Men and Women.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVI, Issue XXII, 30 May 1896, Page 627

Men and Women.

AN amusing letter has been received by the Fulham Guardians from a penniless but aspiring bachelor, who at present resides at Lord Rowton's Model Lodging House at Yauxhall. It is as follows :—‘ Gentlemen, —I take the liberty of writing to you, but the fact is I am trying to emigrate to the Chilly Island, where a good opening is offered for one willing to work ; but you must be married. Have you in charge any woman from 20 to 35 years, or widow, who would marry me and go out there. Small family not objected to. Have good references, willing and strong, and thoroughly understand farming. The passage is free from Liverpool. I have no money now, been out of work these three months, since coming away from the country. Should like to call if you have anyone that would likely suit me. I am 35 years age, single, educated, and of a good family of farmers in the country. An early answer will oblige, as everything has to be done within three weeks or a month.’

An extremely romantic match came off lately at West Bromptoa, England, the bride being the Marquise Hervy de St. Denys and the bridegroom M. Jacques de Warn, the Due de Luynes coming over to see fair play. The Marquise, though no longer in the bloom of youth, is one of the most attractive women in Paris. She is the the daughter of Baron Ward, whose career is an illustration of the adage that ‘truth is stranger than fiction.’ The Baron began life as a Yorkshire stable boy and ultimately became Prime Minister of the last reigning Duke of Parma. She married some years ago an amiable and erudite French Orientalist. The Comte de Warn strongly objected to her re-marriage with his son, and put into force all the terrible powers which the French law confers upon a father. The found couple therefore crossed the Channel, and were united under the British flag.

A Russian artel is an association of persons who agree to throw their lot together an d stand by each other for better or for worse. If the artel is 1 productive,’the members work together and divide equally what money they earn ; if it is ‘ consumptive ’ they share equally in the expense incurred. The most marked characteristic of these associations is the perfect equality which prevails among their members. No matter what may be a man’s personal gifts or deficiencies, from the moment he enters an artel he is simply on a par with his comrades. He must bear the burdens they bear, and he receives the same rewards. In his turn he will be the artelman, or chief of his artel ; in his turn, too, he will be its hewer of wood and drawer of water. As the former he will be neither richer not poorer than as the latter, for the only emolument attached to the office of artelman is shoe money—that is, a small sum granted as a compensation for the shoes worn out while tramping about transacting official business.

Ingenious girls in the Old Country are adding greatly to their little means in a variety of ways. Many women make lampshades for their friends or to sell at shops. One girl makes fichus which she sells for a guinea, making on each a profit of five shillings. Another girl who is in great want of the money, makes it by manufacturing delicious dessert sweeties which she sells among a friendly clientele at two shillings a pound, which leaves a good profit. They are quite as good as and much cheaper than those supplied by the shops, and often she goes to dinner parties at the houses of friends to whom she has on the same day sold the sweets with which the table is decorated.

The Americans are very prompt and thorough in their methods of remedying public evils, and the Cincinnati Legislature was determined not to be left behind when the papers were crying out for some measure to suppress the ‘ matinee hat.’ Afternoon performances are more frequent in the American theatres than in England, and the American woman’s millinery is somewhat more extensive. The consequence is that a considerable proportion of the audience of a matinee in a theatre in the United States gets mere occasional and accidental glimpses of the stage. The Cincinnati legislators have passed an act by which any theatre manager who allows a lady's hat of more than a fixed size to be worn in his theatre will be liable to a fine of ten dollars for every such hat worn ! London managers should take warning. It would surprise you to find how many of the poorer classes have tastes of the highest culture. Go to such a classic place as the People’s Palace when they are giving a oratorio like ‘ St. Paul’ or ‘Judas Maccabeus ” and you will find dozens of shabbily-dressed East-enders, tailors, bootmakers, dockers even, who are following the music with the most intense appreciation and enjoyment. Some will be provided with well-thumbed copies of the score, and the whole audience will compare most favourably with any of the learned music-lovers of the Albert Hall or the Philharmonic. Some of the most enthusias-

tic botanists and naturalists in London are men who would be glad to be earning their regular pound a week, and one often comes across ardent microscopists, amateur astronomers, geologists, etc., in the most unexpected districts in the slums. Students of political economy are quite common, and on any Sunday morning you may hear on Mile-end Waste arguments as cogent as were ever given forth by an Adam Smith ora Ricardo. Classical literature has its votaries, too, among the very poor, as any East End librarian can tell you. Many of the most assiduous readers of Latin and Greek authors in the original are men who (after perhaps a Universityeducation) have failed in the battle of life, and who find in these works, the friends of their youth, a solace and companionship elsewhere denied them. • Don’t believe all you read in English papers about the gaiety of the opera balls in Paris,’ writes a correspondent in To-day. ‘ I went there on Saturday night, or, to be precise, Sunday morning, for the first time after a lapse of a dozen years. You have often said, my dear Major, that things were changing for the worse in Paris. You are right. Saturday’s ball was miles behind Covent Garden, and even that God-forsaken, police-ridden place, Brussels, can do the thing as well. There were a fewPierrots and clowns and soldiers, and certainly many of the women wore pretty costumes. But the women simply asked for champagne after every dance, and when I stood outside in a sleety morning, searching in vain for a cab, where I might bury away the shame of being in some ridiculous and impossible costume I reflected on what England would say if it saw me. lam writing you these reflections on Sunday afternoon with a splitting headache.’