TEA TABLE TALK

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 238, 6 April 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

TEA TABLE TALK

Six hundred women were executed for witchcraft in France in 1609.

The daughters of the Duke and Duchess of Fife are splendid swimmers. It has been the custom in the Royal Family for the children to be taught to swim almost as soon as they are able to walk.

Jean Countess of Roxburghe, who died in 1753, aged ninety-six, had a long widowhood of seventy-one years, but a certain Dame Agnes Skinner, who is buried in Camberwell Church, holds the record for long widowhood. She died in 1499, aged one hundred and 'nineteen years, and survived her husband for ninety-two years.

In the in ISSO, half a million women were engaged with the men in military operations. The leader of this rebellion was Hiing-siutsutn, who believed that he had a mission to overthrow the Mane'hu dynasty. He made an immense number of converts. Having laid waste some of the best provinces in southern China, they captured Nanking in 1853. Here the women were formed into brigades; ten thousand were garrisoned within the city and the rest were compelled to do the rough work of the army—digging trenches, throwing up eartkworks, and erecting batteries. They held the place until 1864, when the Imperial army, led by the famous English general, "Chinese Gordon," finally suppressed the rebellion and retook the city.

Lady Wantage is a most determined opponent of the extension of the suffrage to her own sex. She is the daughter and widow of men upon whom peerages were conferred, which at their deaths became extinct. From her father, Lord Overstone, Lady Wantage inherited Lockinge House, an eighteenth-century mansion overlooking the Vale of the White Horse.

The Queen of the Belgians, like her husband, is a fully qualified doctor of mqdicine, and her labors as a sick nurse in the Belgian capital have endeared ker to rich and poor alike. One of her many good works' before King Albert's accession was the founding of the AlbertElizabeth Dispensary for the consumptives of Brussels. She was often in daily attendance at her dispensary, giving personal attention to the patients; indeed, her goodness of heart and philanthropic disposition have earned for her the title of "the people's Queen."

The most valuable pet dog in England is perhaps a Japanese spaniel named Togo, who belongs to Lady Samuelson, and which is worth probably a thousand pounds. Lady Cordon-Lennox has, however, a Pekinese dog for which she has refused the same sum of money.

Miss Lena Ashwell has, like most members of her profession, had a good many ups and downs in the course of her stage career. More than once, she has stated, she has been on the point of abandoning in despair the effort to make her way. It was in a piece called "The Pharisee" that she made her first actual appearance in London, the theatre being the Grand at Islington. Her part was not a very "fat one, being that of a maidservant w'lio had precisely four words to utter—to wit, "Did you ring, sir?"

The Dowager Lady Bute wears some lovely diamonds, and is particularly fond of a costly tiarra which is in the form of Hebrew letters, and means "A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband."