THE MODERN GIRL

Te Aroha News, Volume XLI, Issue 6439, 17 January 1924, Page 2

THE MODERN GIRL

SYDNEY SILHOUETTES

MANNERS IN TRAIN, TRAM, BOAT, AND ’BUS

“NO TIME TO LIVE”

(By a Sydney Girl.)

Madame Sydney pounced upon the new and shining' wristlet watch that her friend was wearing. “Ah!” she said, “the first stage.” Her friend enquired, and Madame explained “You can divide a girl’s progress into three stages,” she said. “First of all she appears with a gold wristlet watch, even though her birthday is four months behind, and Christmas a thing of the past. Secondly, she leaves off her left-hand glove to show a diamond ring; and, in the third stage, she starts to embroider her trousseau in the tram and on the ferry.” '

, LOVE’S INDUSTRY The “third” stage evidently has a big proportion of girls at present. Boats and trains, trams and motor ’buses are filled with damsels who s.cw industriously, and the fair seamstresses aren't very careful to discriminate in the garments they publicly manufacture. Said one disgusted man: “I didn’t mind picking up the knitting needle that girls dropped in the tram during war time, but I do draw the line at rescuing yards of lace that they’re quite evidently attaching to lingerie.” Sydney trams aren’t the cleanest places in which to sew, either. Various notices exhort smokers to cleanliness, but as these notices are perched high, perhaps they’ve escaped the eye of Mere Man, and, in any case, there’s no notice urging mothers to restrain their children from making dining rooms of the cars.

Little Bobby Sydney seems always anxious to spread toffee on the seat as soon as he enters the car.

THE FILM MAN

The film man wroje to Miss Sydney. “Mine,” he scrawled, “is the flaming super-passion the real tender world-shaking stuff that gets you by the heart-strings, raw elemental throbs that grip and clasp and and clutch. You have never before conceived that such a colossal superlove could be featured through all the ages.”

, But Miss Sydney wrote back, sadly: “You are getting tired of me. I miss the lyrical ecstasy of your earlier letters. Why do you write so formally, so coldly? Ino longer stir you. Good-bye.” HURRY AND HYGIENE

In Sydney the business man loves to meet the hygienic damsel at lunch time—l don’t think. Tie has dashed into a tea-room with about five minutes to spare for his entire meal, and he has to wait and join the hopeless, hungry crowd which stands bver every table counting the very mouthfuls which those seated take. But Miss Hygiene, mercifully, is not over sensative—if she were the Sydney population would soon be one of defective digestion. She examines lier cup deliberately—if there is the tiniest crack in it she sends it back—she burnishes her plate, knife, fork and spoon very carefully on her serviette, and rescues a drowning fly from the cream jug, but the frantic business ' man must call resolution, courage, and resignation to his aid lest he swoop upon the tea and pie which tempt his nostrils. Miss Hygiene, who has a horror of mumps’ germs per telephone, is the same girl who was recently discovered pushing a size four foot into a size three shoe. , “My corns are so bad,” she moaned. "I must go and see a phrenologist.” Her small brother looked at her scornfully. “Idiot!” he said. “You mean a chiropodist— a phrenologist is the chap who reads your head.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, well, you needn’t think yourself so very smart,” she said. “I knew it was something about bumps, and I wasn’t so very far out.” SHE HURRIES There are times, of course, when she hurries —she hurries home at night, and she hurries out again to catch a train, and, when she gets to her evening’s destination, she hurries to tell everyone what a dreadful hurry she had to get there. But the “hurrying habit” has a bad effect upon her—it spoils her temper and impairs her good looks. Her hair, on these occasions of hurry, is screwed up at the nape of her. neck, and her hat is usually at a rakish angle before she has gone the length of the street. Her silk hose resembles a

collapsed concertina and her blouse shows signs of having left undone those fasteners which she ought to have done; but of course she hasn’t time to live, she will tell you, and she knows nothing about the ethics of living. CUPID’S STOCKTAKING The year’s at the close, and Cupid has been stocktaking, with the result that the carping critics in Sydney (and, believe me, my dear, there’s heaps of them) are down like a ton of bricks on the flapper. Ever since Eve ate the apple mere man has blamed all the trouble of this life on poor, defenceless woman. This being the most suitable season, he’s yelling himself hoarse over the way she’s imposing on him.

“That is what comes of equal suffrage, he says, acting as if he had a bright thought. Now, every woman in Sydney knows that equal suffrage has as much to do with (Cupid’s lament as a caterpillar’s chance of reaching the canals of Mars. Young Sydney pays £1 for his girl’s taxis for exactly the same reason that young Marcus Antonio hired the best gilded chariot in the local stables for his in the jazzproof, far-off days-of Caesar, before suffrage had ever been invented. The reason of this extravagance is his own vafiity.

Sydney wants the kind of girl and the kind of time that demands taxis and cocktails, scented cigarettes, and midnight suppers, set to hectic jazz sti’ains.

“Are there other kinds of girls in Sydney?” you ask. “My dear, I’m surprised at you! Of course there are—the street cars and picture theatres are crowded w'ith them, and they are just as pretty, just as fascinating, only the cabarets never see them. Ypung Sydney, with masculine ambition, yearns to be noticed personally just as much as his fiancee wants to be noticed —obscurity is the cardinal sin. He considers he’s something right out of the box when he entertains his Baby Doll (who won’t upon any consideration ride in street cars, or sit in the cheap seats, or eat in the simple cafes out of the fashionable quarter), and so he pays for the bright lights and the high spots, and when he gets them and Cupid presents his bill, why, then he’s as mad as can be, and airs his grievances, expecting lots of sympathy. Somehow he gets it, too.