WOMAN'S WORLD.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5460, 11 January 1896, Page 3

WOMAN'S WORLD.

Mrs William M. Chase, wif9 of the artist, collects ring 3, of which she now has several hundred.

When the Princess of Wales was married the king of the Belgians gave her lace of the value of .£IO,OOO. ' From that time the princess has gone on collecting, and now her collection is worth something like £50,000.

A rejected lover his sweetheart in London for the value of an engagement ring and articles provided towards the contemplated home. The county court judge explained that the plaintiff could not recover the ring, but he ordered the girl to pay ten shillings for the other things at the rate of ono shilling a month.

The Czarina has selected all the ornamentations for her own suite of cabins (which will be more artistically beautiful than anything that has yet bsen seen afloat) in the new yacht which the Czar is building. The Emperor is taking the greatest interest in his new yacht, and knows almost as much about details of construction as does the builder himself.

Mdlle Pauline de Grandpre probably knows more of the prison life of Frenchwomen than anyone else in France. . She lived in the StLazai-e prison as the housekeeper of her uncle, who was Chaplain there during the Empire. In the twentyfive year 3 that have elapsed since he died, she has devoted herself entirely to visiting female prisoners, and obtaining situations for them when they have undergone their sentences.

Miss Annie Pirie, a clever young artist, has just received a curious commission from Professor Flinders Petrie, the Egyptologist. She is to accompany him en his next tour of exploration in order to copy the frescoes and coloured mural decorations which the Professor hopes to discover in certain tombs situate among the mountains beyond Thebes. Miss Pirie is the youngest daughter of the late Principal Pirie, of Aberdeen University ; her mother is half-sister of Mr Archibald Forbes, the war correspondent. She is at present engaged in learning Arabic.

Tho Tuffnell Scholarship of ,£IOO a year for two years, tenable at University College, London, has been awarded to Miss Lucy Hall, a student in residence at Westfield College, Hampstead. The scholarship was founded by the late Sir Charles Tuffnell, and is awarded annually for distinction in chemistry. It is open to both men and women under twenty-five years of age, but has seldom been attained by a girl graduate. Miss Lucy Hall was a pupil at the Sheffield High School until 1893, when she passed the Intermediate B. Sc. Examination of London University, and obtained an Entrance Scholarship of £40 at Westfield College, where she has since resided while attending lectures both at Westfield and University Colleges.

Amid all the fierce and varied light of publicity which beats upon every movement of Mrs Langtry's life (says the New Budget) there is a charm in knowing that her little daiighter, Jeanne, is growing up into a young girl in an atmosphere of quietness and wise restriction such as is almost unusual nowadays. Jeanne Langtry at present only gives promise of being beautiful, but she has certain characteristics, her clear pale skin, her patrician bearing, and her wonderful eyes that are sufficient in themselves to mark her out as being possibly, a little later on, a rival of her celebrated mother. Although tall for her age, little Jeanne is still quite a child, and can enjoy, as she often does an afternoon of play with some of her small friends.

Senora Cousino is a South American widow reputed to be worth forty millions sterling. This lady owns vast expanses of land, many cattle ranches, a fleet of eight steamships, silver, copper, and coal mines, railroads, and many houses, beside personal property in the form of splendid jewels. She is probably the richest woman in the world. Just how much all her wealth amounts to no one knows, probably not even Senora Coußino herself. Prom her coal mines alone, it is stated, her income is .£17,000 a month. From her silver and copper mines she receives the larger sum of .£20,000 net, and uses the refuse from the coal mine to smelt the ore from the mines of silver and copper. Then her stock farms, whereon she breeds thoroughbred horses and cattle, and her ranches yield about as much as all her mining property put together. ,

An indignant American woman has been vigorously using her pen to attack the social shams of America — those of New York in particular. She says : — " This is the day of shams. I know a woman who is supposed to entertain lavißhly, yet who rarely receives a guest. I call her functions 'ghost parties/ because they are only the shadows of the substance, the event itself being purely imaginary. Why, that woman has gained her reputation for entertaining, and has received no end of dinner invitations on absolutely nothing at all ! I have suspected her tactics for some time, and now I am quite sure that what I assert is, indeed, true — that in nine cases out of ten her dinners are purely imaginary. She has a clever way of finding out who i 6 engaged, to whom, and then she asks people who she knows cannot come to her house, and so scores to her social account, with no other outlay than her crested paper and dainty seal."

Queen Ranavalona 111 is a highly attractive woman. She is thirty-four, rather an advanced age among Orientals, but she retains the slimnese and undulating, snake-like suppleness of youth. Her 'eighteen-inch waist, her tiny feet, and her hands, for which a number five glove iB rather large, assort well with a figure as delicate and dainty as a bit of old Dresden china. In complexion sfye is a trifle darker than most of her subjects, her skin <being of a rich and bright chocolate tint. The upper part of the face is full of dignity, with its shapely forehead and expressive almond-shaped eyes, the corners of which are slightly turned up, as among the women of the Far East. Prominent cheek-bones of the Malay typo and too narrow ahd long a chin somewhat mar the general' effect ; but the mouth is charming, especially when she smiles and reveals teeth of brilliant ivory, though rather larger than one could wish. She has a mass of dark, soft, thick hair, which she parts in the middle and plaits on either side, twisting it into a square knot at the neck ; but when her Majesty is in mourning it is allowed to flow loose, like a mane.