LADIES' COLUMN.

Thames Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 17585, 26 March 1929, Page 2

LADIES' COLUMN.

TO KEEP LETTUCE FRESH AND OTHER HINTS. It is aftcii necessary to keep a lettuce lor several days before it is required for use. One of the best ways to do this is to wet the lettuce thoroughly and roll it in paper. Tuck the end in firmly to exclude the air. A paper bag with the neck tied tightly with a string serves the purpose well. Celery may be kept crisp in the same way. To fresh cucumbers that are limp they should be rolled in wet tissue paper. Treated in this way they will keep fresh for days in the hottest weather. Another method of keeping them fresh is to stand the stalk end in water. J.f the washer of the water tap gives wav and you can't just attend to it at once or stop flow of water, just get a. piece of strong string. Press down the top of the tap and wind the string rund it several times to keep it in place. You will find you can use the tap as usual. Put a, piece of bread in the cake tin to keep your cakes fresh. When making omelettes or Yorkshire puddings remember that half a cup of cold water added to the milk will make them considerably lighter than if mixed with milk onl y. Use sour milk if you want a light cake. It is much better than fresh milk. Sweet milk makes a cake eut like nound cake. To" make fine breadcrumbs quickly and well, cut the soTt part from a stale loaf and put it into a clean muslin hag; tie this at the top and gently rub it with the hands until the crumbs are fine enough for any purpose. Laundry Blue.—Buy from the chemist 3d worth of indigo blue and oxalic acid, mixed. Divide this into three equal portions; nut each portion into a half-pint bottle, and fill up with water. Let the preparations stand for 24 hours. . when, it will be ready for use; it does not "cloud" the clothes and is much more economical, than the ordinary blue. Floor Stain.—Boil together for 10 minutes one quart of water., one ounce and a half of washing soda, quarter of an ounce of bicarbonate of soda, and two ounces and a half of Vandyke brown. When the stain has been applied and has thoroughly dried, it should be polished in the ordinary way. Furniture polish can be made quite inexpensively from the following ingredients :—Two-thirds of raw linseed oil and one-third of turpentine; mix well and apply with a brush; wipe off with a soft cloth, rubbing well till quite dry. Dents and' scratches almost entirely disappear under this treatment; if applied* regularly it will cause the furniture to retain a particularly fresh appearance. In order to ensure furniture taking a better polish, first wipe it all over with a cloth wrung out of hot water, then apply the furniture cream. This will produce a brilliant surface which will not show finger marks. WOMEN'S VOICES. I am an optimist about most things. For years I have believed that the duty on cigars will eventually be removed, that there will be a- reduction of the income tax, that policewomen will stop wearing those awful boots and learn to smile, that broadcast programmes will become amusing and that Wells will write another "Mr, Polly." . . Therefore, whjpn I am gloomy, it is time for all men to despair. Hear, then, with strict attention the prophecy which I am about to make. The voices of women are deteriorating, and the deterioration will continue and increase with the years. You must have noticed it. When you were young there were millions of women whose speech was music to the ear, even when its contents failed to impress the mind. They spoke quietly, they spoke slowly, and you listened without regret, ./because there was a song in every syllable. When that tall girl with the brown eyes said that she was deeply sensible of the honour you had done her by asking her to marry you, but it could neveir be, because she. loathed the sight of you but she hoped, nevertheless, that you would remain good friends—even then, although your life was wrecked, you wanted to ask her to say it over again, because it all sounded so beautiful.' And to-day? The world is full of _ women with faces like sirens and voices like foghorns. No, they are not all like fog-horns. I must not forget that there are the high, refined, piercing voices; the flat, metalling voices; the voices that raspingly recall a parrot sharpening its beak on the bars of a dusty cage; the shrill and fife-like voices and the roaring boisterous, invincible voices that could shout "taxi!" in the middle of the Sahara with every hope of a successful result. A terrifying proportion of the women one meets to-day speak in one or another of those, voices. Perhaps they cannot help it; they have to make themselves heard. In the streets they must compete with the arrogant hunder of omnibuses, the squawk of motor horns, and the whine of hawkers. . • In restaurants, musicians specially retained bv the management split the air with the groan of saxophones, the thwack of drums, and the. agonised entreaty of bowler-hatted trumpets. Even on the Sabbath, in the towers of the churches, the bells shout joyous discords with their tongues of brass. These are the obstacles which -women are determined to overcome. Yesterday a friend of mine, a doctor, said to me: "You can blame the telephone for the stridency of many women. . "To-day it is so much easier to ring up a friend than to go around to see her, and unluckily large numbers of women do not realise yet that

one is heard just as well if one speaks quietly into the telephone. "The popularity of open air sports has a lot to do with it, too. Women who ride and play golf are often apt to use their outdoor voices on indoor occasions." It is because there is no indication that open-air exercise will become unfashionable— and why should it?—or that we shall learn to muffle effectively our constant cannonade of everyday life that I am pessimistic about women's voices. Surely, as the aioices of the world increae, there will be even greater need of stridency among the eloquent sex. A desperate bust" ness. I "* '< i TABLE TIMES FOR BOILING. j

h. m. A ham, 201b. weight, requires . 6 30 A tongue (if dry) after soaking . 4 0 A tongue out of pickle . 2g to 3 0 A neck of mutton 1 30 A chicken 0 20 A large fowl 0 45 A pigeon 0 45