AS SEEN THROUGH WOMAN’S EYES.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXV, Issue I, 7 July 1900, Page 41

AS SEEN THROUGH WOMAN’S EYES.

How to Treat your Wife’s Relations and Friends. Many men, when they marry, adopt their wife’s relations, and turn their backs on their own. The average husband seems incapable of doing his duty to the combined families, and generally the. woman makes up her mind not to get on with his people. I don't 1 ■ ow why, I suppose a man’s mother and sisters are not necessarily -worse to put up with than a woman’s; but, there it is, she says to herself: “Jack’s all right, he has his good points—he adores me —I am quite sure I can make something of him when I get him away from all his relations—and friends.” She doesn’t do it all at once, it. is gradual. Jack’s mother invites them to dinner and she accepts with alacrity; when the day comes she has a headache and thinks Jack had better go by himself. Jack, being full of newlymarried solicitude, couldn’t think of leaving her, and so they send round a polite message of regret. By-and-bye, the invitations cease, and excepting at Christmas or the New Year, Jack doesn’t see his people. Don’t allow you wife to banish all your chums; insist upon a room being set apart as sacred to St. Nicotine. She won’t like it, but it will be good for her, and you must consider her ultimate benefit. Once give in to her, and you will never see your frierids again. Those nights of revelry:, those disquisitions in the small hours of the. morning, those midnight escapades—will be yours no more. Dike Kipling’s hero, Captain Gadsby, you will only be allowed occasionally—very occasionally—to invite them to a bad dinner at your club, after which you will call them “wild asses of the desert,” discourse for half-an-hour on the responsibilities of housekeeping, and at twenty minutes to eleven go home to bed.

Sometimes a man is just as bent on abolishing his wife’s friends. He likes to feel he is the Sole and Only. Sisters, cousins, old friends, are regarded with disfavour, and any attempt on his wife’s part to ask them for visits, results in his losing his temper, and remarking brutally that he “won’t allow her an extra shilling for their keep”; and yet this sort of man never thinks twice about asking his friends to dinner, and spending five pounds on champagne. Probably women find existence very dull without some familiar spirit with whom to discuss the all-important problems of clothes and servants. An afternoon tea now and then gives them an opportunity, but it’s not enough. What they want is someone in the house, and plenty of time at their disposal to really talk it out. Why deprive a woman of this innocent recreation?. You need not imagine you arc a companion to her, because you are not. You look at life from a different standpoint; your thoughts, your aims, your ideas are diverse. She may. by sympathetic and imaginative insight, un'd|ersta.nd a little off the inner workings of your mind; but you can never hope to enter more than the. outer court of hers. If you alienate her friends and set your face against her relations, she will probably spend the greater part, of her days pottering al Knit in the kitchen. Why? Because it’s an excuse for talking to the servants. It's no use pretending a man and a woman can be everything to each other; they can’t. They’ may love each other as much as you like, and be capital chums; but between them there is the barrier of sex.

If you want a bright, cheerful home, don’t neglect the rites of hospitality. Ask your chums in to smoke. When they get married have them and their wives to dinner. Trot your wife’s sisters and cousins round the town when you can spare the time, only—don’t flirt with them, don’t even pretend to do so. Let your wife have as many tea-parties as she likes, and if she wants to spend the day with an old school-friend, don’t be a dog-in-the-manger and say, “‘Certainly not, I haven't time to take you, and I couldn’t think of letting you go without me, nor cun 1 undertand why you should wish to go. Married people, in my opinion, ought to be sufficient for each other.” What pleasure would

there be left to you in life if everywhere you went your wife were forced to accompany you? If she wants to go home for a week to see her mother, or to spend the night with married friends in the country, let her; why not? She looked after herself and her luggage before you came upon the scene, and she won’t like you any the less because she’s a hundred miles away. Didn’t somebody say that “distance lends enchantment to the view”?

