WOMAN’S WORLD.

Taranaki Daily News, 8 April 1922, Page 11

WOMAN’S WORLD.

THE PERSIAN WOMAN TO DAY. Persia is one of the latest countries to feel the effects of the woman movement. A lady traveller describes the slow process of enlightenment. A Persian man sometimes likes to Westernise his wife indoors, but she must be Eastern when she crosses the threshold. Thus, at one wealthy home that the traveller visited the husband was pleased to introduce his wife in Western dress and to “show off” how well she could sit on the divan. (The native way of course is to repose on cushions on the floor). When the visitor asked, however, whether his wife wound accompany him on a certain long absence from home, he replied, “No, her parents would not like it.” It was understood by this that he really meant he would not like it. Occasionally, however, a Persian woman shows character. Thus the narrator came upon a young woman living with her mother-in-law, whom she nursed contentedly because “God being good, the old one will probably die soon.” Asked what she would do if her husband took a second wife. “I would poison her,” she said, quite sincerely, while her husband, overhearing, added like a verse of poetry, “Who marries twice is twice a fool.” Less fortunate was the weeping woman encountered later. She had been divorced by her husband for the sin of being too old (she was 25), and forced to leave her six chiklren and return to her father’s home. That parent was compelling her to a second marriage. What troubled her, however, was the fact that to-day her ex-husband was marrying a thirteen-year-old bride, who would beat her children. Persian parents try to get a pledge "from a prospective bridegroom that he will not take a second wife, but this pledge does not amount to much, for though an old axiom tells us that the Persian was trained to “shoot (arrows) straight, and to tell the truth,” he has ceased to graduate in either accomplishment. If possible, however, parents marry a girl to a cousin, as then family pressure can be brought to bear. The marriage ceremony consists in the bride sitting alone behind a curtain and being “nagged at” by a mullah (priest). Later on, the bridegroom, also alone, is nagged at, but not so much.

A CHINESE WOMAN JOURNALIST

The Chinese woman more advanced than the Persian has made her debut in journalism, one of the most famous being Miss Zung Me Tsung. She is a member of the staff of the Shanghai Sun Pas, one of the best papers in that country. She began her career at the Shanghai Missionary School, fr>m whence she sailed to study music at an American coUege. In England later on she wrote articles for the Chinese papers on the factories of Manchester and Liverpool. Returned to her native land she taught sociology, but her interest is largely with matters industrial. Thus she interviewed the Chinese silk girls just returned from' America with the Chinese silk commission which has been demonstrating the Chinese method of manufacture at the International Silk Show.

BLACK FOR WEDDING DAY. Some recent brides have shown an extraordinary disregard for custom and tradition, in that they have selected to wear black frocks on their wedding day (says the British Australasian). Lady Muriel Bertie, only daughter of the Earl and Countess of Lindsay, and so, through her mother, half Australian, who was married a few weeks ago, wore black; and so did Mrs. Rosita Forbes, the well-known explorer, who was married recently for the second time. Such a lack of what one might call proper superstition seems almost shocking. It recalls the story of the young American negress (though the motives must be quite dissimilar) whose husband died. As she belonged to the very poorest class, she could not afford to buy mourning, but had to continue to wear the cotton dress which constituted her wardrobe. She fretted a good deal, as she felt that her social position would suffer. However, in a few months she became engaged again, this time to a prosperous young workman. On her wedding day she appeared proud and happy, wreathed in smiles, dressed from head to foot in a complete outfit of widow’s weeds, even to a pair of tight black kid gloves, the gift of her new bridegroom ! MILLIONAIRE’S TWO WIVES. Millionaires have their troubles, as is shown by the case of Mr. Thomas J. Wells, jun., who during the war was known as the “Millionaire Doughboy.” He has two wives, and both of them are legal. He has offered the extra wife £24,000 if she will settle matters, as he is applying to the American Courts for relief, but she says, she will not take less than four times that sum. When the war came Wells became a private and went to France. On his return his wife accused him of misconduct abroad, whilst he retorted that she had been too lavish in her entertainment of officers at New York. The matter came before the Warren County Court, which granted the husband a divorce. Eight days afterwards he was married to Miss Marion Povie, a Red Cross nurse who had looked after him during an illness. They went to live in California. In the meantime the first wife was not satisfied with the verdict of the Warren Court, and she took the case to the Court of Appeal, which has just reversed the decision of the lower tribunal and thereby restored her to her former status of Wife No. 1. To complicate still further this natter, the first wife is threatening ife No. 2 with an action for £24.000 damages for alienation of affections.

