterbury College. where she studied chiefly under Professor Maemillan Brown, and graduated Master of Arts (with honours) in the University of New Zealand. Mrs Gro.ss.mann has resided' in London for a number of years, and has for many years been a contributor to the pages of the Witness.

. The Education of the Blind. An American paper gives an interesting account of a blind person who has so far. conquered her infirmity as to live as if she had ordinary sight. She owes this happy result to her education, or, rather, lack of education, for her parents boldly decided to do nothing to make up for her want of sight. They forbade her to recognise things by the sense _ of touch, or to walk with a stick, or, indeed, to depend on any artificial plan of life. She was simply taught to deny the existence of her infirmity except for reading. The result was that Miss Lelia Holterhof was able to walk about like other neordo. Her other senses were extraordinarily sharpened and refined 'n proportion as she was de prived of the usual material means of assistance. She even possesses a sense of colour, and a very exact sense of time; and., having had the world explained very carefully to her, requires very little explanation to grasn the character of things. gh« guesses at character from the voice, and knows whether the person she ad dresses is fat or thin, or speaks under a moustache. More than that, she dances, swims, rows, rides a horse and a bicycle, and walks about without anyone guessing that she is blind. We may take some of this with a grain of salt, but if it contains an element of truth, as it well may, this case may well assist the education of the blind. For. after all, Nature left more or less to itself may be the best I'ndpc of how to remedy such a defect as blindness. Christina. Rossetti. This black-robed figure with eyes ten dered large by one of the most painful of diseases, and suffering always from the knife-stabs of yet two other painful diseases —this black-robed figure with the clear-cut and olive-coloured features, the dark hair, the restrained and formal gestures. the hands ail wavs folded in the lap, the head always imliciondv a little on one side, and with.the precise enunciation, this tranquil religious, was Christina Rossetti, who. was undergoing within herself always a fierce struggle between the pagan desire for life, the light of the sun and love, and an asceticism that in its almost "'ore than Calvinistic restraint reached also to a noint of frenzy. She put love from her with both hands, and yearned for it unceasingly; she let life pass hv. and wrote of glowing tapestries, of wine .and nomegranates ; she was thinking always of heaths, the wide sands of the seashore, of south walls on which the apricots grow, and she lived alwavs of her own free wall in the gloom of a London square.—From “Ancient Lights and Certain New Reflections,” by Ford Madox Hueffer. A Heroine and a Sphinx. It was the last night of “A Woman of No Importance.” at the Haymarket. I was there with its author and other friends. Opposite u« in a box sat a lady and her husband. Wilde told ns she was the, writer of the amusing parodies of himself. which sometimes apnea red in Punch, and that this was the first time he had seen her. It was Mrs Levers on (author of ‘‘The Limit”). Wilde used to say afterwards she was the wittiest woman be ever knew', and if you read her novels you will be persuaded

thai, this was the actual truth, and not the mere compliment one distinguished writer pays another. Next year he published "The Sphinx," and an exquisite parody called "The Minx" came out in Punch. From that moment Mrs Leverson was known as "The Sphinx," She is still the Sphinx for all of us. But Avhen the "debacle" came Mrs Leverson became something more than the wittiest woman Wilde ever mot; she anil her husband were two of the most chivalrous friends in the whole world. Wilde had been released on bail; his house had been sold up under a sheriff's order ; no hotel would give him shelter ; his mother was too ill to receive him. The Leverson® welcomed the pariah under their own roof. They faced the chance of social ostracism. —Robert Ross, in the Bystander.

