AS SEEN THROUGH WOMAN’S EYES.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIII, Issue XVIII, 28 October 1899, Page 793

AS SEEN THROUGH WOMAN’S EYES.

A TABLE DECORATION FOR OCTOBER. The carrying out of the scheme for October is simplicity itself, and the cost but small. Firstly, then, a graceful lamp for the centre is required. Should the room be well illuminated from other points, a lamp with a single light would be adequate. This in its place, four small flower-vases, with either pot or copper bowls, mounted on wrought-iron stands, must be posted as indicated, and then the flowers come into play. The eight swags festooning‘from the centre lamp—four terminating in bunches of flowers, and four at the stands referred to —maybe either of ribbon or smilax, but perhaps the former, decked with blossoms, would be the better. With this skeleton—so to speak—ready to be clothed, the question as to what flowers we are to select has to be settled, and perhaps pink ivy geraniums and white marguerites, set off by begonia leaves and asparagus fern, if tastefully disposed, would result in an effect altogether charming. The shade of the lamp, which, by the way, should be simpler than the one represented —say minus the bows—should be of

delicately tinted pink silk, and the tube surrounding the candle of a still lighter shade of the same colour. If the base of the lamp were copper, all the better, as it would harmonise beautifully with the tints of the geraniums and the rieh colourings of the begonia leaves. It is for the same reason that copper for the bowls of the small flower vases has been recommended, but should china be preferred, it may either be of a creamy white, or shading off into the same colour as that of the geraniums. ® ® ® THE DOMESTIC WORKSHOP. A COSY CHILD’S CHAIR, AND HOW TO MAKE IT FOR TEN SHILLINGS. This article is sternly practical. I shall presume that you have a strong fret saw, some sort of a bench, a holdfast. and some French nails, or, better still, screws. The wood for this little article is simply 9in. board, lin. thick, cut up into the various lengths shown by the outside black line of this working drawing. Send to the nearest ear-

penter and tell him to cut out of a 9in. board the following lengths: two pieces, 15in. long, and two, 25in. long. These are for the sides. Then three lengths, 14i<n. long, two for seat and one for shaped' top. Two lengths, 14in. long, cut up into strips, 2in. wide, which will supply wood for the “clamps,” on the sides, to which the seat is eventually nailed —see dotted lines—also the pieces which go down the shaped back and the “shoe” beneath the two back feet. Having secured the wood, which need only be roughly planed up, mark off with carpenter’s pencil the simple lines shown in this working drawing, observing the sizes which are given. Then with the fret saw cut out the shaped portions. Put the sides together—no glue is needed—by nailing on the side pieces as marked by the dotted lines. Then place sides in erect positions, and tentatively nail in seat and shaped top piece of back—-which goes out at top side—and the shoe at the bottom of back feet. As the proposal is to cover the chair with art serge, before permanently nailing or screwing together, it will be wise to consider how best to tack the stuff on. It will be more convenient to cover the top of

seat —the two pieces having been joined by clamping underneath—before nailing it in. and also the sides before the seat and back are finally fixed. A little judgment will settle this point. Having, then, nailed together and tacked on the serge, cover the tacking by gimp or braid as shown in initial sketch. Now, as to the bill of costs. Say, 13ft. of 9in. by lin. deal board at 4d. —4/4; 11 yards of art serge, 11yds. wide, at 1/4 —2/: 12yds. of braid for edging, at lid—l/6; 6 dozen drugget pins to fasten braid, Sd,; nails, 2d.; set of “plate" castors, 1/; piece of fringe for front, 4d.—total, 10/. “But what about the cushions?” you say. They are outside my estimate. There are surely some remnants about the house out of which, with a little labour of love, these can be made without any cost. When made, they are easily kept in position by cords in the manner shown. Of course, if the wood of this little chair is planed up and carefully jointed, no art serge or braid is needed. The wood, stained olive green or dark oak, would look very pretty, and then my figures would leave ample margin for cushions- The making of this chair is not a difficult task.

