LADIES’ GOSSIP.

Otago Witness, Issue 3662, 20 May 1924, Page 64

LADIES’ GOSSIP.

INDIAN WOMEN VOTERS. Indian women are showing themselves quick in using the franchise rights recently conferred on them. In the provinces of Madras and Bombay and in the United Provinces they lately voted at the elections for the Legislative Councils and Assemblies. Though the majority of the women voters are illiterate, they showed an intelligent interest in matters of public concern, and no less than 75 per cent of eligible women exercised their voting power. Previous to the elections the Indian Women's Association conducted * vigorous educative campaign throughout India. It sent circulars to all candidates asking support for a Bill to give maternity benefits, primary education for girls, reduction of the salt tax, prohibition of intoxicants, and national Home Kule. It is worthy of note that the Indian Legislative bodies, that women the vote, have given it to thfem on exactly the same terms as those by which men hold it. QUEEN MARY AND THE ENCLISH LACE INDUSTRY. The Queen has for some time been seeking to promote the lace trade in England. She frequently gives orders to the factories, and showed interest in a big ball lately held at Nottingham, where there was a pageant of dresses made of beautiful lace. Among the presents the Queen gave Pdinqess Maud for her wedding were two beautiful lace robes, and she gave two more to the Crown Princess of Sweden on her wedding. Her Majesty has a fine collection of antique lace, but she also fully appreciates the beauty of some modern home-made laces, and is doing her best to help the industry that has been so much depressed of late years. A USEFUL WEDDINC GIFT. At a fashionable English wedding lately one of the numerous presents on show was a type-writer, the gift of the parents of the bride to the bridegroom. CHERRY BUTTONS. A pretty plainly made slip-on frock aeen lately, owed half its effect to little cherries with a leaf or two placed like buttons down the front. They gave just the requisite finish. COLOURED HAIRPINS. With bobbed and shingled hair, hairpins are not much in evidence, but girls who use them may be pleased with the novelty of coloured ones. They may now be had in all colours, blue, red, and orange, all intended to be worn together, aud are very effective in brightening the coiffure. WHERE GENIUS RESTS. A good deal has been heard recently about “overcrowding” in Westminster Abbey, but conditions there might be much worse. For by no means all of our country's great men are sleeping in ♦‘England’s Abbey.” Muton, for example, is buried in the Church of St. Giles, and Shakespeare in the ohurch at Stratford-on-Avon. Thackeray lies at Kensal Green with poor Thomas Hood and Wilkie Collins; Fitzgerald lies in the quiet little churchyard at Bulge, in Suffolk; and Gray, who wrote the immortal lies in the country churchyard which inspired it, Stoke Poges. Goldsmith rests in the Temple; and Turner, Leighton, and many other artists sleep their last sleep under the dome of St. Paul’s. Here, too, are “the mighty Nelson” and Wellington. These two saviours of Britian met only once in life, but they lie together in the Cathedral.

