Women the World Over UNCHANGING CHARM

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 132, 25 August 1927, Page 5

Women the World Over

UNCHANGING CHARM

Critics and paragraph writers have exhausted their stock of superlatives in paying tribute to the unchanging charm of Lily Elsie who, after an ab-

sence of many years, has returned to the stage. Miss Elsie married Major lan Bullough, M.C., in 1911, and until recently has been busily engaged in living a country life. She is a keen sportswoman and regularly follows the hounds.

MIDSHIPMAID

A New York girl, Miss Viola Irene Cooper, holds the position of “midshipmaid” on the French trading barque Saint Andre, recently in Sydney. She is the only woman on board the barque, which has a French captain and officer and a polyglot crew of South Sea Islanders and other coloured men. Miss Cooper joined the boat at San Francisco, and during the voyage attended to correspondence, managed accounts, and even took a turn at the wheel when necessity arose. In her leisure moments she wrote portion of two books. She is a journalist, runs a public stenography office in New York, and was at one time secretary to Kathleen Norris, the American authoress.

HIGH HONOUR

For the first time in history a woman gained control of an important administrative office of the House of Lords when Mrs. H. M. Court was recently appointed head of the Costing and Accounts Department. In no other department or office of the House do women hold the higher appointments.

FROM AUSTRALIA

Miss Jean J. Hamilton is the first Australian to be awarded the Alexander von Humbold Stiftung, a German scholarship tenable at any university in that country. Miss Hamilton, who is now engaged in research work in London, intends to stay at Heidelberg under the scholarship, for the next two years, specialising in 12th and 13tli century German literature. Then being also the holder of another scholarship awarded by the Orient Line, she will go to study early French literature at the Sorbonne. Paris.

A SWEDISH WRITER

Though the days of the Vikings are over, something of the spirit of the sagas remains in the literature of Sweden and Norway to-day. The grim, never-ceasing struggle between evil and good is portrayed in the works of the northern writers, of whom not the least is Selma Lagerhof, Swedish novelist, and winner of the Nobel Literature Prize. A teacher by profession Selma Lagerhof first won recognition with her story “The Saga of Gosta Berling.” Fame and fortune came to her, but she remained in her quiet home in Varmland, devoting her life to her art, and writing of the simple things and the people she knew and loved. “The King of Portugalee,” one of her less-known books, is, perhaps, one of her best, a work with an unusual clarity of style and simplicity of thought.

THE WAY TO LEISURE

Not too much leisure, but too little, is the complaint of the average mid-dle-class woman. Her time is taken up, frittered away, with a hundred and one things that don’t want doing, and that she doesn’t want to do. Set them against the real joy of a real leisure hour. The book you want to read, against tea with a woman you don’t want to talk to; time to enjoy your snowdrops just now, against the mistaken idea that it is your duty to walk round the shops buying in. Shopping steals countless hours. Forethought and method can reduce household shopping to one expedition a week, and save money on it. Who really wants callers dropping in? The old-fashioned plan of a weekly “day,” on which you disposed of all the well-intentioned bores at a sitting, had its points as a leisure-saving plan. If there are children, why, you must get leisure, somewhere to enjoy them and to let them enjoy you. A disconsolate five-year-old, repulsed from some urgent confidence, bewailed, sadly: “What is the use of a mummy who’s always busy?” Our lives bloom in leisure. There would be no daffodils if the bulbs didn’t sit still a bit. If your carpet is inclined to curl up, make small pockets at each corner and stitch in small lead weights. such as dressmakers use.