Never set yourself against her friends unless yon think they have a bad influence over her. Their ways mayn’t be your ways, nor their thoughts your thoughts, but they are dear to her,' and so for her sake you should try and get on with them. The very fact " u, at she judges them worthy of her love ought to make them objects of consideration in your eyes. She probably thinks your old comrade, Smith, a tiresome, uninteresting, stupid man, with his everlasting talk about dogs and horses. She artfully conceals a yawn when Tompkins comes—leaves mud on the carpet, and relates reminiscences of youthful days; she stifles a sigh when Hunter scatters cigar-ash in all directions; in her heart of hearts she may wish all your friends a speedy burial, but, if she’s really fond of you, she’ll bear with them, as only a selfsacrificing woman can. — “Home Notes.” —By One Who Knows. Woman’s Virtues which may become Vices. It is an old saying that virtue misapplied becomes a vice. It is hard to understand how virtue, in itself the essence of right doing, can be put to evil uses, but a writer in the New Orleans Picayune furnishes a commentary on the proverb. The instances and situations that she cites as 1 such are altogether familiar to every observer in human nature. She says: Sometimes it must occur to even the most casual observer that good women are often the victims of their own virtues. and that many of the precepts laid down for their guidance are more honoured in the breach than the observance. Take, for instance, the old adage that “what is worth doing at all is worth doing well.” That apparently unassailable maxim has slain its thousands, and sent its tens of thousands to insane asylums and sanitariums.

A woman brought up in that faith feels it nothing short of a crime to baste a thing up if she can put out her eyes and get a backache putting in little, close stitches, though the basting might answer every purpose just as well. She considers it her duty to make a burnt offering of herself over the kitchen stove preparing fancy dishes for her family, though she knows perfectly well she might save herself, and they would be better off if she gave them plain food to eat. She grows old before her time sweeping, dusting and polishing up her overclean house, but she despises the woman who gives her house cleaning “a lick” and then goes off to enjoy herself; yet between the two the latter has the truer philosophy of life. There is an art of slighting work as well as doing it, that is worth learning.

Then there is patience. Patience is universally believed to be a good woman’s long suit. A reasonable amount of it is, without doubt, highly to be commended., but it is a virtue that is easily overdone. Truth compels one to admit that woman’s patience is at the bottom of a good many of the crying evils of the day. It is never the patient mistress who has good servants. It is the woman whose eagle eye is going to see every neglected duty. and who is going to "raise Cain” about it, who gets her table cloths put on straight and her beds swept under. It is the patient friends who ean be counted on to forgive, who do have to exercise that virtue seventy and seven times. The impatient woman who isn’t going to be put off with any old thing is treated with respect, and doesn’t have anything to forgive. It is the patient woman, moreover, who is responsible for nine-tenths of the drunken husbands. It is the fact that there are no patient husbands who sit up with a

saintly smile to let drunken wives into the house at unseemly hours, that keeps women in the paths of sobriety and decency. Another thing is unselfishness. Volumes have been written to exploit this crowning virtue of womanhood. Romance and poetry hold it aloft as the beacon light toward which the entire sex should struggle. Yet there has been more useless suffering and idiotic self-sacrifice committed in its name than for all other causes in the world combined. The perfectly unselfish woman is the instigator of selfishness in others. The ideal unselfish wife makes a tyrant of her husband before he knows it. She is always willing to give way without a word, and he lets her do it. She is always anxious for him to have the best of things, and he takes them. It is the woman who has a proper degree of selfishness, and who asserts and gets her share of the good things of life, that remains her husband’s companion and friend. The unselfish mother Is the one who drops out of her set In society to rock her babies to sleep—who. when her children are older, goes in a shabby turned frock to let her girls have real lace and bangles, and who stays in the kitchen to serve the meals instead of sitting at the head of her own table. Of course, such devotion, such angelic self-sacrifice, make her the object of adoration in her family. Not at all. Invariably her children despise her. No one ever saw a perfectly unselfish mother whose children didn’t have a contempt for her. It is the selfish mother who has good and admiring children. The truth is that there are many good qualities that we need to season life, but we want to use them with forbearance and judgment. Salt is a necessity, but too much of it ruins a dinner.

