WOMAN'S WORLD.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5567, 16 May 1896, Page 3

WOMAN'S WORLD.

The Czarina's coronation robe, on which work has been progressing for the last six months, is almost finished. Its estimated cost is 200,000 dollars. The Wellesley College girls are showing practical sympathy for suffering Armenia. They have agreed to do, without butter for a month if the faculty will give the butter money to the cause of Armenia. The first successful woman editor and proprietor of a newspaper in America yas Miss Watson, who edited the Courant 120 years ago. She numbered among her j subscribers George Washington. A lady was chosen enrolling clerk of the Kentucky Senate by acclamation, and is the first woman ever elected to this position. She is a widow of about thirty with- two young children to support. Mary Anderson has a slipper which belonged to Mary, Queen of Scots. When that ill-fated monarch was beheaded, she wore footgear as dainty and beautiful as a bride— that is, so history and Mary Anderson say. Countess Fritz Hohenau is a cousin of the German Emperor. She has this winter introdnced the custom in Brussels for ladies to ride to hounds astride. Beyond this she has organised a club of aristocratic women who are to lend their countenances to this most unseemly style. The Empress of Russia has caused to be built a magnificent swimming bath at the Winter Palace. It covers an area of 1400 square feet, is six feet deep, and built of white marble. The young Empress has had a great many alterations made at the palace, which are said to have cost several million rubles. The Queen of Sweden is one of the richest women in the world. Her brothers owned the gambling table at Wiesbaden, and from them and that source she inherited her wealth. All her money will go to the Crown Prince and his honrgeoise wife, of whom the Queen, aristocrat that she is, is still very fond. ;* Queen Margherita, of Italy, when riding her bicycle recently in the part of the park of Monza from which the public is excluded, was stopped by a carbineer, scolded for trespassing, and then asked to give her name. The same day she sent the man her photograph and one of the ten-franc pieces bearing her effigy by the side of King Humbert's that he might recognise her in future. The Queen of England has a necklace of pink pearls that is worth and the Dowager Empress of Germany one made of thirty-two pearls that would bring easily £25,000. The Rothschild women have, however, gems of this sort that far exceed in value those of royalty. Baroness Gosfcave de Rothschild possesses one made up of five rows of pearls, the whole chain being valued at .£40,000. Madame Gith, cantiniere of the Fifth Regiment of Chasseurs d'Afrique, of the French Army, who has just been decorated ■ with her eighth medal, has ,a militaryrecord that not many men can boast. Now in her fifty-first year, Madame Gith in her lifetime has seen service in the Crimea, in Italy, in Syria, and in Mexico. At sixteen she was under fire when aiding the wounded before Sebastopol. An English poet of the last century gives the following ad vice, as to the wearing of colours :— I " The lass whose skin is like the hazel hrpwn, With brighter colours should o'ercome her own. Let the fair nymph in whose white cheek is seen A rosyblnsh, be clad in cheerful green. Ladies grown pale with sickness or despair, The sable mournful hno should choose to wen P. So the pale moon still shines with purest light, Clad in the dusky mantle of the night." Throughout the winter all the smart women of London, including the princesses, have donned high-necked black gowns for the theatre. Bare shoulders, or even enveloping opera-wraps, are hardly ever seen in the boxes now on chilly nights. Soft ruffs of daintily-coloured chiffon relieve the.sombreness of the attire. The fashion ( is said to have been set by Maude of Wales, who has always suffered more or less from bronchial weakness. i One of the sensations at the Marlboroughi Vanderbilt wedding was the police pre- ! cautions taken to prevent the assassination of the bride. A crank had been sending threatening letters to Miss Vanderbilt and her mother. He wanted money, of course. Mrs Vanderbilt decided "to take no chance of attempts being made to carry them out." When anyone mounted the front steps of the house the Pinkerton men closed in at either side, and stood close to the caller until he had spoken with the liveried servant who answered the bell. Annie May Abbott, the famous "electric magnet," whose feats of strength created a considerable sensation some years ago, is amusing herself now with the strong men of China and Japan. The Japanese wrestlers, whose physical strength is celebrated the world over, were unable to raise Miss Abbott from the floor, while with the tips of her fingers she neutralized their most strenuous efforts to lift light objects, such as a cane from a table. The Japanese papers say this is hypnotism, while the Chinese journals accuse her of being in league with the Powers of Evil. Mdlle Jeanne Benaben, a young French woman, is in some . respects the most remarkable personof her sex in Europe. She is now but eighteen years old, yet two years ago she received the degree of Bachelor of Arts from one of- the most famous colleges of France. She then became professor of philosophy in a woman's college at Lyons, and this year wae a candidate at the Sorbonne i'or the important degree of licentiate in philosophy. She emerged from an extraordinarily, severe examination third out of 200 candidates. She amazed the examiners by her erudition and serene composure throughout the trying ordeal. Mrs King, the widow of Captain Richard King, of South Texas, is one of the world's remarkable women. She owns and manages her estate of 1,250,000 acres with success. Her ranch of Santa Gertrudis is the largest in the world. It is bounded by Corpus Christi Bay for a distance of forty miles, and by barbed wire fences for 300 miles more. From the front door of her baronial castle to her front gate is thirteen miles, and she can drive in her carriage sixty-five miles in a straight line without going off her own premises. Mrs King is

«ood she does and the care she takes of her people. For example, every labourer on the estate receives a cow, not to mention help of other kinds. The vastness of her estate may be gathered from the fact that there are no fewer than 200,000 cattle on the ranch, while the expenses of management amount to about .£20,000 a year. Three hundred .cowboys are regularly employed, and 1200 ponies set aside for their use.

Miss Jane Harrison, LL.D., the distinguished lecturer on Greek Archeology is the cleverest woman of an age renowned for feminine ascendency. It was in a little village of Yorkshire, not far from the coast, that Miss Harrison first developed her love for the classics. After displaying remarkable talent at school, she devoted five years to strenuous study at home, and then entered .on her brilliant career, at. .Cambridge. On leaving the university she buried herself in the reading-room of the British Museum, and then commenced a long period of travel, during which she visited almost every Continental museum. Her renown spreading, Miss Harrison was invited to deliver a series of lectures at the British Museum, which she followed up by a futher series at the South Kensington Museum. Her style of speech is picturesque and her command of the English language gives power to her utterances, while a capacity for minute, and almost painful accuracy, characterises all that she does.