Feminine Interests

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 556, 8 January 1929, Page 5

Feminine Interests

1 Women the Woriel Over

A VETERAN ORGANIST Miss Jane Reicheuberg, the veteran organist of St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church, Hobart, has completed her OOtli year of service in that capacity, she having assumed the position in IS(JS. Miss Reichenberg, who was born in Hobart, is now 82 years of age.

A ROYAL SONG-WRITER Princess Juliana, who will one day be Queen of Holland, has had a delightful surprise. She is now at Ley don University, where she is treated just like any other undergraduate, and with the other “freshers” she had to enter the song-writing contest held every year. The authors’ names are contained in sealed envelopes, which are not opened until the award has been made, and the adjudication committee this year found that the winning song was written by Princess Juliana.

CHANGED FORTUNES From being a housekeeper, Miss Jane Hayes has become a woman of wealth. For many years she kept house for the Rev. Tertius Buzzard, rector of an English village. Wishing to reward her for her services, the rector bequeathed liis few worldly goods to Miss Ilayes, but a few days before lie died his rich sister dropped dead, leaving her fortune to him, and the housekeeper inherited <£26.000.

IN BANKING CIRCLES Miss Helen Watters Patton recently passed the iinal examination in England for the Associateship ,of the institute of Bankers—an unusual accomplishment for a woman. The examination is an exceedingly difficult one, and includes papers on social subjects, political economy and English. For the various sections there were, on this occasion, 13,000 candidates sitting. Miss Patton is now attached to the overseas cables department of the Midland Bank at the head office in London.

MISS CAXTON

Miss Nancy Cunard, the only daughter of Lady Cunard. and a brilliant poet, has set up a printing press in her home iu France. Among tlie authors whom she is to, publish in limited editions are George Moore and Norman Douglas. SPAIN’S LEADING WOMAN LAWYER Miss Clara Campoamor, of Madrid, is the leading legal woman in Spain. She is a charter member of an inter-

national organisation that has been formed to promote the interests of woman lawyers throughout the world. Miss Campoamor declares that the entry of Spanish women into the profession is one of the most important events of recent times, and will eventually lead to the economic, civil and social equality of the sexes in her

WHAT TO DO WITH SOAP PIECES The odd pieces and scraps of any good household soap may be used up with the addition of a little borax for the purpose of making washingup water soft and cleansing. Shred the soap with an old suet grater and place in a 21b stone jam Fill up the jar with boiling water, add a tablespoonful of borax, stir and set aside till cold. A few spoonfuls of this added to the washing-up water will leave the crockery bright and glossy, and will keep the hands of the worker soft and white.

BETWEEN FRIENDS

When we reflect on the astonishing | changes or the perhaps equally sur- ; prising monotony of the lives of | people we know, we are apt to say, i confidently: “Well, of course, it’s all ! luck and chance; there is no rhyme ■or reason anywhere.” Yet if we ask any honest and intelligent person if that is the view held personally of the individual experience, we shall j probably meet with a reluctance to I agree with us. j Few people live to the middle years j without beginning to see a hint of a | plan in their lives. Few of them ever enlarge on this subject; they feel that their ground is too uncertain; that here as in many other departments, superstition may enter harmfully if the imagination is given too much rein. For most of us the best course ninety-nine times out of a hundred |is to get on with the next thing as j freely and as energetically as pos- ! sible. But for all of us there comes the hundredth time when we pause in an involuntary review of circum-

stances. and are astonished at the relevance of the seemingly irrelevant, the revealing, educative power of the thing that at the time seemed so meaningless, perhaps cruelly so. An Idea that Persists We are tempted to believe that after all the experience we have had was and is the right experience for us, and though we lose this belief when life disappoints us again, yet we return to it sooner or later when reflection has again set in. No one else can possibly judge this situation. To others, even to our friends, our lot may seem not only hard, but flippantly, monstrously so, as if we were truly just the sport of the gods in an idle moment. Or it may seem preposterously fortunate, something far beyond our deserts. It does not seem to me that the question of what we deserve enters into our “fates” at all. Destiny is busy with us. if busy at all, in the larger aspects of ourselves. What ihappens to us happens not because we deserve it, but because we need it; it. forces into life some nucleus I possibility of which we ourselves are scarcely aware. I do not. of ■ course, mean that 1 think we need it: in the sense of a correction. We bring our corrections on ourselves; they come under another heading, and are usually recognisable. The faith that destiny is making something of us if we will let it is, like all faiths, a dim thing till lived, but at least t: involves us in neither pettiness nor despair.