Curious Occupation for Women. To .prejudiced ears a “lady shoeblack” sounds ridiculous, and yet in New York the lady shoeblack has arrived.A girl there saw how uncomfortably difficult it was for a woman to get her shoes cleaned in a large city unless she were living at home. The ordinary method of enlisting the services of the boy at the street corner was out of the question, and yet it either meant this or dirty shoes. “Why not,” she thought, “open a shoecleaning establishment?” The idea was a good one, and with commendable enterprise she set about realising it. The result of her efforts is that already she has several imitators, who preside over little sanctums wherein a woman may comfortably ensconce herself with all the latest magazines to hand while her boots undergo a vigorous polishing at the hands of a nimble attendant. Sayings of the Children. Lewis Carroll, author of “Alice in Wonderland,” told with keen relish of a rebuff given him by a little girl who knew him only as a learned mathematician. “Have you ever read •Through the Looking' (Hass?'" he asked her, expecting an outburst of delight. “Oh, dear, yes!” she replied. “It is even more stupid than ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ Don’t you think so?" The mother of a bright little three-year-old had been away from home overnight, and on her return asked: “And how did my little girl get to sleep last night without mamma?” “Oh.” she replied, “papa twied to sing to me like 'on does, an' I dis went to sleep weal twick, so I touldn’t hear him ” The sensation of homesickness has

l>een variously described, but never more graphically than by a little girl who, miles away from her home and mamma, sat heavy-eyed and silent in a railway carriage. “Aren’t you hungry, dear?” asked her aunt, with whom she was travelling. “No, auntie.” “Does your poor head ache?” “No, auntie.” “'Pell me what is the matter?” The lip quivered pitifully, and she said, in a tone to grieve the heart. “I’m so seasick for my home and my mamma.” A little girl was permitted one bright Sunday to go with her mamma to hear papa preach. Now, it chanced that on this special occasion papa's sermon was of the “warning” order. After a moment of breathless surprise and horror, the little listener’s soul was wrought upon with a great pity for the poor mortals upon whom so much wrath was descending. She rose excitedly to her feet, and her wide, reproachful eyes just peeping over the back of the seat, called out, in sweet, chiding tones: “Whit for you scolding all the people so, papa?” How Women are Misunderstood. One of the saddest things in the history of woman is the way in which she is misunderstood wilfully, persistently misunderstood. A woman marries in the first glamour of young love, and ere the moon of honey has waned, she finds herself face to face with an utter stranger. She hardly knows how it began, but the little rift has widened into an impassable gulf. The world might echo with her cries. The husband is unbending. He will not hear, for she speaks a language he cannot understand. I have seen many sad cases amongst my own surroundings, and it is a pitiable sight to see two young people beginning their wedded life with quarrelling until their fancied wrongs can never be righted. Women are sensitive and proud. Mayhap the girl-wife has given herself up so entirely to love that the man has wearied, and begun to fancy he felt the weight of his silken fetters. Imagine the cruel heart-stab, the wounded pride, to be accused of loving too much, when love is in its noontide! Some men are hard and stern, born to rule by brute force and oppress the weak. The wife is cavilled and sneered at. Every argument she tries to put forth is nipped in the bud. Like father, like son, her children pay no respect to her. She is neglected. and yet she may have a tender heart and a beautiful soul. I have known warm and ardent natures wedded to those well-balanced, implacable men who are of all the most unlovable. They reason on all their emotions until they leave love itself a lone and barren land. The bird beats her heart out against the prison bars of her mate’s inexorable will. She is caged for life without a hope of escape. Her hopes, her ambitions, are calmly and kindly crushed out. by a superior personality; there is room but for one in the charmed circle of two existences, and all that is left for her to do is to go mad or take to drink unless she has a woman’s greatest safeguard—her children. Mothers misunderstand their da lighters, rarely their sons — they leave the father's to do that. Pride seals a woman’s lips. She thinks: “They doubt me, they think me capable of such infamy; let them think, I will never undeceive.” Some of us grow weary and faint-hearted under the cross. We lie down under the weight of our sorrows, and drift God knows whither: but others die at the helm, erect, splendidly defying the foe that knows no mercy! To convey our thoughts and ideas in eloquently worded speech is given only to a few; some speak but to disfigure their thoughts they say the exact opposite of what they mean; others are cursed with a stony silence, the silence of despair. “What, does it matter?” becomes the motto of their lives. It matters not that the best fruits of life are but the apples of the Dead Sea. It matters not that all the treasures of their heart will never be recognised—that evil will lie attributed where kindness is meant. And the daily torture goes on producing corresponding evils, for bud denis, like good ones, increase and multiply. To think that we have prisoners amongst us—prisoners of soul tortured more cruelly than ever the Inquisition dreamed of. It is not drink and insanity alone that drives men and

