WOMAN'S WORLD

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 245, 22 February 1911, Page 6

WOMAN'S WORLD

(Conducted by "Eileen"). ABRUZZI ROMANCE RECALLED. DEATH OP SENATOR ELKINS. The "uncrowned King of West Virginia," Senator Stephen B. Elkins, who died recently, left a fortune in mines, forests and railway shares, estimated at £fi,ooo,ooo. According to the reports published in the newspapers, Mr. Elkins was "simply worried to death." The persistent and varied rumors of the betrothal of his charming daughter, Miss Katherino Elkins, to the Duke of the Abruzzi, cousin of the King of Italy, and the statements that he sought ennoblement at the hands of the King as a condition of the marriage, caused him intense vexation. For some time past he had been sleeping on the roof of his house at Washington, in the hope that an open-air cure would rid him of his illness, which is said to have been septic poisoning. All the members of his family—his wife, Miss Katherine Elkins, and his sons, Mr. Stephen and Mr. Blaine Elkins—were present at the death-bed of the senator, whose decease causes an important vacancy in the Senate, which will probably be filled by a Democrat. Born 70 years ago, Mr. Elkins laid the foundations of his fortune as a railway lawyer. He became a banker and acquired vast interests in New. Mexico and West Virginia, where a flourishing mining town is named after him. When a young man he had a marvellous escape from being shot. During the Secessionist war he was captured by Quantrell, the guerrilla leader, who ordered him to be executed. Cole Younger, who was entrusted with the 'execution,' took Mr. Elkins into a wood and whispered, "iNow run." Mr. Elkins ran, expecting to be sliot in the back, but Younger fired in the air. Years after, when Younger was sentenced to imprisonment for life as a bandit, Mr. Elkins employed his political influence to secure his release, and entertained the bandit at his own house. Mr. Elkins was the author of the law hearing his own name' subjecting the railways to the control of Federal authority.

The Rome correspondent of the Paris Temps repeats the story that the projected marriage between the Duke of the Abruzzi and Miss Elkins fell through on account of Mr. Elkins' demands for a title in the Italian nobility and decorations with the Collar of the Order of the Annunciation. "But for this the opposition to the marriage shown by certain members of the Royal Family, such as Queen Margherita and the Duchess of Aosta, would have been overcome. King Victor and Queen Elena had consented to the marriage and to the elevation of Miss Elkins to the rank of a Royal princess." THE WEDDING CEREMONY IN JAPAN A CURIOUS Cu«jLJiAST TO WESTERN" METHODS. Some extremely interesting photographic reproductions which appeared in the Sphere recently are described by our contemporary in the following:— "Mr. Orio Tamura is now twenty years old, having put off all thoughts of matrimony until this late day in order to finish Ills studies at college. He has signified to his father and to the matchmaker, or go-between, that he now desires that a young wife be brought to his own—which is his father's—home. The matchmaker, after considering the official and social position of all the persons and families interested; has suggested that Miss Sugihara Inouye would be a most desirable bride for Mr. Tamura.

"The marriage is arranged by the gobetween and his wife at the instance of the young people's parents. Love has no part in the arrangements, and the young people seldom see each other until they meet and exchange glances, but not words, at some place designated by the go-between in the presence of the gobetween and the father of the prospective bride. Unlucky days for the wedding have been carefully eliminated, and the bride, with the help of her mother and maids, prepares herself for the ceremony. She smooths her face with rice bran and whitens it with powder. She paints her lips red, and takes the utmost pains in dressing her hair. Her wedding dress is of pure white silk. "Weddings on Japan are generally celebrated in the evening, and always at the home of the bridegroom's parents. As she leaves her home she is carried past a little fire which has been kindled at the entrance. In this are burned her dolls and playthings, to indicate that she is passing from girlhood to womanhood. Following the bride in procession to the bridegroom's are her parents, her own and the bridegroom's friends, and servants bearing presents for the bridegroom's family. "Just before Miss Inouye becomes Mrs. Tamura, she drinks tea with her mother and her friend, the wife of the gobetween. For want of an exact term we have to call the wife of the go-between a bridesmaid, for a Japanese bride has no bridesmaids in the Occidental sense, Sngihara now receives some final good advice on her conduct in her new home. Perhaps they quote these counsels from the 'Japanese Greater Learnj iny for Women': The great life-long duty of her countenance and the style of her with her husband both the expression of her countenance and tlies tyle of her address should be courteous, humble and conciliatory, never peevish and intractable, never rude anil arrogant.' 'The 'tokonoma,' the elevated place of honor and sanctity, is decorated for a wedding with articles .such as pine, plumtree and bamboo, symbolising long life, peace and uprightness; rice, oll'ercd to the gods; sake, or rice wine; and two small sake jugs from which the 'butter- | ilies' pour ihc drink for the bride and bridegroom. "In this family sanctuary arc the bridegroom and bride, their parents, the gobetween and his wife, and the two 'butterflies.' The bride has taken her place near the bridegroom, her veil concealing her face until the ceremony is ended. The go-between, or middleman, is making formal announcement of the marriage, while music and singing are heard without. "Xow the 'butterflies' -two little girls, or a boy and girl—present the two-spout- ; od «ii|> of sake to the mouths of the : bride and the groom alternately. Thi.< j | drinking from one cup signifies their ' ]

being united in joy and sorrow henceforth. After the third cup the ceremony is ended, and Orio and Sugihara are now Mr. and Mrs. Tamura."