Banyan and Defoe lie in the old graveyard of Bunhill Fields; and \> esley lies across the road, where the traffic on the City Road rushes by with a sound like the unresting sea. Scott lies at Melrose, and Keats and Shelley in the English cemetery at Rome. Coleridge rests at Highgate along with George Eliot, and Constable, the great landscape painter, at Hampstead, where yen will also find the grave of Du Manlier, the author of “Trilby.” A HOSPITAL FOR ANIMALS. A wonderful hospital for the treatment of animals, from the largest to the smallest has been equipped by the University of Philadelphia. An operating table has been set- up, and is designed specially for big animals, such as horses and cows, relates the C hildren’s Newspaper. They are treated like patients in a human hospital, except that, of course, everything is on a much bigger stale. It takes a quart of chloroform, for instance, to get a horse into a sleep ready for an operation. Operations are not the only part of the hospital’s work, for horses, cows, pigs, mules and dogs are treated for influenza, faults in breathing, indigestion, nervous breakdown, skin affections, and even for being “run down.” It is here that vivisection is made to be of use to the animals themselves, and it is said that through the knowledge thus acquired thousands of valuable animals and well-loved pets have had their lives prolonged to their natural span, instead of being destroyed at the first accident that happens. A TWO-YEAR CLOCK. An electric clock that will run for two years without renewal or attention, has recently been patented in France. Its operation is extremely simple, and, once regulated, it needs no attention until it becomes necessary to put fresh electrolyte in the single cell that supplies the power. JAPANESE ROMANCE. The eldest daughter of jjaron Tokugawa, of Tokio, Japan, Miss Krkuto Tokugawa, has descended to the rank of a commoner in order to marry the man she loves. Her father is a younger brother of Prince I. Tokugawa, who was destined to become emperor as the sixteenth Shogun had the Tokugawa Shogunate remained in power. In theory, Miss Tokugawa ought to keep the family blood untainted by the touch of the lower class, but she is willing to sacrifice titles and blood ties, and has already taken the necessary steps for the establishment of another family in which she renounces all claim to inherited nobility. Her affianced husband is Mr Kenosuke Tagn, an import merchant, who has not even had a college education. He is a plain young man who possesses sufficient charm to win the heart of a noble’s beautiful daughter. Miss Tokugawa. is the leader of a set of young Japanese who have been educated abroad, and who lead a social life akin to that known in Europe and America. The couple first met at a dance at the Imperial Hotel in Tokio last winter. Mr Taga’s business in Tokio was destroyed iu the earthquake, and until the wedding he is living m one room close to Baron Tokugawa’s house. HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS, The following hints may prove useful to the cakemaker : Test the heat of the oven several times whilst preparing a cake, remembering that all ovens have their special charactens tics, and must be duly humoured. If your oven has the least tendency to burn from the bottom, you should place the cake on a layer of bran or a piece of wood; and if the top of the oven becomes unduly heated cover the cake with buttered paper. A little good custard powder added to the ingredients is a great improvement in ordinary plain or sponge cake mixtures. It not only makes the cake richer and lighter, but gives it a delicious iavour. One dessertspoonful to ! b of flour (or more, if liked) is the proportion; and one can use lemon, almond, or vanilla to vary the flavour. This is worth trying nowadays when one has to economise with eggs. If the recipe says two eggs and you can afford only one, try adding a dessert spoonful of vinegar to one egg; beat thoroughly, and it will be found that the quantity has increased to the value of two eggs, likewise the flavour is much improved. To decorate a cake or jam sponge quickly without icing it, place a large paper star on the flat surface and hold it carefully in position. Now, with a sugar dredger, dust thickly with pink or white icing- sugar on the portion of the cake that is not covered by the star. The effect is most attractive, and requires but a minimum of trouble. If when making a caraway-seed cake the seeds are pounded with a pestle and mortar with some of the granulated sugar, the cake does not seem so full of “ bits,” and the flavour is much stronger. The baking of a cake- is as 'mportani as the making, and a good rule is, the richer the cake the slower the oven, after the first quarter of an hour. Never do more than lightly stir or fold in the flour after the butter and sugar have been beaten to a cream and the eggs well beaten in. And remember that it is absolutely fatal to the lightness of a cake to do any beating < nee the flour is added. Never fill a cake-tin more than twothirds full of the uncooked mixture. You will find that if it rises properly it will, when cooked, almost fill the tin ; and if the tin is nearly full before the ixture is cooked, the latter will probably “ run over.” To give fruit cakes a richer appearance, nla.ee ti e flour in a cool oven to SJightlv bake first. b ‘

Have you ever tried to make your own scent’.' First you need sweet-scented flowers, such as violets, cowslips, »oses, and lavender. Pick when quite ary, and then remove the petals. Nmv get a glass jam-jar, and from a sheet of cot ton-wool cut a number ot discs big enough to slip into it. The edges of the discs should touch the jar all round. You will also require a supply of tile best Lucca oil. Take a good-sized pie-dish, and put into it some of the discs of cotton-wool. Four oil over them. It will he best to soak thoroughly eight or nine pieces. •See that your jam-jar is clean inside. At the bottom sprinkle a thin layer ol salt, and on this drop a handful of petals. Then put into the jar one of the oilsoaked discs of cot ton-wool, pressing it on to the petals with a spoon. Now put in another layer of petals, and then a further disc of cotton-wool,, continuing until the jar is filied. Tiiere must always be a piece of oil-soaaed cotton-wool on top. In order to keep the contents of the jar air-tight tie a double thickness of greaseproof paper over the mouth. Put in a warm place—in the sun, if possible —and leave for a fortnight. At the end of that time remove the cover and empty tiie oil into small bottles. It will be surprisingly fragrant. Cork tightly. To get the oil, press the layers of .ohonwool and flower petals with a stick or spoon. The oil will run to the bottom, and if you tip the jar you will be able to pour it out.