women to crime—it is the last straw in the load of misunderstandings that have so long oppressed them. They strike for the sake of a final effort of will, a bid for anything save the narrow pathway in which they are hedged. To get away, anywhere out of it all; to sail, even in the teeth of the storm, into smoother waters where the sunshine kisses the waves and the sky is blue. To be one’s self no longer, but some new and unbnrtheued creature with no stinging memories of past injuries and living sorrows. Poor dreamer of dreams—how brief is your respite in the land of the unreal! To-morrow will be as today—with never a ray of hope or a star in your night. What do you complain of? You are clothed —and well clothed—have enough brains to wish sometimes that reason would give way and open the floodgates of Lethe. Tt is wrong to allow oneself to be misunderstood. It is foolish not to explain things, but what of the unfit who find no outlet in speech, and what of others who are steeped to the lips in the bitterness of disillusion, and disdain to make themselves heard? Children suffer intensely from being too often misunderstood and unjustly punished. “Don’t tell me, sir,” says the irate father—“how dare you speak! I will listen to nothing. It is useless to speak” — are the pet phrases which freeze the words of justification which are never uttered. “We will let the matter drop.” It drops on somebody’s heart and crushes it—some one who is not a fighter, but a clinging, sensitive soul. The greatest crimes go unpunished; they are mental crimes, and bear no name by which justice can condemn them. “Coeur triste, mauvais coeur”—sad heart, bad heart—because it is empty and dead; the life blood oozed out of it at every pore, and there is nothing left for the world to misjudge but the empty shell of a heart. Health and omfbrt for the Feet. Never wear a shoe that will not allow the great toe to lie in a straight line. Never wear a shoe with a sole nar, rower than the outline of the foot traced with a pencil close under the, rounding edge. Never wear a. shoe that pinches the heel. Never wear a shoe or boot so large in the heel that the foot is not kept in place. Never wear a shoe or boot tight anywhere. Never wear a shoe or boot that has depressions in any part of the sole to drop any point below the level plane. Never wear a shoe with the sole turning up very much at the toes, as this causes the cords on the upper part of the foot to contract. Never wear a shoe that presses up into the hollow of the foot. Never come from high heels to low heels at one jump. Never wear one pair of shoes all thu time unless obliged to do so. Two pairs of boots worn a day at a time alternately last longer and are much more healthful. Never wear a short stocking or one which after being washed is not at least one half inch longer than the foot. Bear in mind that stockings shrink. Be sure that they will allow your toes to spread out at the extrema ends, as this keeps the joints in place and makes, a strong and attractive foot. Never think that the feet will grow large from wearing proper shoes. Pinching and distorting makes them grow not only large, bin 'nsightly. ,\ proper, natural use 01 an tne muscles makes them compact and attract-

A Royal Hobby. Few people can realise in how many ways the domestic life of the Queen touches that of her humblest subjects, even to the hobby of fowl-keep-ing. Down in Windsor Great Park there are pens of fowls in which Her Majesty takes the liveliest interest. When she drives out in the park in her donkey-carriage she makes frequent visits to the fowl runs, and never fails to ask after the welfare of her feathered subjects. The fate of a sick hen and the prospects of the latest brood of chicks ;..e matters of moment to her, for she loves to see her stock increase and multiply. “Toby,” the white Bantam, is a special pet, a perky little fellow, who flies on the keeper’s shoulder and eats out of his hand. He has been known to hop on the step of the Queen’s carriage and delight his mistress with his quaint brusqueness and eccentricity. Fifty years ago the Queen was one of the first breeders of Cochin and Brahmah fowls in the country, and Her Majesty still fancies these breeds. But the pens now hold many varieties, Dangshans, Plymouth Rocks, Hamburgs, and Bantams. There are also Diamond Jubilee Orpingtons, presented by the originator of the species, and white Wyandottes from the Salvation Army farm at Hadleigh, purchased by Her Majesty when she heard that Mr Cecil Rhodes had ordered a large number from the same source for South Africa. Pretty ring-doves are in the aviaries, and birds of a stranger sort. Two of the finest Australian ostriches live in this quarter of the Park, near the late trince Consort’s show farm. They were presented to the Queen by the New South Wales troopers who were in England for the Diamond Jubilee. With them were sent also two kangaroos and four wallabys, but in spite of great care only one kangaroo and one wallaby now lives.