Clever Women Inventors. A few women have realised fortunes from patents. One woman.. patented a contrivance for trimming the bottom of dress skirts so they would hang evenly—a great boon to the home dressmaker. Another suggested to her husband, who was mechanically inclined, that the thermo men ter on the outside of an oven really told nothing about the heat inside; what the oven needed was a heat valve—some arrangement whereby an aperture in the even would automatically open when there was too much heat, thus maintaining the correct temperature for baking bread. He perfected fixe idea, patented '.t, and has profited' largely through its sale. Another woman, after many unsuccessful efforts to find a corset that would adjust itself to her corpulent figure, discovered the lack that had not been provided for by corset-makers, and set about designing one to suit herself. She perfected her plan, found it a great comfort, patented the idea, and is to-day at the head of a large factory where these special corsets are made. An invalid husband had reduced her to sewing by the day for a living far both before she thought of her new corset. Another woman discovered through experiment a food mixture that made her hens lay; she gave it a name, patented it, and’ put it on the market with the greatest success. Another compounded a disinfectant that killed insect life in her chicken-house, and that also- proved efficacious for use in hospitals and homes following infectious illness. This was patented, and is now sold in large quantities. Kiirsiiis: as a Society Craze. The vocation of nursing bids fair to become a craze among fashionable women in London. A good deal is being made of the news that “Nurse Grimston,” who has entered a training home in Bow, happens to be tbs Earl of Verulam’s daughter, buit, as a matter of fact, the Peerage has supplied a good many recruits to the profession of nursing during the last few years. Lady Esher’s “firstaid” classes, held at her house in Tilney street, have given a considerable impetus to the movement, while the practical interest in nursing institutions which Queen Alexandra has repeatedly shown is also largely responsible for the firm hold which the vocation has taken on the minds of Society women. Queen Alexandra set a grand example in this respect at the time of the Boer war, and so- did Mrs Cornwallis West (Lady Randolph Churchill) when she took charge of the hospital ship Maine.

Ons of the best-known London Society nurses is Lady Annesley. who became deeply interested in hospital work and spent meet of her time in the wards of the Citv of Dublin Hospital. But for bier marriage, she would have adopted nursing a® a profession, and she founded a village .hospital In the wrounde of her home in County Down. Lady Hermconc Blackwood, a. ma,rams’s daughter, and sister of lord Dufferin, is president of the Irish Nursing Association, and among earl’s daughters who have been greatly to the fore in the nursing world are Lady Katherine Stanhope. Lady Rosalind North - cote, Ladv Gn'selda Cheane, and Lady Maud Keith-Falconer. "Nurse Grim. ston’s” entry into the profession does not surprise her friends, as she took to nursing when a mere. girl, and helped to nurse her h TV 'tVn-, Lord Grimston, when he met with his driving accident. Hospitals anti SSodern Surgery - Now that an appeal is mads to the women of Otago for assistance to provide a ward for women the following extract from the Gentlewoman may he of interest : The wondrous achievements of modern surgery was once again demonstated at the Governors’ meeting of the Chelsea Hospital for Women, when Lord CastlercQigh presided for the first time as the new President of this most useful of the medical charities. Can the lay mind conceive that out of the 859 operations performed in the year on poor and suffering womankind, of which 500 cases were called "maior operations,” because the chance of life or death was held lightly in the balance, that only 1.7 per cent, of all these cases terminated fatally? In other words, that more than 98 out of every 100 of the patients were cured. In the pre-Lister days nearly as many died as are now saved in each 100 operated on for the more serious diseases to which womankind is peculiarly subjected. No wonder the Governors listened to Mir Bland Sutton and Mr Hugh Fenton, two of the chief members of the medical staff of the hospital, when they spoke so impressively on the work of the institution and the pressing needs for enlargement. Mr Inglis Parsons, another of the surgeons who spoke at the meeting, disclosed the delightfully feminine feeling of the poor patients who, with all their trials and sufferings heavy upon them, begge 1 that the ladies (who being members cf that most useful adjunct of the hospital, the Ladies’ Committee, of which Lady Ilchester is the active president, regularly visit the> wards to chat with and cheer

them) might wear their prettiest clothes and millinery. Most of the lady visitors, with kindly feeling, refrain from dressing too grandly on these occasions, but “it does us good to see fine fashions” pleaded one poor sufferer, ami she seemed to express exactly .the view of the majority. They are bearing some of woman’s heaviest burdens, but they are still women. A Photographer of Royalty. There are several very well-known women photographers nowadays, but when Miss Alice Hughes, who has just retired from business, began, she was a regular pioneer, for it was then considered a very unusual sort of profession for a woman to take up. In her time, Miss Hughes has photographed pretty well every woman of note in England.

