Five Pounds a Day For Cigars.

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 49, 10 May 1884, Page 4

Five Pounds a Day For Cigars.

Lady John says strong things of luxury in furnitnre, and mere spending in dress. Her ladyship says that £600 a->ear is spent by many ladies in clothes. They will change their dresses three times in the course of the evening. The men spend £200 a-year on hansoms ; some of them think it no shame to give £5 a day for their cigars. Flowers for a ball cost £2,000. Rents have gone up for no reason save fashion. Bouqueti, cost three guineas, because the com- 1 petition is severe. Lady John lifts up the voice of a prophetess against all this, calls for simplicity of Hie again, and what comes with simplicity of life, sympathy for others, and work for the poor. While all thie self-indulgence is going on the real duty of wealth is unperformed, and her ladyship demands that the rich shall accept the greatest luxury of all, the luxury of doing good. For a lady who may yet be a duchess some day thus to talk is one of the most refreshing signs of the times.

Mr Ruskin says, "What was beautiful yesterday is beautiful to-day." There are exceptions, Mr liuskin. A young man who took his girl to the opera one nig^ht recently thought she was the personification of beauty. Next day he made an early call and found her attired in a faded calico dress, dilapidated slippers, and her own hair; and— well — She wears finest diamonds and laces, And is worth half a million, they say ; Her set socialistic embraces The fashion and wealth of the day ; Hex* face is a model of beaiity— Her praises are sung o'er and o'er ; But what are her health and her booty, When a foghorn can't equal her snore ? The utility of the mongoose for the destruction of rabbits is questioned in New South Wales. The "Wentworth Advocate " says that the mongooses lately imported to the district have not as yet proved a success, and that hitherto they have not killed a single rabbit.