Week-end Chat

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 208, 18 September 1937, Page 12

Week-end Chat

"ANN * # #

ELIZA. "

A DIETICIAN. * Hk

"OLD STOCKINGS."

' NOT AN ONLY CHILD. ' '

"NO GLAEE."

"ANTI-EGOTISM."

I GODSIN

EOSE,

COUNTRY ANDl TOWN.

September 18. Dear Everyone, — After so much excitement with the football mateh it is xestful to think about abstract things, and readers have been thinking and writing for this column about topics which are always under discussion. This letter is from a southern reader. Dear Gousin Eose, — I do most heartily agree that there are many ill-considered ways of economy. The person who thinks she cannot afford a holiday does not consider that if she is spending away from home she is not also spending at her home. Those who grudge lighting fires may be lowering their vitality for want of warmth. That never pays. Then there is the person who does not walk as well as she did 20 years ago, and yet cannot bring herself to spend a shilling or two on a tax'i. This is a very common economy. I do not, of course, refer to the really hard-up people, who are forced to consider every penny. The bits of string economy is a very harmless one. But personally I dislike to tie a parcel with six-inch bits of string knotted together, so do not. An economy I deplore is for those who can afford better, to wear a hat of the timo of Mrs. Noah. It looks so forlorn, and such cheap head-gear can now be bought for both men and women. — Yours, etc.,

Dear Gousin Eose, — As a dietician you ask me to give my idea of mixed f'oods. To put such a very eoniplicated subject_ in a nut-shell, I will answer that the question. of the combinations in foodstuffs eaten at one meal, resolves itself into this: Simple meals are easier to digest by people who have weak digestions, than are meals with a variety of dishes talcen at a time. This is the reason why some people with quite unscientific ideas get good results, because they do not mix this with that, but eat very simply. One has only to consider how nianv miilions thrive on such familiar meais as fish and chips, or bread and milk, to realise how little harm is done to ordinary people by mixed meals taken by healthy people. It is always as well to check up on the broad facts of life to test our cranky ideas in such matters.— Yours, ete.,

Dear Cousin Eose, — Thank you so much for forwarding to me a large parcel of stockings for the Napier person. Your appeal for boolcs, papers, etc., for the Tokanui Mental Hospital at Te Awamutu, will, I am sure, be generously responded to by your many kind contributors. Let us pass on the address to our friends, so that a regular supply of literature will always be sent. from Hawke's Bay to these DOOr afflicted folk. Vnnr= atn

* it •# Dear Cousin Eose, — I have noticed letters in your column diseussing as to whether baehelors are selllsh. Of conrsc they are. But they do not mean to be. They simply do not thinlc of others or what they can do for them. It does not enter into their scheme of life. I know a number of spinsters, too, who earn enough to lceep themselves and have many little trips, or one big trip. They see. their young married sisters struggling along with less money, and no domestic help, or insufficient help, and these spinsters deside that they would far rather Temain single and independent. I do not know if you could call them exactly selfish, but they do look out for ' ' number one. " I am afraid that soon there will be a shortage of good housewives and mothers. How happy a large family can be and what fun they can have is only known to those of us who have belonged to one. — Yours, ete.,

• * # Dear Cousin Eose, — I would like cordially to disagree with you over the remark in your coloumn that a window is better without blinds. I do detest a- glare. By all means let in every scrap of winter sun, but not summer sun. I prefer the blinds down so that the house keeps cool and flies keep out. No, I do not agree with you. — Yours, etc.,

* $ Dear Cousin Eose, — I wonder why people are seldom taught that it is a good thing to leave out the personal pronoun "I" when they converse. Have your readers ever tliought how many people bring the conversation baek to themselves at every turn. Someone tells an ineident, and "Oh, yes, I had that exporience," they will say. A huaband is ill and the wife seeks sympathy, but the neighbour hardly waits to hear before the ailments of ' ' my ' ' family are brought f orward. Those people who cannot keep their own family affairs out of conversation are a lerrible bore. Was it Mark Twain who said, ' ' There are wild boars and tame bores, but it is the tame bores who make me wild." — Yours. fit.c...

it it «> . It is certainly amazing how capable New Zealand girl« are, One ie

full of admiration at the charming homes that a girl can achieve while her husband is busily earning the salary to keep it going. This week, in Hastings, a delightful . home and garden was seen, the furnishing of the home and most of the work in the garden carried out by a dainty young wife. There were frilly muslin spreads on the beds, most original furnishings in attraetive colours, and gay bowls of flowers about the rooms. The garden had every nook filled with plants. Gay rock plants were thriving over bricks, borders of polyanthus grew in the shade, and, to crown all, under a tree, was a comfortable prarn, anri in it one of the loveliest brown-eyed habios vou could wish to see. What a contrast to Ihe home of many an able-bodiid man who will blissfuliy smoke his pipe on a porch beside a garden that is uttcrly uneultivated. It is aston ishing what human energy can achieve, given the impetus of intelligent will-power.