ROMANCE OF BEAUTY. Romance has followed the Daily Sketch Town and Country Girls Beauty Contest in England. One’ of the fortunate seven selected by the votes of readers for prizes of £5O each was Miss Audrey Fieldhouse, of Horsforth, Leeds. She was given more than 25,000 votes, and every one of those who voted for her will be interested to hear that as a direct result of the competition she is engaged to be married. Mr. A. W. Fenton, eldest son oi Sir Michael Fenton, K.C.5.1., of Holly Oak, Northwood, Middlesex, was one of l ie many who wrote to Miss Fieldbo’ >e congratulating her on winning a I but ha was the only correspondent who

was lucky enough to be rewarded with lan answer. After some correspondence photographs were exchanged. Then Miss Fieldhouse and Mr. Fenton met, and the inevitable result was that they fell in love. Early this year Miss Fieldhouse visited Mr. Fenton’s people at Northwood, and during the holiday the engagement began. Miss Fieldhouse, who is only just seventeen, is now preparing for the wedding, which will take place at the end of April. The honeymoon will be spent in France.

WOMEN BOXERS. Theie will be women in the Albert Hall, I do not doubt, to see Carpentier (states a writer in the Westminster Gazette). Possibly they might be better employed elsewhere, but their critics would be surprised to know that women have been known to attend boxing matches, not only as spectators, but as principals. Research at the Record Office, on quite another matter brought to light this passage from Latimer’s Annuals of Bristol in the 18th century. “Prize-fighting by women was also common at this date (1729). The Bristol x Newspaper contains the following:—‘Monday next, at the Green Dragon, upon St. Michael’s Hill, is to be a combat boxing bout by Moll Buck, of this city, and Mary Barker, from. London, for seven guineas. The latter has won many prizes at Sword arid Staff, and she designs to perform the same at Bedminster one day next week.” In 1772 one Elizabeth Wilkinson advertised in the London newspapers her willingness to box another woman for a stake of three guineas, and at the same time contests between women prize fighters seem to have been fairly common at Spa Fields, Islington, one of the favorites being a certain “Bruising Peg.”

A NEW PROFESSION. Quite a brilliant idea has struck a young Sydney girl, Miss Elsie Walker. She has decided to take up as a profession the entertaining of kiddies. All her life she has loved and been loved by the little folk, and has been, generally surrounded by a happy band of laughing youngsters (says the Sydney Telegraph). She means to take upon herself the organising of children’s parties, picnics, excursions, and little family festivals, providing all sorts of fun for the' tiny guests and relieving the “grown-ups” who have had all the worrying details of the preparations to look after, of the fatigue of romping with a houseful of lively bairns. As time goes on, no doubt, many of the charitable organisations will look to her to take the children’s entertainments off their hands, a task for which she is fully competent, and in which she will delight. The life of the “kiddies’ entertainer” has been the ideal of Miss Walker for a long time. Now she means to set to work at once as a sort of just-about-grown-up cousin to scores of the many children. She has youth and charm, and a happy heart to equip her for her delightful duties, and what more could the children want from a grown-up who will play with them by the hour and never be tired?

