A WORLD WONDER.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18382, 28 September 1929, Page 14

A WORLD WONDER.

A woman’s handbag is one of the wonders of the modern world. Its capacity appears to have no limits, and the contents of a small boy’s pocket are a model of neatness and necessity compared with it. What can any schoolboy or any man show to compare with the list of treasured trifles which a business girl turned out of her bag recently? Mirror, comb, powder compact and puff, lipstick, bundle of orange sticks, nail file, penknife, fruit knife, fountain pen, one pencil and two pieces of pencil, cheque book, notebook, notecase, cardcase, length of gold braid, two pieces of material for matching, packet of cigarettes, box and packet of matches, five omnibus tickets, 11 cigarette cards, concert programme, two theatre ticket counterfoils, seven keys, two handkerchiefs, bottle of perfume, newspaper cutting, five snapshots, four visiting cards, seven letters, three postcards, one pound and eleven pence, three stamps ten receipts, two income tax forms, three sheets of blank paper and an envelope, eight safety pins, one stocking (laddered), one eucalyptus gum, needle and cotton, sundry scraps of paper. The young culprit maintained, after carefully examining the list, that 36 of the 40 items were necessary, and that her handbag is never without them. DANGER TO BEAUTY. "Can you beat it?” as the Americans quaintly say. America, the home of the beauty parlour, and France, the mother of make-up, have suddenly discovered need to protect the faces of lovely women from the effects of unreliable cosmetics. “Some cosmetics would take the paint off an automobile,” a leading New York skin specialist recently said. Americans tell the world that six million pounds (not dollars) worth of cosmetics were sold in 1928. Any preparation on which the manufacturer’s name and address is printed is quaranteed as wholsome, but in America and France there are so many anonymous cosmetics that legislation is being framed to kill them. So money-making is the sale of cosmetics that small laboratories have sprung up everywhere for the making of “miracle potions” guaranteed to do almost anything. So heedless is woman in her pursuit of beauty she will use these things without one thought as to their reliability, but motherly governments are stepping in and preventing any further havoc of feminine skins. THE MOTHER’S JOB. At the national conference of Labour women in England Mrs Porteus, of Durham, commended the idea of a trade union for mothers, with of course, the right to strike. A daily newspaper suggests that the lady will not find the propaganda easy, for the mothers are perverse creatures. They are not earning any money, though they may be doing half a dozen jobs, but few of them are conscious of self-sacrifice. Mothers are made that way. They really do prefer the end pieces of the suet pudding, and they really do think it more important that father should have his ’baccy than that mother should have a new hat occasionally. Their sacrifice is voluntary, and all the eloquence of Mrs Porteus will fail to enlist under her matriarchal banner the millions of mothers whom logically she might expect to rally. Life is not logical. If it were it would be unendurable. GRANDMOTHER’S TRINKETS. Young girls who have been left their grandmothers’ and great aunts’ trinkets are now the envy of their friends. Nothing is so fashionable or so sought after at the moment as genuine Victorian jewellery; necklaces and heavy brooches and ear-rings of garnets, filigree gold-work dog collars and bracelets of massive and intricate designs. Lady Seafield was the pioneer of this mode when she wore a real Victorian coral necklace at a recent party, emphasising her likeness to Queen Victoria.