WOMAN'S WORLD.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10813, 5 July 1913, Page 2

WOMAN'S WORLD.

In a boys' school in Trondjheim, Norway, the lads are taught cooking, and show remarkable skill. Other male schools are to follow tho practice. Women must look. to thedr laurelp.

During the last few years there has been a notable revival of ono old cottage industry, namely, lace-making, in Norfolk. The Association which promoted this scheme eleven years ago gives work to many cripples, invalids and at least one deaf and dumb girl. Queen Mary has given some handsome orders for Norfolk lace.

Investigations made by an " Express" representative show that women are invading the last stronghold of business masculinity—the City bank—not only in London, but in Manchester and elsewhere. Many gTeat London banks have 'recently introduced women correspondents, and conservative private banking 1 institutions have made eimilax changes.

The Queen of Montenegro celebrated her sixty-sixth birthday a little while ago. _ She was the daughter of a Montenegrin Voivode, Peter Vukotich. She married at thirteen, bore her eldest daughter, Zorka (who married Peter of Servia), when sho was just seventeen, and lived all her life in MontenegTo until December, 1908, when she wintered in Paris to esoapo the winds of Cottinjo.

There are three cities which can boast of a " Jenny's Garden " —Paris, Brussels and Chicago. It is an institution founded by. M. Figuiere, the poet, and consists of an annual distribution of flowering plants _ to poor sempstresses and other working girls, it was the poet's happy thought to present girls who live in. dingy ■ surroundings with something to brighten tip tho home a little. Ono can imagine how one of these girls would treasure and oherish a flowering plant in her room.

King Manoel'a fiancee Is rumoured to be one of the prettiest of European Princesses. But her proud ancestry Is less oommon know- ' ledge, at least in England. If of small pre- J sent dignity, the Princess Augusta is a do- I scendant of Queens. Sho is the • granddaughter, too, of a Quean in her own right, Maria da Gloria, who reigned for eighteen years in Portugal, when Queen Victoria occupied the British throne and Queen Isabella the throne of Spain. It waa the first in- , stance in history of three Queens reigning l simultaneously in Europe.

King Edward at one time visited Mr Carnegie at Skibo. Little Margaret Carnegie's nurso had given her, some time before, a large print of the King; she had placed it in a conspicuous position on the wall of her day nursery, and when anyone oame to Bee her she made him or her bow to the portrait before she would talk. Margaret on this occasion took tho King by tho hand, led him into her nursery, and told him he must bow to his own portrait. "Everybody does that who comes to see me," she said, "and you must do it too," and his Majesty bowed aooordingly, after which Bhe gravely Introduced her two nurses to him.

A short time ago the Kadva Kanbi-s of Gujarat celebrated, after an interval of some ten years, the weddings of all the marriageable youths and girls in tho tribe. A similar custom prevails among a group of the Madras Chettis, and among pome Kareins in Burma it is only when an official visits their country and orders a wedding to take place that the ceremony is performed. This custom may be an extension of the human pairing season, oays a writor in " Man." At present, among the Kambis, it seems to be tho result of a system of hypergamy—the desire to marry a girl into a grade higher than her own—which results in a scarcity of bridegrooms and increase of the bridegroom price. But it may have originated in some belief connected with astrology, or eome tribal custom tho cause of which is now obscure.

The women and girls in many parts of New Guinea wear a. skirt of native grass, which hangs down from tho waißt to the knee, each piece of grass being plaited into a strong encircling belt at the top. The material may also be cocoanut or banana leaves, the former finely shredded with a shell. Sometimes the grass used is laid in the mud and stained black, or reddened by the juice of a root, and the three colours, red, black and light brown, are blended very harmoniously. The effect of wearing the skirt, especially when composed of banana leaves, is to make tho girl's walk approach moro closely to a waddle, and when some ducks were introduced lately at tho beadquarters of tho Anglican Mission, the boys nngallantly exclaimed, " They walk like the girls I"