WOMAN'S WORLD

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 209, 23 January 1913, Page 6

WOMAN'S WORLD

(Conducted by ''"Eileen"). WIVES WHO WORK WITH THEIR HUSBANDS Mr. Rudolph Do Cordova sketches in Woman -'it Homo the activities of several literary and other famous wives and their -husbands. Mrs. Avrfcon, Lady Hnggins and Madame Curie, together with their husbands, weie discoverers in the realms of science. The bulk of the article is, however, devoted to co-work-,ors in the field of literature. Mr. and Mrs. Askew, Mr. and Mrs. Williamson, Mr. and Mrs. Egerton Castle and Mr. and Mrs. Loighton will be familiar, through their work, to the novel reader. Mr. and Mrs. Askew had only had one story each published before their marriage. They wont on working alon<* their own individual lines for about a year: "Mr. Askew was doing a lot of writing for Household Words, which was then under the proprietorship of Mr. Ilall Oaine, and naturally Mrs. Askew took a great deal of interest in it. About a year after they had been married it occurred to them that it would be pleasant to work together, since their tastes were so strikingly similar. They began with short stories, in which, they have been as successful as they have been prolific, and contributed practically a new story every week to Household Words. A little later they thought they would try their hands at serial stories. The first one they did was accepted, and was published in the Evening Xews under the title of 'Gilded London.' So great was : ls success that they received orders fol 3 second."

Both Mr. and Mrs. Askew dream the plots on which many of their stories are founded. One of these was "The Baxter Family." So marked is this gift that when they want a plot for a new story it is no unusual thing for Mrs. Askew to say to herself on going to bed: "You will wake up to-morrow with your plot," and she does. It must. Aowever, be told immediately, or it would be forgotten. These plots are always rapidly written down, and it has happened over and over again that the fiot for a long serial has been practically set down in one sitt'ing. ! GUSHING LETTERS Men accuse us, as a sex, says in The Gentlewoman, of being incapable or true friendship for each other! You and I know better, but no one can blame those who cynically deny us the capacity. And even we ourselves must acknowledge. I am afraid, that women's friendships are more easily broken and destroyed tlian men's. A bit ot honest, plain speaking hurts us dreadfully and seriously, if it does not permanently damage our love for each other, whereas men can say even unnecessarily rough and harsh things, and be on the" best of terms again directly after. There is no doubt that men have very much the better of us in this matter of friendship. Do you think our ideal is too high, and that we are all too exigent and altogether too sensitive—or shall I call it "touchy"—with out friends? The slightest failure in responding to our call or answering to our claims wounds us with a long and lasting pain, whereas men can remain friends after years and years during which thev have not seen or heard from each other. I sometimes fancy that our tiresome ways of writing long letters to each other helps to kill our.friendships.... Foj, as a rule, the correspondence between close women friends begins warmly and gushingly, and then each side feels bound to keep it up with the initial regularity and cordiality, nutil the letters beeome'quite a bore to write and a nuisance to read. Such heavy drafts on friendship leave us bankrupt, but we go on keeping up the old form?, knowing how sensitive we ar ® to the smallest change, though the spirit i s quite gone out of them. °

"NERVES." Dr. Ludwig Hirsehstein, a Hamburg physician, after many experiments lasting several years, now assures us that the question of "nerves" is a prettv simple one, and that nervous complaints and breakdowns are almost, if not quite, wholly due to a chemical change in the constitution of the body by which the system becomes too highly charged with acids. The evil comes from the nourishment that people to-day think proper and even necessary. Children are given food that contains large quantities of food that is rich in albuminoids, and nuite rightly, as it is necessary for them for their growth; but, unfortunately, adults to-day frequently preserve the same proportion in their diet, and the lonsequenoe is that as the surplus is not assimilated to form new flesh it has ta be discarded, otherwise it will remain a= a poison in the body. Dr. Hirsclistein adds that the cure by means of tl>" neutralisation or elimination of the ;.cic.s by means of what are chemically known as "bases," such as salts of sodium, calcium natrium and magnesium, ii a long business, and lasts several months, and may even take four years, for that is the space of time that the process of poisoning may take to develop into its most acute state.