The Household.

Hawke's Bay Times, Issue 1590, 3 July 1874, Page 273

The Household.

The Fashions.

The following extracts are from the latest Paris correspondence of' the Young Ladies' Journal:—

The new material which simulates quilted silk, is acquiring favor. After appearing first in black as a tunic for a walking-dress, here it is again in white or most delicate gray, combined with blue faille, to make up the - loveliest of breakfast toilettes. This Princess peignoir, of white quilted silk, has a train, cela va sans dire, but is short enough in front to* allow about four inches of the uhder-skirt to be seen. This blue faille skirt, trimmed at the bottom with a gathered flounce.over a pleated one, is more fully seen on both sides, the white skirt being very gracefully gathered up by a.broad scarf of blue faille, and a large mother-of-pearl buckle.' A handsome blue silk ; cordeliere is loosely tied round the waist. The dress is closed in front with large mother-of-pearl buttons, and a ruff and jabot of white silk guipure. The blue silk collar and eleeve revers are also edged with : white silk guipure.' J f'vl! Vid i' i iThis extremely rich model ican.easily be copied in less expensive. material—such as cashmerei merino, alpaca, or any other fancy material. It is the shape and harmonious contrast of color which are the only important items, in tasteful dress v True elegance can be as well purchased with shillings as with pounds, and does not at all exclusively belong to wealth. ' 3 ,- I. notice in .spring costumes a good many striped trimmings. Thus, a walking .or travelling dress is composed ;of plain and satin-striped woollen material.' The skirt is trimmed all round with a series of narrow flounces, eight in number, put on almost quite flat, alternately plain and ttriped, the plain ones only, being cut across. The tunic, of plain material, is edged with a striped band the same width as the flounces. The sleeveless bodice and the revers of the sleeves are also of striped material without any trimming. Satirr buttons. This dress is extremely pretty, and can be made of any color whatever.

Forjjewels. nothing is*so ranch the fashion now as stars, or rather marguerites, made of diamonds or pearls and diamonds. The. setting is contrived in such an ingenious mariner, that they can be turned to ever so many accounts, and might be called jewels-of-all-works. Three of them, completed by two smaller ones for ear-rings, form thus the most complete ana useful of parur'es.

German Women. —A writer to the Victoria Magazine, of which Miss ;Emily Faithfull is the editor, says :—" Germany, in spite of its military success,-and the 1 splendor of its triumphs in the realms of .science, stands lower iu the scale of civilization than any other European country, except Turkey; for in no : other country does womeu occupy so ignob}e : and. servile'a position. In England ,they. are treated with respect. In France America so. long as they are young and pretty* they are Worshipped. .In Germany they are simply utilized.'' ! ■'■''• Female Attire.—Miss Elizabeth Stuart. Phelps, .the authoress of." The Gates Ajar,' writes in the New York Independent:—" For myself I confess that I never feel thoroughly ashamed of being a woman, except in glancing over a largo promiscuous assembly, and contrasting the. simplicity, solidity, elegance, &nd good sense of a man's apparel, with'the affectation, the fljinsiness, the tawdriness, the ugliness, and the" imbecility of a woman's. For her mental arid moral deficiencies my heart is filled, with a great compassion and prompt ■ excuse,. ■ Oyer her, physicial inferiority I mourn, '■'. riot as one without hope. When I consider .the pass to Which she has brought the one sole science of whichshe is supposed to be yet i mistress, my heart misgives : me down to the roots of every hope I ■ cherish for her." How to Take Care of a Piano.—-It should be remembered tha't the pianoforte is susceptible to the changes of temperature, and, when tuned in one temperature it will be out of tune in another. Good and wellmade pianofortes will stand in tune, if they, are tuned in proper periods. Many people, if they wish to avoid expense, will let their instruments remain long out of tune, which is a great detriment to them, as they are less likely to.-stand well after having been, so left. We will offer a few hints inreference to the'matter. A pianoforte ought firstly to. be' ttined f.wice at year a - least. First, whe a you: qorinnence with a fire in the room; second, /when, a fire is discontinued. By following ■ this l course I you have the , best that'the instrument will remain in turie'fbr -the* longest period of time. Again, ; the instrument should not be r :suffered torernahi, long, below concert pitch ; if it is for years'tuned' 'beWiv it will never stand up to" theipitcbtiwithdut a great deal of labor, dfj 1 indeed,; it;pvej:-starids;,a,tJail.* 'Many other-J wise" beautiful instruments are nearly; or ; quite ruined for want of proner attention to. theses 'Simple, -fact's.'; L'Yetifel will'riot forp tuner, to these i things; 'if '3ie 'does;,' the, people will anasaj^ thaV-He-iß' plariWrt'g'fornis-bwn a l dvalitagc; Owners J of- pianofortes'^ho'-Care mtiti ac-'-' quainted with L i ought to. bear '{hese facts in miriu, when, by a Jye.arly outlay of'a'trifling 'surti, 'they may save infinitely .morfylthari they expend by the preservation of their instrument, in which they have invested so much. (

THE MASSACHUSETTS FLOOD. The floods in: Massachusetts, of ..which

only brief mention was.made in a recent telegram, have proved to be most serious.

