AS SEEN THROUGH Woman’s Eyes

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXI, Issue VIII, 20 August 1898, Page 252

AS SEEN THROUGH Woman’s Eyes

JHE NEW AMERICAN PATRIOTIC DANCE.

It is called the Dewey two-step, this patriotic danee, and it and the Anarka gavotte anti the Doranda waltz are expected to become the popular dances of this season in America, and every devotee at the shrine of Terpsichore will be wanting to know how they are danced.

The two-step and the gavotte are minuets in reality, with an additional step, whieh makes it necessary to danee them in four-four time. Of course the Dewey two-step will be the thing-. Professor Kretlow says it is Ijoth easy and pretty. It calls for all the grace and stateliness of the minuet and the liveliness of motion of the two-step. The combination, he thinks, ought to be irresistible. The description of the dance), as given by Ihe professor, will be understood by all who have been taught to dance by educated teachers. This is the way to danee the Dewey two-step: — Slide with the left foot to fourth position and count one; bring the right foot to third position, at the same time gliding the left again to fourth position; repeat the movement with the right foot to fourth count, draw left to right at same time, offer right hand to partner and walk around each other and courtesy; after eourtesying take waltz position and danee the. two-step eight measures.

A face veil can make or mar a woman’s beauty. A dark complexion, rosy cheeks, and bright brown eyes look far prettier than they really are under a veil with coarse mesh; but the pale blonde, no matter how perfect her features or pure her complexion, makes a mistake -when she wears a veil of this mesh. It will accentuate her paleness ten times and make her look old and drawn, while a net of soft, fine, close mesh will have just the opposite effect.

The favourite scent of the modern beauty is wood violets. She wears a bouquet of real violets, full of their own delicious fragrance, in her toque, on her muff, and tucked inside her corsage, and at night big bunches in her hair and at her waist. Powder saturated with the same delicious odour is sewn by her dressmaker in small bags between the linings of the dress and the material of the same. Imitation violets sprayed with scents are having a big sale, but they are rather dear, though not so absurdly expensive as bunches of the real flowers, which must be renewed hourly. A scent that every woman of fashion once used, patchouli, is the one that should inbove all others avoided. It is considered vulgar, and is said to be deleterious to the health. TESTS FOR A HUSBAND. Au observant woman gives the following advice to her juniors: — For a. man’s birth look at his linen and finger nails, and observe the inflections of his voice. For his tastes, study the colour of his ties, the ] sit tern and hang of his trousers, his friends, and his rings—if any. For his propensities, walk round and look carefully at the back of his head, and remember, girls, never to marry a man whose neck bulges ever so little over the back of his collar. For his breeding, talk sentiment to him when he is starving, and ask him to carry a band-box down the public street when you’ve just had a row. To test his temper, tell him his nose is a little on one side, and you don’t like the way his hair grows —and if that don’t fetch him nothing will. A CHARM OF CHILDHOOD. ‘Washed and dressed and set in a corner, my dear, and no fuss made about ns—that was the way it was in my time, and 1 really don’t think the. present methods are much of an improvement. With all the child culture I hear so much about, children are in danger of losing what is one of their greatest charms—unconsciousness of self.’ The speaker was a beautiful woman past sixty, and her memories of child-

hood were distinctly those of a regime in which parents and grown people generally had lives independent to some extent of the generation just emerging from the cradle. Possibly then the small people were not considered quite enough; certainly they w ere very often judiciously let alone, and they did not altogether escape a neglect, which may somewhat have l>een unwholesome, but now the pendulum has swung the other way, and we devote too great a portion of our time to the development of our children in their presence.

‘I have been reading the pathetic ballad of .Tack Spratt and his wife,’ said an old member, “and I am struck by the marital uncongeniality therein evinced. But it is always the way with any close companionship. You eleet to chum with another girl, and go to the length of running a. flat together, and you are sure to discover that she has an unfailing and unflagging appetite for young onions, while you loathe even the savour of an onion in a salad! That’s the first rock on which you split. To paraphrase George Eliot, a difference of taste, in onions is a great strain upon the affections. No sentiment could withstand that strain!’

‘1 know,’ assented another member. ‘lt is always so. Don’t you recollect the three travelling companions in Kate Douglas Wiggins’ charming story, “Penelope’s Progress,” who always for their breakfast had three different trays for their three beverages, since one would drink nothing but tea. another could not have her breakfast without coffee, and a third invariably ordered chocolate?’ T once knew a woman who was inordinately fond of vegetable soup,’ said one of the auditors. ‘She had never had enough vegetable soup in her life, because as a. self-supporting woman she boarded for ten long years. When she married she went at once to keeping house, confiding to me that she was going to have vegetable soup every night for dinner for at least a month! To her horror, she found that her husband could not bear the sight or smell of it. It was a trag’edy!’

‘lf it isn’t a matter of eatables or drinkables it is sure to be a matter of taste in some other way,’ mused the first, speaker. ‘I had a friend who loved tragedy and the classic drama. She married a man who adores farce comedy and extravaganza. They don’t go to the theatre together a great deal lest it should lead to the divorce court.’

‘Anyhow, there seems an evil fate whieh forbids you ever to like your friend’s friends or your wife’s relatives. They are always precisely and exactly the sort of people whom you most abhor. There is no getting over it. They are insupportable, odious. This is a beautiful chance for disagreement—oh dear,’ sighed a last year’s officer.

‘I know a musical man whose wife is tone deaf, and I don’t really know whether he suffers the most when he takes her to the opera, or when he goes there gallivanting without her, knowing she is crying her heart out at home.’

‘There is always something. The born traveller marries a hopeless stay-at-home. a barn-door fowl; the man with literary tastes chooses a. wife whose idea of literature is represented by Mme. Corelli and the Duchess. The artist, and painter gets the dowdy, the poet is tied to an unimaginative log. The world is all skew-gee. It is the story of Jack Spratt and his wife over and over again. ‘But you forget the end of the rhyme,’ interposed the new member. ‘And so between them both they licked the platter elean, or in other words, their separate incongruities merged into one congruity, and the result was a beautiful marital completeness.’ The club turned and glared at the newest miember. Then it. looked reflective and uncomfortable. There was a slight whisper, which buzzed through the little company as the wind wails through a. group of trees. It sounded very much like, ‘So we did forget,’ but it did not grow actually distinct. Lastly, they arose as one woman and filed slowly out, leaving the new member lonely ais Ariadne at Naxos.

POLLY.