She has probably, too, taken more photographs of Royalty their children than any other living photographer, and she has received at different times, many marks of Royal favour, only the other day Queen Mary came to her studio and sat for hear.

Until the .accession of King Edward and Queen Alexandra, Miss Hughes made a point of never going out of her studio to take photographs—her sitters, even the most distinguished of them—came to her. But after that event she went several times to Buckingham Palace to take portraits of Queen Alexandra; and one of her most prized treasures is a beautiful monogram brooch, set with precious stones, which was presented to her by the QueenMother after one of these sittings. Miss Hughes is ,a daughter of the late Mr Edward Hughes, the portrait painter, whose pictures of beautiful, women are so well known. Most of the noted and lovely women of the day have sat to him. He painted Queen Mary when she was still Duchess of York, and he had the honour of painting Queen Alexandra no less than three times. . For 28 years Miss Hughes had lived in the house in Gower street, made famous by herself and her father ; but lately she has grown tired of the busy life and the rush of London, and has given up her profession and her bouse, and gone to live in the country, “somewhere within reach of the sea,” as she told someone the other day. Hints and Suggestions Before attempting to drive a nail through wood, push it through a thin cake of soap. You will find that it will then go through the wood quits easily. An undefinable smell of cooking can generally be traced to a dirty oven. Wash the oven thoroughly with soda and hob water, and the smell will vanish. Ground coffee sprinkled freely amongst the fur or feathers of freshly-shot game will keep it sweet for a considerable time. It should always be treated in this way when packed for travelling. The most harmless skin lotion is a mixture of lemon juice and glycerine. Those who desire to use it should rub a little into the skin every morning after washing. The lemon juice whitens, the glycerine softens the skin.

Steel pens are destroyed by corrosion from acid in the ink. Put in the ink some little nails or old steel pens and the acid will exhaust itself on them, and the pens in use will not corrode. If you want your silk skirt to retain its freshness, sew loops under the flounces, and hang it upsidedown when not in use. Hanging in this way, in the opposite direction to that in which, they are worn freshens and mokes the frills stand out and take a new lease of life. When frills are left lying-flat they soon go into holes.

The shelves in the pantry often mean a great deal of scrubbing. This need not be so if the shelves are covered with white oilcloth, such as is used for tables. Cut the oilcloth in long strips about 3in. wider than the shelves. Make flour paste, and with it stick the oilcloth on the shelves, covering the front edge and pasting it underneath, and letting the oilcloth come up about an inch against the Avail at the back. Shelves covered with oilcloth will keep tidy for years, and only need wiping over with a cloth and warm water to clean them.

For scenting clothes. —Take an ordinary coat-hanger, cut a broad strip of wadding to the length, and sprinkle generously with vour favourite sachet • powder. Fold tightly round the hanger, and fix on firmly with satin ribbon, an inch and a-half wide, twisted over and over. This will be found a great improvement on the tiny satin sachets usually sewn in our coats and dresses.

An excellent laundry hint. —To prevent clothes from iron-moulding with rust ofl: the boiler when the wash is done each week, empty all the water out_ of the boiler, and when the latter i.s still warm rub it all over with soft soap, a.nd let this remain on until the boiler is required again ; it is then easily washed off. Muttonfat can also be wed. ' If this is done every week the boiler will never iron-mould the clothes.

The following mixture is excellent for cleaning kitchen tables and shelves. Mix together half a pound of sand, half a pound of soft soap, and a quarter of a pound or ordinary lime. Apply it with a scrubbing brush, and wash off with plenty of water. It keeps the wood beautifully white.