BE CAREFUL HOW YOU SIT. An eminent physician recently announced the opinion that appendicitis is more common in America than in other countries, because of the Yankee custom that men have (and men are more frequently sufferers from the disease than women) of habitually sitting- with one leg thrown over the other. This habit, the doctor said, restricts the action o» the digestive apparatus, especially of the lower intestine, and causes stagnation of the contents and the stretching of the opening of the vermiform appendix, making it possible for obstructions to reach the latter, and thus causing appendicitis. There is no other disease, if we may judge from the attention given to it by the leading publications, in which the general publie takes so much interest as in this one, which is comparatively new to the medical profession. Much of the popular interest is due probably to the fact that only within the last few years what may be called the literature of appendicitis has reached the public at large. ® © © GIRLS WHO KEEP YOUNGLOOKING. Hospital nurses, despite the hardness of their lot, are believed to retain their youthful looks much longer than most girls; and the hard-worked ladies on the stage are likewise noted for their extreme juvenility. English girls, as a rule, retain tleir youthful looks much longer than their Scottish and Irish sisters, while French ladies are especially young-looking. Italian and Spanish women mature early, and fade as suddenly. The latter are usually beautiful while in the teens, but assume a coarseness at a verv early age. Turkish beauties keep their good looks and youthful appearance until well beyond middle life, and the same has been said of Grecian ladies. But in very few countries do women retain a juvenility which enables them to appear youthful when old enough to be called “grandmamma;” yet this may be said of Englishwomen and their sisters of France. ® © © GOVERNESSES’ CHANCES OF MARRIAGE. According to a great many novelists, a governess ea.n marry whom she please, and she generally chooses a millionaire or a duke, who is also possessed of every good quality. In real life, however, it is otherwise, though it is certainly not the case that a governess has no chance of meeting a man calculated to make her a happy wife. There are undoubtedly ladies who. on seeing an “eligible” man paying attention to their governess, will take means to prevent him from meeting her. When there are unmarried daughters in the house it is possible that this may be done through jealousy, but there is no doubt that a mistaken sense of duty is also often the cause of the interference. Unfortunately, there are people who consider a welleducated, lady-like girl “impossible” as a wife, merely because she has the misfortune to be poor and to be obliged to earn her own living as a governess. On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that there is many a woman who takes a kind, motherly interest in her governess, and who is only too glad to be of what assistance she can in forwarding a likely match. Tn a case like this the governess has as good a chance of making a good marriage as even a daughter of the house would have. Indeed, it might l>e a better one. for a woman would have less hesitation in dropping little words of praise about one who was no relation of her own. The governess herself is the pith of the whole matter, and in the great majority of instances it may be safely asserted that a bright and clever girl, who is calculated to make a. good wife, has a very good prospect of meeting the man who can make her a good husband. ® ® ® fashions influenced by personal DEFECTS. It is a. singular fact in the history of fashions that not a few of the more famous owe their origin to the endeavour to conceal a personal defect or deformity of some distinguished leader of society. Patches were invented in England in the reign of Edward VI. by a foreign

lady, who in this manner ingeniously covered a wen on her neck. Fullbottomed wigs were invented by an ingenious French barber for the purpose of concealing an unnatural protuberance on the shoulder of the Dauphin. Charles VII. of France introduced long coats to hide his illmade legs. Shoes with very long points, fully 2 feet in length, were invented by Henry Plantagenet. Duke of Anjou, to conceal a large excrescence on one of his feet. When Francis 1. was obliged to wear his hair short, owing to a wound he had received in the head, short hair at once became the fashion at Court. As a set-off to the examples quoted we may note that, not to conceal but to display her eharms, the beautiful Isabella of Bavaria introduced the fashion of leaving the shoulders and part of the neck uncovered in order to show the remarkable fairness of her skin. © © © BALL PROGRAMMES. The latest idea in ball programmes is the addition of a three-leaved card that contains the list, not only of music and dances, but the last leaf is headed "Rendezvous,” so that against each dance can be entered a settled place where the partner can be found. This innovation is certain to be a huge success, especially at crowded balls, where people do not know each other, even by sight. How often it happens that a luckless man is brought up in rapid succession to half a dozen girls, one after another, and the only part of the introduction audible is his own name? He puts his partner down vaguely as “pink,” "white,” or "dark,” and then vainly searches the whole place for her when the dance begins. She in turn waits for him, losing her ehance for dancing at all, and almost invariably losing her temper as well. The dancing season is nearly over, but this idea is vv Orth making a note of for next year.

