HITHER AND THITHER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 53, 4 March 1939, Page 2

HITHER AND THITHER

Solway Old Girls. ’ Mrs. Jolly was hostess when the members of the Wanganui branch of the Solway Old Girls’ Association gathered at her home in Marton for tneir February meeting. The president welcomed several new members and after business was dispensed with and a letter read from , Mrs. Avann (Dominion president), containing news of other branches, all enjoyed a very pleasant social afternoon. Those present were. Mesdames Jolly, Aiken, Rabone and Keenan, Hammond, Pappe, Whale and Christie; Misses Ora Galpin, Lindsay Hunter, Betty Hammond. Ngaire Lawrence, Jessie McDonald, Nelle Stuart, Bobbie Dunkley, Betty McDonald, Joyce Hammond and Ruth Smith. It was decided to hold the next meeting at the home of Mrs. Rabone, ! Gonville, on the last Friday in March. Druids’ Hall. To-night (Saturday) dancing will be held in the above hall. The guests I of the evening will be the visiting St. Mary's tennis players. An excellent dance band, and floor, together with a good programme, dainty supper and excellent Monte Carlos, will be provided. A tip-top night’s entertainment is assured all patrons, so be sure to be there. Farewell Gathering. What was undoubtedly the largest and most representative gathering ut women that has ever been held in Wellington took place on Thursday afternoon when the executives of fifty-two societies and many personal friends attended a reception in honour of Mrs. M. H. Chatfield, M.8.E., J.P., to mark her retirement from the position of lady editor of the Evening Post after twenty-live years’ service. The reception was held in the Majestic Lounge. There were about 400 women present, and the careful arrangements made iov the programme and the beautiful flowers displayed everywhere also gave eloquent testimony to the affection in which the guest of honour is held. Richly deserved tributes were paid to Mrs. Chatfield. Her work has been not merely that of the journalist.. in that particular sphere of her activities, her work as a contributor to the Press, she has always displayed not only care and thoroughness, but, and this is of the highest importance, good sense, and above all good taste. She has taken an active personal interest in all the main activities of women in the city. All the various movements for helping women anu , girls have received her active personal support. Not only has she by her pen given prominence to these movements, but she has by her personal enthusiasm, been of very real help to the community. Death of Lady Sandeman Allen. Regret will be felt by the many friends in New Zealand of Lady Sandeman Allen at the news of her death in London, which was received t by relatives in Auckland. Lady Allen i was particularly notable lor her I charming and vivacious personality, I and during her two visits to the Dominion, one of which was made with her husband, the late Sir John Sande • man Allen, early in 1934, and the second one in 1936, after her husband’s death, she made many long-standing friendships. A woman of wide interests, Lady Alien’s first visit here was made on behalf of the Royal Empire Society, for which organisation she was doin fe propaganda work in connection wiLn the proposal to build new headquarters for the society in London. For many years she identified herself with the type of work which had tor its ultimate object the closer welding together of the British Empire, and on her second visit to New Zealand she was working for the Children’s Imperial Penny Fund, by which it was intended to give groups of children free trips to some part of the British Empire. I Courage and Devotion. I Writing in “The Friend of Australia and New Zealand,” a writer i states: —It will probably never be I known how many owed their lives [those few days to' the courage and I devotion of the bush postal officers—(most of them women—some quite .elderly, with home and family respon-