WOMAN'S WORLD.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 112, 1 November 1911, Page 6

WOMAN'S WORLD.

{Conducted by "Eileen.") \ FOOLISH FOOTWEAR. The tLondon correspondent of the Observer has the following on modern foolish footwear: Hobble skirts have revealed the fact that pretty feet are rarer than one would suppose, and that this summer has seen the craziest fashions in boots and shoes ever known. What i with blue shoes, green shoes, j'ellow '. shoes, and shoes made of velvet suede, or satin, covered with chiffon or lace for outdoor wear, we have seen some really weird footwear, and one might add some really weird feet. A number 0, for instance, wearing shoes of yellow suede, which have bagged and sagged as suede always does, and got rubbed at tile toes and sides, besides revealing several knobby bits indicating corns, bunions, or other foot blemishes. The way this season's footwear has been madly donned without any attention being paid to a sense of the appropriate, leaving the becoming quite out of the question, is almost extraordinary. At the (iallery I caught sight of a smartlooking woman in a beautifully cut pale blue linen coat and skirt, with a deep collar of Irish lace on the coat, the whole topped by a rakish hat of white tcgal. with a regular covev of white wings standing up round the crown. * She looked so nice I walked round the , leather lounges which separated us, and,) hey presto! the very smart woman was I suddenly transformed in to a freak. Her very tight skirt was very short, and what do you think she had on her feet? A pair of black velvet shoes with diamond paste buttons! Yes, really. And they were all bagged out of shape too, and worn white at the toes like suede gloves do. Velvet shoes with a linen frock for outdoor wear seemed to me the limit in bad taste. But, then, it is smart to show bad taste nowadays. We ' have by no means reached the limit in graceless footwear, for the bootmakers have just sprung on us the news that satin boots with pearl buttons will be the rage for the winter. Think of it. Red satin, emerald green satin, or any other color to match one's gowns. It is, I too. too much. lam just off to order a pair of prunella shoes with flat heels, as a protest to my bootmaker's new season's circular. He will either hate making them, or seize on it as a new idea, and make them all the rage by sending out a circular announcing: "The Crinoline has returned to favor, and brought in with it the Early Victorian prunella I shoe," with an underline in small letters, "all sizes made to order of best prunella at lowest prices," and add as i an afterthought in nonpariel, in the lefthand corner, "White stockings kept in stock," for everyone knows prunella shoes cannot be worn with any but the stocking of blameless white.

FLIRT CATCHER. What is a "volunteer flirt catcher!" A "volunteer flirt catcher" is a young woman in the service of the police whose reason for existence is the undoing and destruction of "the man who pgles girls in the public streets." There is apparently only one of her at present, and perhaps you will be glad to hear that she is as far away as Los Angeles, which is in California. Now, this is no new thing (says a London paper). That may tw disappointing to the good people af Los Angeles, who possibly believe that they are in the very van of everything which is new and surprising. But in the pages which Steele and Addison wrote a. matter of two centuries ago, you will find much complaint and much debate concerning the iniquity of "ogling," which we generally call staring. It was. if a haphazard memory serves, among the offences for which Mr. Isaac Bickcrstaffe and Mr. Spectator appointed their engaging courts to justice, and as a misdemeanor may therefore be taken to rank with huge hoop petticoats and the like excesses. But among the remedies which occurred to the polite age when Queen Anne was yet alive, "a volunteer flirt catcher" was not numbcu I ed. Let her, therefore, be put upon record. She is "Miss Fay Evans, a remarkably pretty girl, wearing exquisite clothes." She became "convinced that the tactics of the man who ogles girls, in the public streets are a menace to womankind," and therefore she "offered her services to the police." You will pause to remark that Miss Fay Evans had in some degree herself to thank. She need not have been a "remarkably pretty girl," and certainly she need not have worn "exquisite clothes." People who choose to do these things ought to accept with proper humility the established maxim that "a cat may look at a king." Now you may like to know how the catcher went a-catching "Followed at some distance by two detectives in plain clothes, Miss Evans promenaded the main thoroughfares of Los Angeles. Her walk resulted in the capture of ten men, who were each fined £6, with the alternative of thirty days' imprisonment." The phrasing of the telegram is, we cannot but think, a little unkind to Miss Evans. Her walk was doubtless a very wonderful performance. "By her gait the goddess stood revealed," says the old translation of Virgil. The gait of Miss Evans was apparently that of the perfect flirt catcher—an awful thought, not lightly to be admitted of any woman alive.

A NOVELIST'S DIVORCE. Mr. l']>Um Sinclair, the Socialist novelist, sprung a surprise upon the public last month (says a New York correspondent) by formally announcing his inli'iitiiiii of bringing as speedily as possible a divorce suit against his wife, whom lie married in somewhat unusual :cimiinsl.aiices in 1001. Mr. Sinclair once described his reasons for marriage in the following extraordinary terms:

"When my wife anil I fell in love we talked tlie whole marriage business over very conscientiously. We both hated tin! idea of being tied together by either a religious or a legal ceremony. We tried to make up our minds to set the right kind of example to the world. But we knew that Mrs. Sinclair's father and mother would go raving crazy if we did what our consciences told us was right. So to ease their minds we let someone mumble a few words over us and made Ihi'in happy. Marriage nowadays is ni>l liing but legalised slavery—that is ilii- must polite word to describe it. I fancy the average married woman is brought and sold just as much as any h<ir-c nr dog is bought." Then Mr. Sinclair declares he received a letter from his wife, informing him that she wished to go on the stage and be independent. Mr. Sinclair informs the public that his wife left him because he objected to her friendship with a young poet fctfiS^

A WOMAN PREACHER. Mis- Von Pelzohl. M.A., pastor of i Unitarian church in Birmingham, is the li»■—t- woman who has been permitted to preach in a church in Zurich. She was educated for the ministry at Manchester College. Oxford, and was for some years pa-tor of !■ church in Leicester. She has occasionally occupied, Unitarian pulpits in Manchester. While acting as loeum tenens for some months for a woman preacher at Des Moines, U.S.A., shef ul-

filled that lady's function as chaplain to the State Legislature of lowa, and conducted prayers for the State Parliament at each sitting. The Swiss grant medical degrees to women, but they needod a practical demonstration to convince them that tho theological faculty should be thrown open to women.