® ® ® NEW HINTS FOR BAZAARS.

Whatever else is started to raise money for some charitable or clerical purpose, a bazaar is sure to be one of the things arranged for; and how very much time and labour has to be spent by the stallholders to find something out of the common to make that will sell well and quickly! A few new ideas have eome to the front this season that are both novel and easily made. Merry thoughts made into slave penwipers, dainty bonbon boxes covered with worked or painted satin, with a motto across the top. and tied with delicately shaded ribbons, and pincushions made like cricket bats, green-pea pods, and croquet mallets, are among some of the novelties this summer.

® ® ® CARE OF CHILDRENS TENDER FEET IN HOT WEATHER.

When summer comes—and it seems coming fast now —attention should be paid to these hints about children’s feet. Too great care cannot be taken of the feet. They should, exclusive of night and morning baths, be washed frequently in warm, not hot, water, in which a little borax or carbonate of soda has been dissolved. Sometimes a little linseed oil well rubbed into the sole of the foot gives great relief. Fresh socks or stockings should be put on every day. For the benefit of busy and not over-wealthy mothers, I would suggest that two pairs are kept in use for half the week, one pair being lightly washed while the second is being worn; then on about Wednesday this first two pair can be put on one side for the laundry, and another two pair worn in the same way. This will only make four pair for each wearer a week, but means a very great deal in a cleanly and comfortable sense. Boots, too, should be ehanged more frequently in hot weather than in cold, and thin, cool shoes should be put on for the house and garden. Blisters at the back of the foot are extremely painful. and should be looked to at once, and some healing ointment annliea 2 or 3 times a day after the foot has been bathed in warm water. Another hint and I have finished. Let the children's boots and shoes, like their gloves, be easy-fitting—even loose—during very hot weather. To me it seems so cruel to wedge growing feet into tightly fitting shoes—a sure and certain way to promote corns and induce an ungraceful gait.

PRAISE AS WELL AS BLAME SOMETIMES.

It used to be held to be deteriorating to commend the efforts of children and servants, while it was deemed good for them to be found fault with. 1 he old adage ran, "Praise to the face is open disgrace,” but human nature is not the same to-day as it was when that saying was originated. Nothing is so disheartening as to meet with no approval, or to win no praise after effort has been made, and it is not so often that the effort is really unappreciated as that the fear of giving praise has withheld the expression of commendation. Behind their backs parents heap praises on their children, and friends on their friends, and. perhaps. while the voluble outpouring is going on, he or she, whom it mostly concerns, is far away, pining and desponding, because love seems scarce and encouragement is lacking. What a waste of Warm praise, of kind appreciation, may be thrown broadcast on the wings of the winds, while to that particular person it might be worth, if not ten years of life, at least many hours of happiness. A word of praise—the stimulus of it, the courage it gives to endure and to struggle, only those know into whose ears it has been poured. Ruskin was right when he set praise up as a gift we should all bestow on those who. from our lips, would take it and treasure it as a jewel of great price. ® © ® FOR THE COMPLEXION. A RECIPE HANDED DOWN FROM LAST CENTURY. In the days when a still room formed part of a lady’s suite of apartments delicious concoctions were made to aid beauty to remain a lifelong possession. One. intended to scent the bath, was composed of the following ingredients: — Take of the best white vinegar one pint, and of rosemary, rue, camphor and lavender two drachms each; let the herbs soak in the vinegar for several hours, then strain. Rub this lotion thoroughly all over the body, and a deliciously comfortable feeling and a dainty perfume will remain with you all day long. This process is worth its weight in gold to every girl who desires a beautiful complexion, and to those who. already rejoicing in one, wish to keep it. It is cheaper now to get these beauty lotions dispensed by a chemist than to distil them one’s self. The apparatus of a distillery is dear, and the processes required tedious. We have no time to give to patience-re-quiring pursuits like still-room work in this busy day. © © © SEVENTY BABIES ARE BORN EVERY’ MINUTE. About 36.000.000,000 babies are born each year, an average of nearly seventy a minute. That is ten more in each minute than there Ae beats of the clock. A man with a pronounced weakness for statistics has figured that if all the 36,000,000,000 little ones were ranged in a line of cradles the cradles would girdle the earth. If carried one by one in their mothers’ arms past a given point the procession would continue night and day for a twelvemonth. ® ® ® THE WOMEN OF THE PAST. No greater mistake can be made than to suppose that outdoor exercise is a special attribute of us children of the present day. Our mothers and grandmothers could sit a horse, wield a salmon rod and use an oar as well as dance a minuet or embroider on silk and linen, while we know that certain of them could hold a pistol straight, take the field of war, or defend a castle as stubbornly as its absent lord might have done. If fashion and society followed a Royal lead, the ladies of Queen Elizabeth’s Court must have been virile both in their language and behaviour. We know that Mary Queen of Scots could never keep her health unless she rode 20 or 30 miles a day, and that the ladies of her Court accompanied her when she went out hawking. The women of the past have, with the past, ceased to be. They lie in the garden of sleep and rest from their labours. In their day they toiled and wept, or led idle lives, eaged or shackled. But in no era. and in no country, has native talent and energy in our sex been entirely suppressed. We of to-day live in a different atmosphere, and inhabit a