GIRLS OF YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY. Discussing the controversy which has been raging around the girl of to-day as against the virtues of her grandmother, a writer in an Austalian exchange states that in one particular only could she see that our grandmothers exceeded the wives of the present, and that was in the number of their children. Even when they did not know so much about the rearing of children as the average modern mother, and the number of children they lost was very much higher. Then compare modern conditions of house-keeping with the conditions our grandmothers of the middle, and upper-middle class enjoyed. To begin with, no woman of that class ever thought of doing her own work in the house; she had the help of at least one and often several servants, and the motto o-f her larder and kitchen was “full and plenty of everything.” There was a bounteousness about her house-keeping which very few people of the present day could possibly afford, arid every housewife knows that it is easy to be a good cook if butter, eggs, milk, and other things, which we now look upon as luxuries, can be had in abundance. Grandmother’s role iu life was to manage her household, but to do very little manual work in it, and because she was a sufficiently competent manager to run her household on well oiled wheels, we have idealised her qualifications, and imagine that she possessed an art which is lost to the present generation. In point of fact, it is not so, for the majority of Australian women not only manage their houses well, but they do all the work in them as well, and, as a rule, the better trained the brain the more satisfactory she does both jobs.

JAPANESE GIRLS AS SPORTS. The girls and women of Nippon are coming into their own with a rapidlyincreasing stride, in the. opinion of Mi?s Elizabeth Illsley, an American, who recently returned, having completed a year of observation in Japan. For 12 months she was head of the musical department of one of the largest Congregational Church Colleges situated at Kobe. Her work consisted in supervising the progress of pupils and teachers, and in the beautiful seaport town she had an unusual opportunity to study the Japanese “new woman. “Nearly all of the girls of the higher class families, and at least one-third to one-half of the girls in the lower classes, are going in for higher education, and they are getting it.” Miss Illsley said: “In our college at Kobe we had 550 girls in the college and academy. M hen I say that, mid then say that a paid staff of eight regular music teachers, you will understand | that most of the girls were 1 studying I music. “Of course, Kobe being a port town, the girls there had greater opportunities of hearing foreign music masters. With the chaos wrought by the Bolshevism in Russia, most of t'he leading artists of that country fled to .Japan, arriving some time or other at Kobe. Then too, a number of American singers appeared there in concerts. "All of the girls read and write English very well indeed, and they are most of all enthusiastic about athletic meetings and tournaments. Each year a volley-ball and tennis tournament is staged in which most of the girls take part. Of great interest also is the annual debate which has just been es--1 iblished, and which is usually held v Hi one of the young men’s schools c. .ducted by the Congregational I

Miss Illsley’s time was not entirely taken up with her college work. She found time to give a few evenings each week to the Young Women’s Christian Association, a branch of the American “Y.,” and inhere taught the working girls of Kobe the English language. With an associate, a young American singer, Miss Illsley toured the outlying districts o-f Japan, and gave concerts for those who could not possibly get to the towns. WOMEN WHO PULL THE STRINGS. Women are changing their ways. They grow in subtlety and finesse. Since our sex has been invested with civic and most public rights it has been developing a genius for wire-pulling that surpasses and staggers the understanding of man. Having secured all his national powers and most of his privileges, she now starts to walk, like Agag, delicately, along the road to preference and great place. “Not to put too fine a point on it,” as Snagsby would say, woman has become an arch schemer, a superplotter, a whole committee of ways and means in herself, to win the day. She it is, and not the men themselves, who secures half the promotions and the enviable posts which the receding sex is too self-conscious to seek for itself.