WOMEN IN LITERATURE AND JOURNALISM. On the completion of the production of the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, the proprietors of the Times entertained the women editors, and on that occasion .Miss .lane Hogarth, who is at the head of the female stall', made this interesting retrospect:— I Eive-nnd-tliirty years ago a woman (capable of the higher llighU of scholarship and science had to be content to hide her light under a bushel. I remember very well hearing a publisher friend of mine tell how, when the then editor of an important reference book fell ill, the work was carried on for more than a year by two ladies of his family, the sisters of a well-known dean. They did the work excellently—so well, indeed, that the publisher was exceedingly sorry when their brother recovered. But their editorship has never been acknowledged, because the publisher felt that public confidence in the book would have been rui; iv -iiiken if it had ever got out that it ...i.i !i en even temporarily under fenainie e.i.orship. But to-night we are celebrating the work of women representing education, scholarship, literature, travel, sociology, science, philosophy, medicine and history, who have all contributed to the great book, and whose fitness to do so would receive instant and general acknowledgement. Education work is represented by Mrs. Henry Sidgwiek, litera- [ ture by Mrs. Humphrey Ward, .Mrs .Meynell, Miss Jessie Weston and Miss Bryant, travel (and therefore history in its most living and attractive form) by Lady Lugard, Miss Gertrude Bell, and Mrs. Alec. Tweedie, administrative woi k and sociology by his Majesty's Chief Lady Inspector of Factories (Miss Ade--1 laide Anderson) and by Mrs. Barnett and Miss Zimmern, science by Lady Huggins and Miss A. L. Smith, as welt as bj the late Miss Mary Bateson and, Miss Agnes Gierke, scholarship by Mrs. Wilde, Miss Anna Paues, and Miss Bertha Phil- | potts, medicine by Dr. Hennessy, music by Miss Schlesinger, and art by Mrs. Gomme and the late Lady Dilke, whilst in philosophy the eleventh edition of the Encylcopedia has been enriched by a most original contribution, a lady advanced in years, whose health does not j allow her to be with us to-night—Lady Welby the author of the article | "Signifies." i What does this wide range of feminine activity prove? It proves that into the last four decades women have compressed the work of four centuries. In 1875, when the ninth edition was beginning, there were as yet no women's colleges at Oxford, and only trn very small, and, one might almost f.\ . <'\r>erimental, institutions at Cambridge. \'.-i-''jv you do not ask about a clever, v.;; informed woman: "Was she at a university?" You are surprised if you find that she was not. In 1875 women had only just got into the Post Office; now they are there lin their thousands. They are even in that most conservative of all iastitutions, I the Bank of England, and there are sixty women in the Bank now. Women clerks, indeed,' are everywhere. They have practically the monopoly of secre- | tarial work, ttiey are book-keepers and I accountants in all the great shops; but twenty years ago where would you have I found a woman in the counting-house of 1 a great business concern? Seventeen years ago there were no women inspectors of factories. To-day, if she will forgive my saying so, Miss Adelaide Anderson is both a power and a terror in the land.

Or, again, take the profession of journalism. Twenty years ago you could count women journalists on the fingers of one hand. To-day the women are everywhere, even in Printing House Square—though, if rumor tolls the truth, they had to slip in there by stratagem. With the exception of the Law and the Established Church, which remain close corporations, women have become such a recognised part of the professional world that when the editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica came to consider the question of repeating the heading, "Women's Professions," in the new edition, he saw at once that it would look just as aosurd as a heading "Men's Profession," and that if you were going to write the history of women you might as well write the history of the world. With the exception, therefore, of some sketch of their education and of the laws protecting women (kc do still want a little extra protection), and that vexed subject, which I will most carefully refrain from mentioning, women are not treated in any special place in the Encyclopedia Britannica, just because they are treated all through the Encyclopedia Britannica. Their interests, their work, and their present place in the social scheme are so completely on a level with the interests, the work'and the place of men that it is impossible to treat them separately. And this one fact is the strongest possible testimony to the enormous advance in civilisation made by all the Englishspeaking people in the last forty years.