Fairly Feminine.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 15, 16 June 1911, Page 6

Fairly Feminine.

View Freak—Hoop Sleeve.

Despite many bold efforts to popularise it, the harem skirt 'has been a. failure, even in "the gay city" of Paris. Though the garment is occasionally worn at the roller-skating rink or in the theatre-box, it is seldom seen on the streets, except in the shape oi milder models, which are hardly distinguishable from the conventional woman's costume. The harem has not yet appeared at ;the fashionable racecourses. The manager of Worths, the famou-s house of modes, says that society was unprepared for the harem skirt, but it may be resurrected later on. Lesser known luminaries of fashion Bay that the innovation was killed by cheap imitations —hideous models that were put out by the great department etores. . -_ Really aristocratic women in Pans ere wearing with their ball gowns and bouse frocks the latest freak—the hoop Bleeve. . , In this eleeve the hoop, seven inches in diameter, is placed in the middle oi the forearm and the material of the sleeve drawn in at the wrist and elbow.

Fictional " Feathers." A High School teacher of Ne> York, Miss Clara Whitmore, in a small book that is i-he fruit of much study, "Women's Work in English Fiction" lias been sticking some feathers in women's caps thab give us all a right to hold our heads higher. A woman, it seems, wrote the first humanitarian novel in English fiction, the first political novel, the first important historical novel, the first novel depicting Irish life, Scottish life, and factory life, the first novel on the marriage problem, the first on the problem of labour and capital. Perhaps it would puzzle a good many people to name these novels, as most of them are now forgotten. "Qrinooko/ , by Aphra

Behn, the first humanitarian novel, dealt with the problem of slavery in Dutch Guiana before the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was born. The first historical novel was "Thaddeus of Warsaw." by Jane Porter, whose "Scottish Chiefs" etill delights the youth of the British Isles. Maria Edgeworth's "Castle Rackrent" introduced Ireland into fiction, and Miss Elizabeth Hamilton's "Cottagers of Glenburnie" did the same for the Scottish peasants.

Child Labour. The old method of teaching pur children was by making an example of their dulnees. If they failed to keep tip, then "dunces cap," and "put in the corner." These were the old methods that failed to bo a mental prop in the past. It would be interesting to note how fax we have progressed in the methods of teaching in the present time. Take «. boy who has just passed the fourth standard, which may or may not have been "rather stiff ,, to him: if the latter then his pull up must •come sooner or later. The master will start by giving him plenty of home work, and if he does not do that to his satisfaction, he will be kept in until four or half-past four; £c therefore has the boy working and worrying almost every waking hour about his work. Now that continuation classes are about to be started, this seems to be the exact time to ask the department: "What is gained by working young children at night?" If it be wrong to overwork a grown man mentally, surely it is a hundred times worse to tolerate the system in the child. Ask any doctor casually whether he thinks "that night study for a child is harmful," and he will answer immediately that it is. Which boy would have the most retentive memory, after he passed the eixth ? —the boy that had night work while at school, or the boy that had not? Which one would make the clever man ?—Gazelle.