Ladies’ Column.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XX, Issue 2029, 11 February 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

Ladies’ Column.

WS y Men Don’t Murry. rho in rriago market in all Englishspeaking lations has become an arena of competiti n as keen as any auction room. Die natu il impulses of women are disregarded. ] others advise prudent alliances, and dis<j antcnancc, by fair means and foul, lovlmatches. Girls choke down their feedings, and aid and abet their seniors it| encouraging men who are “catches," throwing off the restraints which made their grandmothers charming. But still the cry goes up, “Men do not marry.” And yet the most inveterate clubmen, the mocker at love in a cottage, was once a youth not hhw, to whom the vision of a home was enchanting. Almost every man tries his hand at realizing some such dream early in life, but the attempt is usually nipped in the hud for want of means, or by failure to win the particular woman on whom his heart is sot. He suffers acutely ; but man is an elastic creature ; in time ho mingles again with the world, not entirely proof against feminine fascination, but Uncling it almost impossible again to sot up an ideal. Matrons with attractive daughters cannot complain that their girls sec few men. The tendency of the ago is to level the barriers between the sexes : girls play lawn-tennis, they row, they rink, they sit in the smoking room, they dance not only in the evenings but in the afternoons. The natural tendency of such intimate associations would bo matrimony, But the fact is that men who might have had serious intentions arc frightened off before liking begets love. There is an all-prevailing fuss pervading the intercourse of young people which is altogether detrimental. The instant a pair begin to show any particular liking for each other’s society the wide world around them is instantly on the qui vke. The mother watches, fusses, reports to her cronies, and too often catechises the girl, wounding her sense of delicacy, and making her conscious and constrained ; or leading her to imagine herself beloved, when the man’s feeling is only that of pleasure in the society of many a young woman who does her best to make herself agreeable. Men are usually ignorant how girls note and weigh the attentions they receive, and that they impart the details of such homage to sympathetic, if envious, feminine cars, thus giving body to vague nothings, and brooding over trifles till they gather shape. Meanwhile the man, having said the pretty things his ideas of politeness have prompted, goes away forgetting them and their recipient, while she is expecting a declaration as the result of a few soft nothings, a squeeze of the hand, or tender glances. Women are not aware, on the other hand, how sincerely he may like or admire a girl without a thought beyond mere good-will. And it is precisely the better kind of man who falls into the misfortune of raising false hopes—the man who believes in the simplicity and candor of women, desires their sympathy and values their regard.

A man of the world has the instinct of self-preservation developed strongly enough for his protection. The sense of safety is the real bond of many of the alliances now so fashionable—sometimes salutary, often rnischevious —between men and married women. Kept within bounds, no suspicion attaches to them, no hopes are built upon them. The lady receives the petits soins, dear to the female nature, which the husband of long standing often neglects ; the man receives the sympathy grateful to the masculine creature. Men feel this without analyzing their sentiments, and it is a common complaint among them nowadays that it is impossible to become well acquainted with a girl without exciting the too lively anxiety of her friends. And no wise man proposes without knowing the character of her friends. The mothers who are so eager for their daughters’ establishment are wise, although this precipitation is not only foolish, but indecorous.

The attraction that lies in a beautiful woman’s open mouth says tho Boston Krooni, hasn’t been sung by poets a great deal, but it is a momentous fact just the same. There is a lovely girl, whose homo is at one of our watering places, who almost alw»3's goes about with her mouth, in which there are two exquisite rows of pearly teeth, open, and who, oddly enough, generally has an admiring circle of men and youths about her. Her elder sister, who doesn’t hold her mouth open, told the other day how the thing goes : “At the party last night,” said she, “Bessie was sitting with her mouth closed, for a wonder, and there wasn’t anybody with her—for a wonder, too. Presently she opened her mouth a little, and a young man left me and went over to her. Then she opened her mouth a little wider, and another j’oung man went over where she was. By-and-by she opened her mouth a little more, so that both rows of her teeth showed, and she kept laughing about something, and the men kept gathering around her. Dear me ! I thought her jaws would break, but it’s perfectly natural for her to keep her mouth open that way. And tho sToung5 T oung men fairly swarmed around her all tho evening.”

Dress flints.

One of the least trying combinations for woman's dress is wood-color and green, which can bo worn by the very pretty and by the very ugly. In many fashionable costumes there is a decided contrast between the colors of the draperies and the underskirts, and the result is effects which arc picturesque and agreeable. Of course a woman with no taste will make a greater fright of herself when allowed a choice of colors than she will when compelled to dress in one hue, and, equally of course, a short woman or a fat woman has no right to insult her follow-beings by dividing herself into sections of sharply contrasting tints, but a tall, slender girl, or even a woman of medium size, is sure to look pretty this season, and the streets will look gay enough.

Women are not apt tn bo thoroughly extravagant, but generally have some pet economy. With some the instinct is directed towards the saving of pins ; others like to hoard brown paper and pieces of twine. Many tremble at the idea of any waste in coal or light; the several fires are kept at a minimum, and the gas is turned off on the smallest pretext. Some believe that thrift consists in spending no money except as necessity demands, while others regard any make-shift, and living from hand to mouth, as the worst extravagance, and consider that real economy lies in having plenty of everything and using it with care. Contriving a meal out of nothing is the acme of satisfaction to many housekeepers, while others deny the possibility of such miracles,