THE SOCIAL WORLD

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1247, 12 March 1914, Page 30

THE SOCIAL WORLD

The Champion Lady Billiardist. Miss Ruby Roberts, the champion lady billiardist, is creating the greatest interest among players with her remarkable skill. She is making an extensive tour of the Dominion, giving exhibitions in the various towns., * * * * Victoria League Garden Party. A most successful garden party was held at Mr. R. C. Carr’s residence under the auspices of the Victoria League. A tennis competition was won by Miss Enid Ree'- and Mr. Keith Hunter. Mrs. Edgar and Miss Ballard won the croquet competition, the prizes being given by Mrs. W. R. Bloomfield, Mrs. W. J. Napier and Mrs. E. Andersen. Enjoyable items were supplied by an efficient orchestra and the Misses L. Brierly, Tanner and Saxon gave an exhibition of fane dancing. Mr. Napier gave a short address on behalf of the League executive. * * * * The Wanganui Races. That picturesque spot, the Wanganui racecourse, was looking at its bes. for the autumn meeting, and Northern patrons were loud in their praises. Amongst those on the lawn were Mrs. D’Arcy, Mrs. Christie, Mrs. Patterson, Mrs. Blundell (Dunedin), Miss Muriel Starr and Miss Mary Worth or “Within the Law’’ Company, Mrs. W. L. Young. Mrs. Eric Riddiford, Mrs. Harold Cooper, Mrs. Walter Johnston (Wellington), Mrs. Hutton, Mrs. F. Moore, Mrs. Reg. Collins, Mrs. W. H. Barnicoat, Mrs. J. Duigan. Jp * * * A League of Politeness. A League of Politeness for the purpose of cultivating the externals of courtesy is being created in New York. There will be branches throughout the United States, the underlying idea being to round off the rough edges of servants and tram con ductors and other classes whose sterling hearts are often vei’ed under bearish exteriors. The new league does not seek to make waiters, attendants in subway trams, and policemen servile, but to encourage them to speech and actions in their relations with the public more consistent with the standard of good breeding. Members of the league will wear a badge, anl are expected to show a good example in everything relating to acts of public and private courtesy. * * » » The New Winter Hat. An item from an American fashion paper is to the effect that the most fashionable colour for the new winter hats is black and the most fashionable materials are velvet and velour. Almost no other colour is seen. And there is remarkable similarity in the shapes and in the trimming. Nearly all of the hats roll upward from the face. They are not large and almost universally becoming. The trimming is simple and in many cases consists merely of a band and a fantasie of aigrette, fined ostrich or Paradise plume. Redleaf hats are the acknowledged smart headgear for autumn. As their name implies they repeat the tones of the fading foliage as well as those of the woods and the fields during the waning of the year. Of medium size, they come in brown, green, bronze, copper, mustard and purple velours, and to trim them there are embroidered scarfs, braided bands and brilliantly-coloured feather fancies. £ & :i: * Earl Grey and Countess Grey are spending a holiday in New Zealand.

Novel Beauty Exercises. A noted French actress, the “Mail” says, uses a novel method of exercise when indoors. Each morning her maid enters her room with a basket of tiny pieces of paper, which she scatters all over the floor. This done, the actress starts picking up every scrap, one by one, until there is not one to be found on the carpet, so by the time she has finished this operation she has exercised a good many muscles of her body.

‘Every woman likes to think of her discarded lover as one who is inconsolable.” —“The Sword.” By C. A. Benton.

The Tango. Lady Helmsley, a well-known Englist gentlewoman, who entertains a good deal, is reported to have said upon the subject of the Tango:—“ I think it is a great pity that the old Spanish dance, the Tango—quite graceful in its original form—should, in the course of its indirect introduction to our country have acquired so many of the nigger-dance characteristics now associated with it. I am sure it will never be taken up seriously as a ball-room dance.” * * * * The Parisian’s New Mascot. Paris has taken up a new mascot, which is to be seen everywhere. It assumes the shape of a snail, hitherto only favoured as an edible, but now manufactured in gold and silvei’ and precious stones. The “escargot” has leapt into immediate popularity, displacing the miniature horse-shoe, the white elephant, and the four-leaved clover as a luck-bringer.—Globe.

Babies’ Hospital for Napier.

A movement is afoot in Napier to build a babies’ hospital in connection with the Plunket Society. A substantial sum has already been subscribed. Mr. E. W. Knowles has donated a site worth £5OO, and also £2OO to the building fund, and Mr. J. Vigor Brown (the Mayor) donated £lOO.

