Ladies' Golumn

Feilding Star, Volume XIII, Issue 121, 9 April 1892, Page 3

Ladies' Golumn

« By Htjia. I keep his house, I wash, wring, brew bake, scour, dress meat, make the beds, and do all myself. — Shakespeare. " One of the common errors of the day is indulgence in indiscriminate reading. The greater the number of books the more careful readers ought to be in the choice of them, and as a guide to their value nothing could be better than the following wise words of " Southey " : — " Young readers, you •whose hearts are open, whose understandings are not yet hardened, and ■whose feelings are neither exhausted nor encrusted with the world, take from me a better rule than any professors of criticism will teach you. " Would you know whether the tendency of a book is good or evil, examine in what state of mind you lay it down. Has it distracted the sense of right and wrong which the Creator has implanted in the human soul 1 If so, if you have felt that such were the effects it was intended to produce — throw the book into the fire, •what ever name it may bear on the cover." FASHION NOTES. French tucking or plisse is very much in vogue now. The material is very wide and is woven in tiny, closely paced tucks, that are pressed quite flat. In plain black fabric the heavy twilled diagonals and nuns serges seem to be the most fashionable and are a good deal trimmed with fur. Mew de sole and cuir royale are among the newest silk materials for dinner gowns. For evening wear the favorite fabric is cream satin-stripped chiffon. A trimming for tailor made gowns is made of black soutache and tine gold thread. The designs are mostly floral. A new skirt-lifter has been invented for wet and muddy days, this will be a greet boon as the dresses are worn so much longer now. For street or travelling gowns nothing has been found to compare with the Irish friese for durablity, and ■which has recently reappeared. Bedford cord is again very fashionable, but is in wider wale than before. " Tarn o' Shanter's " are slowly reviving but are, I think, more suitable for children's wear. One of the latest novelties is the half-high embossed leather shoe, these do very well for town wear, but are hardly suitable for the stony roads of the country. VARIETIES. In a curious old pamphlet called Lenten Stuffe, the author says : ;' The discovery of red herrings was owing to accident, by a fisherman hanging some in. his cabin, when, what with his firing and smoking in that narrow house, his herrings, ■which were as white as whalebone when he hung them up, now looked as red as a boiled lobster."