People and Their Doings.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 164, 13 July 1931, Page 6

People and Their Doings.

Wellington Discovery recalls the Case of Mrs Mouat : When Peter Dawson Lo: u his Collar Stud : Women to-day Approach the Greek Ideal.

'jMIE SENSATIONAL discovery of the body of a missing Wellington girl under the spoil from the new Kilbirnie tunnel is a tribute to the thoroughness of the Wellington police, who were not averse to following up a slender clue. The case recalls the famous Mouat case in Christchurch. The police found a few burned bones in the back garden at St Martins, but they would have given almost anything to find the head, and the mystery of its disappearance has not yet been solved. The river was dragged in all directions, but the police did not act on the suggestion that sewage works which were proceeding in various directions should be investigated. Many Christchurch people thought that the head was deposited in a sewer which was being filled in. There is only one man who can tell, and that is Mouat.

@ $$ 3? PETER DAWSON will probably have a new collar stud when he sings in Christchurch next week. During one of his concerts in Wellington, in the middle of a comparatively long song cycle, the audience noticed that in the last half of the cycle he kept putting his hand to his collar, and at the end, during the applause, it was realised that his collar had come adrift because of a truant stud. Amidst laughter and much applause a member of the audience stepped up to the platform and handed from the floor the stray portion of the stud. Mr Dawson accepted it gratefully, but the correcting of the collar was not easy. 11 is neck-tie also came adrift, and it was only with the help of his accompanist that the whole was readjusted.

s2? sS? jV|~ARY ROBERTS RINEHART, who is certainly in the front line of American women writers, received a total of £460 for forty-five stories and novelettes turned out during her first year of writing, though some of the stories brought as little as two To-day Mrs Rinehart’s yearly earning from her writing represents a sum that would have been a fantastic fortune in the time when an adequate income in the literary field seemed to her like an echo from a Hans Andersen story book. lin - patien t women workers should read ** My Story,” Mrs Rinehart's epic account of what happens to the woman who can rip the silver lining out of a cloud and use it to makCM&jffles for a carnival costume.

‘‘N OT for generations has the standard

of women’s beauty been so high as it is to-day.” This statement was made by Mr Bertram Park, the English artist and photographer. “ Women to-day,” said Mr Park, “ have personality and character expressed in their fine mouths and chins, whereas in bygone days the mouths were pinched and the chins narrow. In old portraits of notable women you can see evidences of good family and breeding in their foreheads and even noses, but the mouth and chin seem to fall away. “In bygone days the contours of a woman’s face were admired merely from the picturesque point of view. While the small mouth and chin are picturesque, they lack the personality that stamps the high standard of beauty we find to-day. Now women are admired as much for their character and expression as for superficial attractiveness. “As regards figure, too, the modern woman is much taller and bigger in the waist and shoulders, but perfectly proportioned. She approaches to the Greek ideal height of seven and a half heads, while the mediaeval woman was only, say, six and a half heads in height.”

J-TOR MANY YEARS tlie Chapel Royal at Stirling Castle has been used as a military store for the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders for which regiment the Castle serves as a depot. From time to time numerous protests have been made against this “ desecration,” and only last week the matter was referred to on the floor of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Now it has been announced that the Mar Office is arranging to vacate the chapel and hand it over to the Department of Works. It is considered impossible to restore the building to its original function as a chapel, but the Department hope to utilise it as a museum in which will be displayed relics and articles of interest connected with the castle. The new arrangement will probably be in operation next summer. This Chapel Royal as it exists at present dates from the time of James VI., the date mark being 1591, The foundations of an earlier chapel supposed to be erected in 1107 can be traced some yards in front of the present building.

FORMER New Zealand girl, who is now married and settled in London, says that the days of romance are not over in the big city, and that boys to-day with only the proverbial sixpence in their pockets are going into the heart of the city, against what almost seems hopeless odds, and finding work. Her eldest son, a lad of fourteen, finding that his father was having severe “ cuts ” in his salary, decided to leave school and go and seek work in a shop. After a week’s hunting he still found himself minus a job, but persuaded his mother to give him another sixpence to go to Bishopsgate, where he might see something. There he saw a notice up in a window, “ Respectable boy wanted.’* He went in and got the job, with one of the biggest upholsterers’ merchants in that important locality, at 12s 6d per week. He is able to give his mother 6s 6d per week, it costs 2d per day for fares, and the other 5s he reckons will keep him in clothes.

9 ® JN ONE of the towns of Germany, the great pianist, Liszt, once found in the hall where he was to give a recital a very small audience. Stepping to the front of the platform, he announced: “Ladies and gentlemen, the audience which is absent deserves to be punished, and you deserve to be rewarded. I invite you all to dine with me at my hotel, and after dinner I shall play to you there.” And he did so.

CIXTY YEARS AGO. (From the “Star” of July 11, 1.571) : Hokitika, July 10, 12.45 p.m.—The Omeo, from Melbourne, arrived in the roadstead yesterday, but the sea was too high to tender her. She signalled the words “ Suez mail,” and then had to stand out to sea. It is supposed she has the Suez mail telegrams on board. There is no chance of tendering her to-day, as there is a mountainous sea running. Commemorative dinner.—Although the dinner proposed to be given in honour of the marriage of the Princess Louise and the Marquis of Lome has not yet been carried into effect, it is not altogether abandoned. Extract from report on the drainage of the city. -The City of Christchurch, for which this system of drainage is required, is limited to an area of little more than one and a half square miles, as all the rural waters now draining through the city can l>e diverted by the respective river boards before they enter the city.