The birth of a son is announced to Dr. and Mrs. J. M. Mackintosh Bell, late of New Zealand, now of Canada. Just now Dr. and Mrs. Bell are in London, living at Cheyne Walk, Chelsea.

Decline in the Marriage Rate. Madame Clara Butt recently gave her views to an English paper on the decline in the marriage rate. The famous contralto things it is due. to a large extent, to the different standpoint the younger generation take of life as compared with the standpoint of their grandfathers and grandmothers. The younger generation have larger ideas, more varied and wider interests, more ambitious ambitions than were those with which their fathers and mothers started life. “When they think of the struggles their fathers have told them about their early married life, how they pinched and saved and screwed, and denied themselves almost the ordinary necessities of life to provide their children with the means to procure a good education, and so on and so forth, thev think to themselves, ‘ls it worth while? I am now earning a small income—have I the right to ask a woman to lead the life of self-

denial my mother has told me she had to lead in her early married life?’

“They remember that their mother always used to seem to be working. She would sit up sometimes far into the early morning darning her husband’s socks, mending rents in her children’s clothes, sewing buttons on antique shirts, and occasionally—but only very occasionally—making a new blouse for herself or “ turning ” her skirt, in a vain endeavour to imagine that, when once it is turned, she will have a dress which will look almost as good as new. They think of all these things, and, havingthought about them, they say: ‘Well I should like to get married, of course but really it doesn’t seem worth it for me —nr my wife.’ “Looking at the question from this point of view, who shall say whether the man is right or not to remain unmarried? I, for one, could not reply to it with any degree of conviction.”

America’s Snow Eaby. Miss Marie Peary, the only daughter of Admiral and Mrs. Robert Pear “America’s Snow Baby,” as she i J popularly called, made her debut in Washington on Saturday afternoon (says a recent London paper).

She met hundreds of friends of her parents amid floral offerings, and under the well-worn flag which he? father carried for sixteen years on the repeated expeditions that terminated only with the discovery of the Nort i Pole. Mrs. Peary, who shared her husband’s spirit to such a degree tha: Saturday’s debutante was born within 13deg. of the Pole, looked more lik ; the elder sister than the mother of this far-North debutante as they stood together before a large three-panel screen of American beauty roses. * * <ls « The “Slinker Slouch.” A correspondent of the London “Daily Mirror” declares that Englishwomen, by following the fashion of wearing gowns with flowing curves are in danger of permanent injury to their figures. “The slinker slouch,” she writes, “is the only possible description for the limp and lackadaisical gait which woman is now adopting. This slouch, from a health point of view, is most distressing.” Y v * « The White Guimpe’s Rival. Although few of the minor dress accessories so much become the average woman as does the guimpe and stock in white or cream net or chiffon, a rival of it has recently appeared (says an American authority.). This is the transparent guimpe precisely matching the gown or frock, and in many cases it looks extremely well. In gray and tan tones it. is markedly smart, also in many shades of brown, green and mauve, but in blues and reds its effect is almost uncanny. A very good example of the matching tone gu’mpe was seen in a French model in maize-coloured fcßk voile having a deeply cut-out bjodice filled in about the bust and throat with maize net over a slightly deeper shade in maize chiffon, th better to counteract the pink tone of the flesh.

Mr. Spencer Lorraine, who is well known in musical circles in New Zealand is in London at present.

The wedding took place in Christchurch on February 26 of Dr. Louisson, of Christchurch, and Miss P. McGallan daughter of Mr. T. McGaTan, cf Fisherton.

‘‘You’d be a great goose if you didn’t see your husband’s faults; but you’d be a still greater one if you tried to cure him of them! I always think a husband’s faults are like the spots upon the sun. It is a great pity they are there; but if you try to remove them, you’ll only succeed in burning your own fingers. And you’ll get a lot of amusement out of them if you take tnem in the right way, and remember that marriage is n voyage of exploration and not a missionary enterprise.” — From “ Her Ladyship’s Conscience,” by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler.

Mrs. Hugo Friedlander and Miss Friedlander, of South Canterbury, left last week for Australia, where they intend staying until Easter.

At the Sandringham meet of the West Norfolk Hounds, Princess Mary made her first appearance in the hunting field, on a side-saddle, as all her ancestresses, especially Queen Victoria, did, and not the cross-saddle, which is now so much in wogue in England. The “Ladies Field” opened its columns to correspondence on this subject. The net result is that the) side-saddle —and the writers are all expert lady riders of light and leading—with alj its disadvantages, is' more graceful and Safer than a cross one, and fewer side-saddlers get emptied in the hunting field than cross ones.