It is very annoying when fires are not in constant use to find the grates getting rusty and having a neglected appearance. To prevent this mix the blacklead with turpentine instead of water, .give a good coat of this, polish well, and the grate will retain a beautiful brillancy for an indefinite time.

Heie is a useful method to keep the carpet beneath the bed free from dust and fluff. Take some unbleached calico the size of the bed and bind neatly. Lay this on the floor and fasten securely at each corner, either by safety-pins to the carpet or tapes, to the foot of the bed. When, its removal each day for shaking purposes will be found a simple ma_Uer.

AS' Descriptions or balls, &c, mast be endorsed by either the Witness correspondent for th« district or by the secretary of the ball committee. The MS. of any correspondents who do not comply with this rule will be sent to the secretary for endorsement prior to appearing.—EMHELlNE. To ensure publication in the forthcoming issue letters should reach the Witness office if possible on Saturday night, but on no account latei thai" Monday n'trht. WEDDING AT BERWICK. A v-cry pretty wedding, and one which created a good deal "of interest locally, was celebrated in. Berwick on May 24, when Miss Isabella. Grant, youngest daughter of MiPeter Grant, of Berwick, was joined in wedlock to Mr Arthur Hcenan, son of Mr Edward Heat) an, of Maungatra. The ceremony was perform&d by the Rev. D. M'Coll in the presence of about 100 of the friends and relatives of the bride and bridegroom. The bride, who was given away by her father, looked charming in a double skirt of white crysalline edged with cream satin. She wore the usual veil with a, wreath of orange blossoms, and carried a- pretty bouquet of white chrysanthemums and maidenhair ferns. She was attended by her sister, Miss Janet Grant, who was dressed in cream silk voile with pearl trimmings; and also Miss Edith Kirby, a. niece of the bride, dressed in white silk. The bride's gift to the bridegroom was a gold watchguard, and the bridegroom's gift to the bride a gold bangle, and to the bridesmaids a gold bangle and brooch. The bride was the recipient of many beautiful presents, including a number of cheques. After rhe marriage ceremony the usual speeches and toasts were made and duly honoured, and these were interspersed with songs and recitations. During the evening, in honour of the occasion, a dance was held, the grand march, in which about 45 couples took part, being led off by the bride and bridegroom. Among the laciies present I noticed the following: Mrs P. Grant, black and silver; Mrs Sheddon, dove grey crysalline; Mrs Kirby, Chinese silk; Miss W. Heenan, white voile; Miss Nicholson, cream lace; Mrs Cattan, black silk; Mrs Renwick, white silk; Mrs Gibb, black poplin; Mrs J. Shennan, black voile; Mrs P. Bathgate, evening dress; Mrs Lyall, black costume; Mrs Lawson, white Indian silk; Mrs J. Hall, black; Mrs R. Petrie, black; Mrs J. Cameron, white lawn; Mr 3 Summers, back; Mrs J. Crcssan, maioon; Mrs W. Munro, black; Mrs R. Shennan, black; Mrs Walter, silk blouse and dark skirt; Mrs George, black; Mrs A. Wither, cream cashmere; Mrs M'lntyre, black satin; Mrs R. Robinson, brown; Mrs Hohnan, black; Miss J. Bathgate, white embroidered lawn; Miss C. W. Ferguson, pale bine voile; Miss J. M ; 'Kay, cream silk; Miss Twelftree, black; Miss M'Pherson, embroidered muslin; Miss M. Thomson, white silk; Miss Petri©, black costume; Mica M'D.iarmicl, cream cashmere; Miss Brown, heliotrope voile; Miss M'lndoe, cream silk; Miss B. Munro, croam lustre; Miss Gibb, white lawn; Miss Prentice, cream cashmere; Miss Little, blu» spangled evening dress; Miss Sinclair, black lustre; Miss'Robinson, blue overlace; Miss R. Gray, pale blue; Miss Palmer, Eea green delaine; Miss Blake, white sdlk spangled; ' Miss George, heliotrope crysialline; Miss Smail, white embroidered.—A GUE3T.