WOMEN'S WORLD.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 304, 16 May 1913, Page 6

WOMEN'S WORLD.

OVER-STRAIN We are constantly bearing about overstrain in professional and business men, .but very little is said of the same condition in women. The family doctor, however, sees many eases of this kind « in his practice. Women may not work 3 so hard as men in money-getting, but o the'rush of modern life affects them nevertheless (says a writer in the London Daily Mail)" The old quiet life of ' women has gone. Social functions are carried out now under much the same conditions as business, and women with their more excitable nerves do in fact sull'er more acutely than men. A clay's ° shopping in the swirl of traffic and Babel " of noises produces extreme nervous ex- e haustion. It is a mistake to suppose ' that work only is responsible for nervous breakdown. 'Modem nervous tension is due to many causes—the increase of education, the haste and speed charac- s teristic of every affair of life, the irrita- v bility resulting from dazzling lights, be- ~ wildering noise, and the whirl of amuse- t ments. The result of natural fatigue is v a lowering, of sensibility, which passes f, away entirely after rest. But the over- |, fatigue so common at the present time [j produces a state of irritable weakness c which a night's repose fails to remove. ' A woman suffering in this way will find 0 that her heart .beats more quickly and 0 weakly, that her breath is "short," her 8 temperature slightly raised, and that she 7 las lost her ordinary strength and vigor; 7 ; To add to these evils many business fi tvomen nowadays do not get enough 5 sleep, and what sleep they have is often 6 disturbed by city noises. To get the " most out of life it is well to go slow. c _ The only preventive and cure for over- ' ' strain is rest, and the woman who leads ] a tranquil life will really succeed in enjoying a maximum of its pleasures. A TOUCHING APPEAL j Considerable alarm is displayed by the 3 Paris shopkeepers at the freedom at j which their designs in dresses, millinery, r. jewellery and furniture are copied by f foreign firms, and they have made a ( touching appeal to the Prefect of Police < to "protect" them. M. Lepine has re- ; pied that to issue a decree forbidding I .lis plagiarism is outside his province, ! but he has given orders that the sketches < or photographs of trade "spies" are ' liable to be confiscated. Londoners are put in possession of some explanation ' 1 by people who know what they are talking about. One of these authorities says: "The real ground of complaint on 8 the part of Paris houses of high repute is e that their models are very often copied i by unscrupulous dressmakers in Paris r itself, and sold at half the price to any customer that comes along. It is no , uncommon thing for a great firm of c fashion creators to pay their designers r £2OOO a year, and the risk of their d models being exploited has always to be e run. ' That is why you never find any d window display of dresses at their establishments. " The models sold to customers outside Paris are never delivered 2 to them in the French capital, but are t, sent diiect. There is no quarrel with t- English firms; the trouble is confined to 'enterprising' Parisian dressmakers themselves, who manage in, some way to copy t, forty or fifty-guinea models, and sell 1 them ior, perhaps, ten or twenty guineas, "e' It is to try and prevent this that the i, well-known firms have been holding cont, claves." "Nothing useful can he done s by complaining to the police," says another man with a large business in Londo 1. "You simply cannot prevent a leakage of ideas, and if models were not iuitated widely they would never be- _ come the fashion. I know that models 3 jf hats which cost us a hundred guineas are imitated by shopkeepers and milliners who sell them for four guineas. But [do not mind. While other people are imitating lam creating." Again: "The ' attempt to prevent the imitation of new models is senseless, as well as impracticable. Paris herself comes to London for models in men's hats and attire, and adopts them just as we adopt French models." MARRIAGE WITHOUT BONDS After a seven months' "trial of marriage," Mr. and Mrs. Carletpn Wolsey Washburne, a young couple of Los Angeles, California, have issued a statement to the newspapers, the gist of which is contained in the phrase, "We are perfectly mated." Their "higher morality" wedding was denounced at the time by many clergymen as "moral anarchy." It was a legal wedding solemnised by a minister of religion, but immediately after the cerem mony the couple published the terms of ~ a pre-nuptial contract, in which they •1 greed to allow each other full liberty for other alliances the moment their ove grew cold. "[ am my husband's equal partner," i said Mrs. Washburne. "I have my sepI arate bank account and half of all his * earnings. lamin no way subject to my < husband's will. Our love is absolutely without .bonds. The result is that there has been no- ripple in our married life. v We have proved ourselves adapted to each other on every plane and have no idea of ever separating." REVENGE ON COQUETTE Mile. Girot, the "belle amie" of a certain Cheignou, a journeyman carpenter, was (says the Paris correspondent of the Daily Telegraph) a coquettish young person, whose crowning glory was a magnificent head of hair. Cheignon was a jealous master, and furious and frequent were the scenes between the couple. One night, such was the carpenter's violence, that, in fear of her life, Mile. Girot. clad in little else than her luxuriant "chevelure," left the house and took refuge with kindly neighbors. Discovering her hiding place, Cheignon one night managed to enter her bedroom, armed with an axe, a pair of shears, and several pints of Dutch courage. "Your head or your hair!" was the alternative he proposed to the cowering victim. Judging that her golden tresses would avail her little without her head, Mile. Girot, like a sensible young lady, pointed dumbly to the shears. In a few minutes her head was as bare as a convict's or 11 Prussian cavalry officer's. With a genial promise to return and cut off the lady's nose, Cheignon went out, brandishing her trophy, and stumbled into the nearest bar, where he bartered it for a round of drinks, paid for by a barber •j with an eye to a bargain. Accused by Mile Girot, who still wears a scarf round her head that the shame of her nakedness may not appear, Cheignon was condemned to thirteen months'