SWEEPING SKIRTS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 41, 8 October 1892, Page 1005

SWEEPING SKIRTS.

Few men can understand theallection a lady has fora train to her frock. It is amusing to see tiny girls wrapping a shaw l round their waists, ami looking over their shoulders with immense complacency as itsweeps the floor. But why giown up, presumably sensible, women can still retain this childish feeling of pleasure in tlieftw/roM of their sweeping skirts, is, to the average male mind, an insolvable problem. In this colony, the ladies have kindly swept our pavements for the last few months, and have carried

all kinds of disgusting tilth into their own houses. It is nice of them to help the City Councils, hut hardly wise. In Beilin, the question of reform in the womens train line is being properly discussed. About two hundred ladies, we hear, assembled the other day* when one of them gave a brief review of the origin and history of the train. She could not exactly begin with Mother Eve, to whom the train was unknown. but was able to tell her hearers that the prophet Isaiah was said to have pleached against the trailing evil in question. Aftei the various reasons—.estbetical, sanitary, and common-sense—why the train should not be tolerated had been given, various proposals were made for its abolition, and one lady outdid the others in the very drastic nature of her suggestions. There were extremists who wanted purposely to tread on —and so tread off—every train in the streets : others who suggested that the roads should be closed to them by the police. Healthy common sense, schoolmasters, doctors, and, indeed, all men, the press, the theatre, and the authorities were summoned to co-operate, ami finally a resolution was passed asking the police to issue an order forbidding the wealing of a train in the streets.

He : ‘ I don’t believe in original sin.’ She : * Nor I. It’s utterly impossible to select any |»et sin that somebody else hasn't worn threadbare.