The most terrible disaster in the annals of the history of Massachusetts (says the Alta of May 27), occurred in Hampshire Country on Saturday. The Williamsburg reservoir, covering a' tract of over one. hundred acres, gave wa}' early in the fore- . noon, precipitating the vast mass of water it contained three miles down a steep, and harrow, T.alley ; into the thriving manufacturing village of .Williamsburg, and thence further, down; the; .valley, ..through the villages of Haydenville, Leeds, and Florence,; into, the Northampton Meadows, where the stream empties into the .Connecticut 'river. The" huge torrent, dashing' into •Williamsburg with resistless power,'; swept away in a moment the manufacturing' establishments and numbers'of dwellings, causing enormous f de r structibn'of property and terrible loss of; human life'. The' lower villages suffered only less awfully. The reservoir which burst was a wall of masonry five' feet at the' thickest, bached and faced with fifty feet of earth* It was twenty-five feet in depth and four hundred: and fifty feet long. Behind it was a lake, of one, hundred and four acres, folding, three million tons of water; j On .Friday: night; last it rained hard.. At half-past seven on Saturday morning,, Cheney, one of the dam watchers, waß in front of his dam when he saw in the east branch a spurt of. water, near the base. In a moment he turned to his barn, jumped on his mare, and ran her for dear life down the road to Williamsburg. ' He ; looked back once, and saw that out of an enormous breach in the earth and masonry a torrent of water had burst into the air./ There was no dam, there was nothing to be seen but the front of a huge,' rolling, wave, which was carrying oh Its very crest the great, stone blocks of the .wall, and dashing them down the steep incline of the valley. The speed of. this torrent: increased ,every moment, but Cheney was gone, riding recklessly. oyer the stony and rnnddy roads to give the, warning where fifty homes were in the,, direct path of. the flood. He/went oyer 'the terrible.two and. half miles at so rapid ■ a pace that in ten minutes he was crying and yelling, like a madman among, the cottages of , Williamsburg, "The dam! The dam! is burst; -get up to the highground, the waterfis coming."- It : had' come;'-' : Ten< minutes wasfull enough for that mountain of water going down a decline of one foot in six to reach the first victims. There' they 'stood, pretty • white, cottages hr rows and rectangles on the flats.' 1 The gorge had been narrow above, and a thirty foot moving wall of water and limestone rock undistinguishable were upon them, over them, and spread out upon the plain, roaring like the crash of near thunder and tumbling down the. frightened valley at twenty miles an hour. Those who were safe before the news came escaped ; for the rest they took the . chances of the flood. Some clung to their houses, but houses were mere toyß of paper, swept like feathers here and there, piled one upon the other, upset, spun round, lifted bodily and broken in twain against trees, lifted into the air and ground to splinters between the flood, beaten and buffeted and tossed adrift, with all that was human in them, shaken into the terrible railway speed of the deluge of timbers, and quartz rocks,. and .water. Some fled, and were overwhelmed befpre the eyes of their friends; some went mad, and rode the deluge down the valley.: shrieking. ,Here and there'one could be seen sitting upon .the; roof:of his-shaking house,, and , clinging-;to it as the billows struck it. ;': Ofyi these last, one or two escaped by. the.sudden of the waves. It was all. over in a short half hour, and the waste-had gone down the valley not 1 unheralded entirely; An hour from the alarm at "Williamsburg, the waters had done their work; arid in half : a^ ! hour more' had lost their power; 120 buildings are destroyed, hundreds of acres covered with'stone arid mud; No one has attempted ;to; estimate the., loss in money. As' for human life,. to-night 90 bodies in '. all. have been found,' arid''squads of men here and' there through 'the valley are , looking for the missing. Scarcely a trace has been left of the removal of habitations, so completely had the torrent ploughed up the ground in all directions. Happily, says the New York Tribune, the details of the terrific disaster in Hampshire County, Mass,, which are made known to our readers this morning, do not confirm the wild rumors which at first arose,' though the loss of life and destruction of property are both very great. One hundred and forty-five persons are believed to have perished, and SIO,OOO (?) of property to "have been swept away,' and from* 300 to 400 families' have been renderedl homeless; I To add 'to'the' general' confusion ,<and rough fcharacters:from.neighboring Icities, and.' even from New.fYork -and ißostohj'' have pouiied in,'eager fpru>plurider. ; ■ But "the ruined.;., communities... are j the ; ; first; to take measures:,,fop .their.jown ~ Temporary;reljef,committees haveibeen i , organized and. have gone Actively to work'.". ,the, number] of /liyemhpst by. the t}MS£ jßivero accident-can. (how* be -fixed .with practical certainty at 145, and the value of dollars. Practically nothing wiR be saved: from the vast quantities of valuable

machinery, costly stores, and manufactured products. All day long this ghastly wound in one of the fairest valley of Mas. sachus'etts, has'beeu explored and probed by searchers looking for the bodies of the lost and loved. All day the exhumation and interment has been going on. The labors of a large force' will be required for weeks to search thoroughly the debris covering the meadows. So intimately, however, were, the villagers known to each other that it will not be necessary to prosecute the search for bodies much longer, nearly all the missing being already accounted for. The supply of coffins was exhausted early in the day, and two bodies, which were found after there were no more to be had, were laid under a tattered coverlet in an : open express wagon, and so driven through the streets of Williamsburg. Long lists of the dead aie published in the New'York journals' The more, one sees of the scene, the more desolate., it ■ appears, says the writer. Nearly every tree in the course .of the torrent is filled with shreds of clothing) which the cruel branches stripped from the helpless people whom the flood swept by, and the trees themselves ate stripped by the torrent of their bark, and from trunk to twig are left as naked and white and scathed as the corpses ef those they crushed and bruised.