In the centre of the fowl-pens and aviaries stands a little house where the Queen often takes tea. Here is her comfortable anm-chair and the homely china cupboard for the teathings. On the walls are cases of stuffed birds. It is a room that would please even such a royal bird-fancier as Her Majesty. Little Points of Law. Whoever finds a lost article is entitled to the possession of it, as against all parties but the real owner. And if a person discount or cash a bank note, knowing that another person found it, he is in no better position than the finder, and cannot detain it from the owner who has lost it. The finder of a jewel or other article may maintain an action of trover for a conversion thereof by a wrong-doer —that is to say. if a person having found a jewel or other article entrust it to another person, and the latter convert it to his own use, the finder may bring an action against the other. A master tradesman is answerable for the loss of a customer’s property entrusted to such tradesman's servant in the course of business. Where a person has wrongfully converted property, and will not produce it it is presumed in law, as against him, to be of the best description. Where a person found a sovereign in the highroad, and at the time of finding it had no reasonable means of knowing to whom it belonged, but intending at the time of finding it to appropriate it to his own use, even if the owner should become known; and on the owner being speedily made known the finder refused to give it up, it was held that such finder was not guilty of larceny. But where a bureau was sent to a carpenter to be repaired, and he discovered in a secret drawer nine hundred guineas, which he appropriated to his own use, it was held that he was guilty of felony. Ir

a man buy at an auction a chattel, and afterwards discover valuables concealed within it, he does not thereby acquire a right to them, unless it can be made to appear that the vendor intended to sell the contents, whatever they might be.—“ Every Man’s Own Lawyer” (London: Crosby Lockwood and Son). When the Queen Borrowed an Umbrella. The Queen, like the rest of her subjects, has borrowed an old umbrella in her time. On one occasion, the story goes, she and the Prince Consort wandered for some distance beyond the woods of Claremont, and were overtaken by a thunderstorm. They took shelter in the nearest cottage, and, seeing there was no likelihood of the storm abating, the Prince asked the old woman at the cottage if she would kindly lend them an umbrella. The old dame was quite unaware of the rank of her visitors, and had a rooted objection to trusting her precious gingham to the hands of strangers. She at first declined altogether to lend it. Finally, however, her objections were overcome. The old woman followed her visitors down to the garden gate, reiterating many times over that they were to be sure and let her have it back in an hour’s time, or she would let them know the consequences. Well within the hour a footman arrived from Claremont bearing the precious gingham, with a message of thanks and a handsome gratuity from the Queen. Ladies, be Proud of your Red Hair. Red-haired women are ardent and vivacious, especially if with it they have hazel eyes, in which case they have a bright and quick intelligence. They have a great deal of natural felicity for study, and good memories. Red hair with blue eyes shows the

same warmth of character, but not so much intelligence; bright golden hair, of a rich, deep colour and of a crisp and waving texture, growing thickly on the head and somewhat low on the brow, shows an ardent, poetic and somewhat artistic temperament. It is the signature of Apollo, the sun. People with red-brown hair which is very thick, and redder over the ears and at the temples than on the head, are courageous and energetic. It augments the indications of force anil power given by other features, and in part this sort of hair gives sense of colour in painters, force of language and eloquence in poets, and power in musical composition. The heroic women of history were of the red-haired sisterhood — Isabella of Castile. Helen of Troy, Catherine I. of Russia. Joan of Arc, Elizabeth of England, Mary Stuart. Anne of Russia, and Beatrice Cenci. The Queen's Stick. The Queen’s walking stick is much in evidence on occasions when Her Majesty goes to Netley to cheer her wounded The staff of the walking stick, it may not be generally known, is of sound oak. and was made for, and presented to Charles 11. by a cit’zen of Worcester. It was originally a branch of the famous oak-tree into which the king climbed when pursue I by Cromwell’s men. The frtick had originally only a plain gold top; but to this the Queen, who wanted something to “grip" in her support, added a queer iittie Indian idol, which formed part of the booty of Seringapatam. Her Majesty never use s any other stick. The very varied gathering of walking sticks owned by the Prince of Wales has eome from all parts of the world One stick is made of the wood from one of the piles of Old London Bridge, discovered during some repairs to the present structure.