DOWN PETTICOAT LANE.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 73, Issue 366, 9 September 1930, Page 3

DOWN PETTICOAT LANE.

Ascot Kills the Goose. If you’ve screwed up your nerve to confront a new Dark Age of long and trailing skirts, high waists and fantastic outlines, you may just as well take out the screws again, and relax. For the long skirt is on a perfectly authentic death-bed. Ascot has killed the goose that laid the dress designers’ golden eggs. The fashion shown at England’s greatest racing event were so utterly exaggerated, and obviously unsuited for modern tastes and ways, that, instead of being greeted with reverent admiration by the public, they sent profane chuckles of merriment around the lawns. And the one solitary thing which a fashion can’t stand is heartfelt ridicule—so Ascot’s exag gerations have apparently done for us what medical protests and the remonstrances of sensible women could not—they’ve spared us the awful spectacle of the Colonial girl advancing in trailing clouds of dust and glory.

The Eaglet. Picture a wee scrap in a white gown, with dark hair and his small face all screwed up for one enormous howl; and know, with reverence, that you are beholding a future monarch of the skies, for this is the infant son of Colonel Lindbergh, who made a receat appearance on the American stage and was welcomed with plaudits loud and long. He looks a decidedly healthy and vigorous mite, and he’s to become accustomed to the skyways very early in life, for, when he was only four weeks old, he accompanied his father and mother by ’plane from New York to the Lindbergh home in Maine. Surely this must be pretty well a world’s record for youthful fliers. In Leningrad. Hard things are spoken of Russia—the prevailing impression being that it is equally compounded of blood, thunder and whiskers; but occasionally some interesting little bits of news issued forth, which seem to indicate that it is developing on its own lines, and lines not always to be despised by modern progress. For intance, we Naw Zealanders, of whom it’s said that our first industry is football and our second racing, should certainly approve of the fact that Russia hag a Minister of Sport, with a portfolio and a place in cabinet all to himself. Moreover, the Minister acts along laudable and orig-1 inal lines. He doesn’t like professional boxing at all, and recently declined to arrange a bout in which the enormous and terrifying Camera would have figured. He said, however, that he would be delighted to arrange any programme in which amateur sportsmen from the outside world should try their skill against “the Russian bear.” A good many people feel that the jingle of coins is rather a discordant accompaniment to the good old sporting songs, and will acknowledge that the Russian way of looking at this question has a strong—and likeable—flavour of idealism. The Golden Palette. As a rule, our florists’ shops are; charming and fragrant places, but they don’t go in for “novelties” very much. A bouquet is a bouquet and a buttonhole is a buttonhole. But in a blossomshop the other day I saw one really wonderful creation. Thousands of Iceland poppies had been sacrificed to make a gigantic artist’s palette—gold and flame and salmon colours mingling with apparent carelessness, just as the paints might have run from the painter’s tubes. The palette was to be used as decoration for an artistic gathering —and a glorious picco of work it was. Apparently our florists can rise to any occasion when the spirit moves them. A Job For the S.P.C.A.

Man’s inhumanity to man is bad enough, but at least it has a certain amount of provocation; man’s inhumanity to dumb animals, is a great deal harder to bear, according to a lady who has been making a tour of New Zealand recently., and has seen a good deal connected with farms and freezing works. The particular “dumb brother” whom she wants to champion is that most pathetic of all waifs—the little three-day old calf, who, being useful neither for future milking or beef purposes, is promptly dispatched to the freezing works. This she recognises as more or less of an economic necessity—but the conditions under which the animals travel, and finally wait for their death, are frequently utterly inhuman. She hag seen the calves, she says, piled one on top of the other, and slung out by the feet. They wait for their end in yards as bare and bleak as the Sahara Desert. Naturally, they are still at the age when nourishment is taken in nature’s own way, so they go hungry, as well as roughly-handled. The sight of the little creatures standing with heads hanging, as if unable to make out why they were brought into a world which looked so fascinating at first glance, and immediately became so brutal, is absolutely piteous. Surely, if Herod has to massacre the innoceiits, he can do it with a trifle more thought for their sufferings than is usually displayed.

A Gallant Doctor. New Zealand has a visitor of distinction just now in Dr Violette Bergere, who is spending a holiday of six weeks or so in our Dominion. Dr Bergere is the possessor of no fewer than seven coveted military decorations, for during the war she did magnificent work among the sick and wounded. She was born in Texas, but the French blood in her veins led her to join up promptly with the French Red Cross. In Poland, perhaps her most difficult and dangerous work was done. Typhus was a plague in the country, and this deadly enemy was combatted’ throughout the war, and successfully banished at last. Another splendid worker whose activities brought her into contact with Dr Bergere was Madame Paderewski, wife of the famous Polish pianist. Fashion—A La Pioneer.

We of to-day have no idea just how difficult the problem of clothing was in the days of the pioneers. An old lady of sixty, born in a lonely part of the Sounds, told me quite cheerfully that it was impossible to get dress materials in tbc days of her childhood, and that she and her little sisters were all dressed in clothes made from sugar sacks. This, although their mother was an English lady of title. Even in the “earlies,” however, tho lists of cargoes, published in the shipping notes of our very first papers, didn’t altogether neglect pomp and vanity. One advertisement from a very early paper offered for sale “black velvet and fine black flowered satin for waistcoats.” So mere man, apparently, was more of a dandy than the feminine members of his household, and roamed about in a black satin waistcoat whilst his better half made the best of a sugar sack.