"MARK TWAIN" AND "THE LADIES."

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 10, 11 August 1883, Page 4

"MARK TWAIN " AND " THE LADIES."

"■The ladies, bless them," was the toast assigned to "Mark Twain." The toast, he said, includes the sex universally ; it is to woman comprehensively ; wheresoever she may be found. Let us consider her ways. First xomes the matter of dress. This is a most important consideration in a subject of thif nature, and must be disposed of before we can intelligently proceed to examine the profounder depths of the theme. Pop text let us take dress of two antipodal types — the savage woman of Central Africa and the cultivated daughter of our high modern civilisation. Among the Pans, a great negro tribe, a woman, when dressed for home, or to go to market, or out calling, does not wear anything at all but just her complexion — that is all ; that is the entire outfit, Tt is the lightest costume in tho world, but it is made of the darkest material. It has often been mistaken for mourning. li is the trimmest and neatest am! gracefullest costume that is now in fashion. It wears well, is fast colours, does not show dirt. You don't have to send it down town to wash, and have some of it come back scorched with the flat-irou, ami some of it with the buttons ironed off, and some of it petrified with starch, and some of it chewed by the calf, and some of it changed for other customers' things that haven't any virtue but holiness, and ten-twelfths of the pieces overcharged for the rest of the dozen " mislaid." And it .always fits. And it is the handiest dress in the whole realm of fashion. It is always ready done up. When you call on a Fan lady and send up your card, the hired girl never says. " Please take a sent ; madam is dressing. She will bedownin three-quarters of an hour." No, madam is always ready dressed — always ready to receive ; and before you can get tho doormat before your eyes she is in your midst. Then, again, the Fan ladies don't go to church to see what each other has got on, and they don't go back home and describe it and slander it. Such is the child of savagery as to everyday tuilet, and thus, curiously enough, she finds a point of contact with the fair daughter of civilization and high position who often has " nothing to wear," and thus these widely separated types of the sex meet upon common ground Yes, such is the Fan woman as she appears in her simple, unostentations everyday toilet. But on State occasions she is more dressy. At a banquet she wears bracelets, at n lecture she wears earrings and a belt ; at a ball she wears stockings, and witli the true feminine fonduess for display, she wears thim on her anna ; at a funeral she wears a jacket of tar and ashes ; at a wedding the bride, who can afford il puts on pantaloons. Thus the dark child of savagery a; id the fair daughters of civilisation meet once more upon common ground, and these two touches of nature make the whole world kin. Now we will consider the dress of our other type. A large part of the daughter of civilisation is her dress — as it should be. Some civilised women would lose half their charm without dress, and some would lose all of it. The daughter of modern civilisation dressed in her utmost best is a marvel of exquisite and beautiful art and — expense. All the lands, and all the climes, and all the arts are laid under tribute to furnish her forth. Her linen is from Belfast her robe is from Paris, her lace is from Venice or France or Spain, her feathers aie from the remote regions of Southern Africa, her furs from the remoter home of the iceberg and the aurora, her fan from Japan, her diamonds from Brazil, her bracelets from California, her pearls from Ceylon, her cameos from Rome. She lias gems and trinkets from buried Pompeii and others that graced comely Egyptian forms that have been dust and ashes now for 40 centuries, her watch is from Geneva, her card-case is from China, her hair (lengthy) is from — from — I don't know where her hair is from ; I never could find out that. That is her other hair, her public hair, and Sunday hair ; I don't mean the hair she goes to bed with. Why, you ou^hfc to know the hair I m«an ; its that 1 thing she calls a switch, and which resemoles a switch as much as it docs a brickbat, or a shotgun, or any other tiling lrhJoh you correct people with. Its, tlujit thing which she twists and then coils' round and round her head, bee-hive fashion, and then tucks the end und,er ; the hive, and harpoons it with a hair-pin. And that reminds me of, a trifle : — Any time you want to, you caw glance around the carpet of a Pullman car, and go and 1 pick up a hair-pin, but not to save your life can you get any woman in that car to acknowledge that , hair-pin. Now, isn't that strange ? But its true. The woman who has never swerved from cast-iron morality and fidelity in her life will, when confronted with this crucial test, deny -her hair-pin. ' She will deny that hairrpin before a hundred witnesses. I have, stupidly got into more troubles and more; hot 'waier trying to hunt up the owner of .a hair-pin in j» Pullman car than by any other indiscretion of my life. ''We'll, you see what the daughter of civilisation is when she is dressed, and you have seen what t\\a daughter of savagery is when she is not. Such is woman as to costume. I come now to consider her in her higher an I nobler aspects as mother, wife,' widow — grass-widow, mother-in-law, hired girl, telegraph operate r, telephone hallooer, queen, book-agent, wet-nurse, stepmother, boss,"profeBpional double-headed ; woman, f professional, t beauty, and so forth audiSO'Qn. ,We will simply discuss these few — itt the rest of the sex tarry

in Jericho till we cortie again. ' Fitftfi on thojlist of right, and first on our list cornea a woman who^why, f d,ear me, I have been talking threc r quarters of an hour. I beg a thousand pardons. But you see yourselves that I; have a large contract. I have accomplished anyway. I have introduced niy subject/ and if I had till next Forefathers* Day I am- satisfied that I could discuss H t as adequately and appreciatively as ft glorious and noble theme deserves. But, as the matter stands now, let us finish as we began, and say, without jesting, but with all sincerity, " Women — the ladies, bless them 1"