strange element in which our predecessors could scarcely have drawn breath. Every woman has now a fair chanee of showing what is in her, and whether she can do as good work as her masters of bygone days.—The Countess of Malmesbury, in "The Humanitarian.”

ANIMALS IN JEWELLERY. Apparently the tortoise has given place in popular favour to the more sinuous and graceful reptile, for everything seems to proclaim the fact that the sefrpent has once again gained ascendency over the heart of woman. He wriggles down her dress chains, he eoils himself into buckles for her waist belt, he winds himself over the bars of the safety pin brooch, and round the pearls which form the heads of the bonnet pins. He is likewise turned to account for a boa fastener, an attache boa. the ends of which are slipped through the curves of his body, and thus are kept from blowing about, and yet do not get injured, as they do with tying and pinning. Verily, the boot is now on the other foot, and ’tis he is subject to woman, instead of making her subject to him. and as in his new role he does his duties admirably, long may he remain in his present position.

Insects still abound, and flies and caterpillars are put with a most realistic touch on the pearl bonnet pins. Charms are more numerous than ever, and comprise a very Noah’s Ark selection of animals: everything, indeed, is considered fit for conversion into a charm, and dress chains are now hung with them up nearly their entire length, converting the wearer into a sort of toy stall.—“ Woman’s Life.” ® ® ® HOUSEWIVES’ HELPS.

Flowers, in the summer especially, should be watered before sunrise or after sunset.

After knives have been cleaned they may be brilliantly polished with charcoal powder. A little powdered washing soda applied on a damp flannel will successfully polish tin ware. A piece of charcoal in t'he water containing cut flowers will keep the water fresh for some time. Wash an oilcloth with a flannel and warm vvater, wiping dry. and rubbing a little skim milk over. Use celery freely. A tea made of the leaves and roots, and used daily, is said to cure rheumatism. Rain marks may be removed from cloth by damping the part marked thoroughly, then ironing with a hot iron. If hot sealing wax is dropped on the hand, it will not make a painful burn if allowed to remain on till it cools. Paper may be made transparent by spreading over it with a feather a thin layer of resin dissolved in spirits of wine. To take a glass stopper from a decanter, drop a little oil with a feather

Itetween the stopper and the decanter neck, and stand near the fire.

A few drops of ammonia in the water in which silver is washed will keep it bright a long time without cleaning. This should always be done with plated ware, as frequent rubbings wear oif the plate.