Woman, since the Eden episode, has always enjoyed a genius for subtlety. To-day she is a born wire-puller and unscrupulous diplomat. And her ambition will let no twinge of shyness or self-consciousness or diffidence stand in the way. The clever wife says, “We must get the Blank-Dashes to ask General Shrapnel to dinner. Effie is a goodnatured little fool, and so I’ll fix the name cards. Of course she must go down with the general, but I’ll be on his other side. Comprenez? You’ll get your command, you darling idiot! It’s overdue and this will nail it.” And it does. Or she gets into touch with a Cabinet Minister, or the Chief of a Party, of the K.C., or the Shipping Magnate, or the Admiral, to get the husband the billet dear to her heart, or to secure post or commission in the Services for her sons. The woman does all this. She dreams and plots and plans and drives boklly ahead, or tip-toes along like a bird, as the occasion warrants. And the man looks on amazed, perturbed, and sometimes even ashamed. /He wonders if he has married twentywomen in one. For he sees her in twenty different guises and surprises. He sees her wheedle, coax, cajole, flirt, coquette, and pose in turn successfully as a fool and a philosopher. It is she who enters the new-born son for Eton or Harrow or Sandhurst. It is she who selects the opulent godparents, and she who launches the boy on a career and runs him into Holy Matrimony with the Right Girl before he can be caught by the wrong one.

Marvellous woman! Dreamer —Plotter —Pilot—Scout—Schemer—Siren and Self-sacrificing Martyr. And, to cap all, she can accept congratulation on the dazzling posts she has schemed for with an air of complete nonchalance or gentle surprise. At Bridge she will smile in a quiet Mona Lisa way or look round-eyed and guileless while she raurmers before the final rubber —“Yes, such a pleasant surprise for Freddie! I am sure the poor darling didn’t deserve it in the least, but then, when is a man clever in his wife’s eyes?” —Lady Doughty in Daily Mail. MAKING A ROYAL WEDDING CAKE. (By A Confectioner.) Within one hour from the receipt of the command for a royal wedding cake operations axe in full swing for the “try outs” or necessary tests. The analytical chemist is first consulted about the blend of flours to be used. . . This is most important, as the limited time between the date of order and the ceremony does not allowz for the natural ripening of the wedding cake. Therefore a blend soft English flour, made from wheats grown on light ground, is the first consideration. In the meantime instructions have (been given for a certain, make of Devonshire butter; selected fruit is being cleaned and washed and carefully looked over by smart girls in snow white costumes, only to be further examined by the forewoman before it is finally passed. New-laid eggs are now submitted to powerful electric lights to test their age. Those with, more than the dayold air space arc put aside.. When the desired weight has been reach the eggs are broken separately, at least 12 hours before using, so as to improve the air cells in the whites. a*s it must be remembered that the eggs are the only aerating agents used in wedding qakes. Citron orange, and lemon peels nex't claim the attention of the store chief, while the spices and flavors are already weighed and blended in the lab-

oratory. . The whole of the ingredients now go to the hand-bakery foreman for the making process. ’ . Butter and sugar are placed in a cake-making machine, the wheels are set in motion, and a gentle heating operation is carried on for about 10 minutes until the. mixture shows signs of cream in ess. Now the eggs are gradually added while the machine is in motion, until all the eggs have been absorbed into a silky, cream-like texture. , . The machine is then put on low speed, the flour is added with the spices, and, lastly, the mixed peel and fruit. . . The mixture is weighed into carefully prepared papered metal hoops and placed in the baking chamber for from 4 to 10 hours, according to size. After baking, the cakes are iced, and then comes the decorative work.

This is entrusted to the firm's own special staff of ornamentors, male and female. ; The design has been decided upon, and feach ornamentor carries out his part of the work “off the cakes.” Now comes the final touch. The cakes are brought out, given the last coat of snow-white icing—thLs is put on by the head ornamentor—transferred to the drying-room for two hours, and then taken out for the work ot decoration. Calipers, rules, compasses, in conjunction with marvellously steady hands and eyes, are concentrated on each section of design. . When the design has been carried out to the head’s satisfaction pillars between the tiers are fixed into position and the cakes are placed just they will appear at the wedding feast. The head ornamentor generally travels to set the cake up—and his responsibility is then finished—Daily