MAORI CRITIC.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1380, 5 March 1912, Page 9

MAORI CRITIC.

STRANGE THINGS RELATED. A Maori woman, Hine Rawei, is in Chicago with her husband on a lecturing tour, and the following alleged interview with her is given in the Chicago "Sunday Examiner" :—

''For large-built women to wear fashionable tight skirts is tho same as to try to get a 20-inch man through a li-inch hole —you might get him in, but you can't fet him out," said the dreamy-eyed laori. "In New Zealand tho Native women don't dress so absurdly, and imagine they are fashionable. "Now another thing about vour women," sho ) added. "They go to clubs until they can t seo straight. One woman was a member of twenty, and when sho joined tho twenty-first she told a friend, 'I did so to get rid of the other twenty.' What with being members of clubs, mistresses of homes, good wives—and fxisting! Oh!" Hero came a most wonderful expression of earnestness and emphasis into Mmo. llawei's, eyes. "And then their ideas of entertaining are so funny. They invite a whole lot of people in for afternoon tea. They fill tho room; thev jam it till tho doors bulge out; the women chatter—then leave. New Zealand womeu have not so much company as friends! "And then theso mothers let their girls out on tho streets late at night. Oh, my! Why, in New Zealand they lock them iip at night, and if tho girl goes out the peoplo wag their heads and say, 'Too bad, and sho used to bo such a good girl, too.' She is out of tho pale, that's all. And von pamper your girls too much. Let them breathe. They won't get cold. New Zealand children live out of doors all tho time. Every Native child swims when a babe. Why, there was a littlo baby girl two years old who fell in a well—and drowned—contrary to all precedents. The only comment on tho death of this little girl was: 'Why didn't the girl have sense enough to swim V And our Native women all rido horses—in any fashion—bareback or any other way outside ef a circus; some can ride that way, too. In tho interior they still hold to the good old practice of throwing their children into the nearest river whon they wish to punish them, and when they swim to shore throw thorn back again and again until exhausted. They then put them to bed. "If you put children on cushions at their easo they will havo cushion muscles and cushion brains. They need to get out and run. And another thing young men and women don't use in New Zealand is rockers. We sit erect in straight backs. Tho rockers we preserve for old people and tho frail ones."