THE RAGE FOR TALISMANS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1687, 17 January 1888, Page 4

THE RAGE FOR TALISMANS.

It is the fashion to have a fetishsomething to love, to chide, to swear by, to dream on, to talk to, to reason with, and to worship as nothing mortal or material is worshipped. It may be a button without a shank, picked up from the marble slab in a Turkish bath ; a bangle found in a street car with an indecipherable mogogram on one side and a date on the other, in which case there will be fatality in the letters and luck in the numbers, combine them as one may. Such things as daggers, old coins, madstones, oyster pearls, ocean pebbles, nuggets, petrified stones, opals, amethysts, and cornelians are dearly prized, and in jewels, old designs, such as wings, claws, spurs, foils, cubes, and the like, obtained or purchased under strange circumstances. Mrs Langtry wears on one of her long, tapering fingers a torquoise as big and beautiful as the gem Shylock mourned for. The ring and she are inseparable. There is never a glove so snug that it cannot be coaxed over the solitaire, and on the stage, when it might be considered poor taste to wear it in, view, the stone is turned towards the palm, or dropped in the bosom of her bodice. Both the gift and wish were bestowed by royalty. . Mine. Cavalazzi has a small ivory crucifix, the gift of her dying mother, who bade her cherish it with a reverence, and burn a taper before it whenever the way seemed dark and dreary. In her stateroom on the ocean mad winds and wild waves have no terror for her while burns the sacred taper at the foot of the ivory cross, and in the theatre no earthly power could induce her to go before the footlights until her devotions had been made. Her husband, Charles Mapleson, has ceased to laugh at her, and almost believes that the light of the cross and the tiny dip light her pretty feet through the intricacies of the dance.

Sarah Bernhardt has an antique girdle made of medallions, on which are the signs of the zodiac in superb chasing. The zone was a gift from Napoleon, who received it from Abdallah Bey, of Egypt. She is never without it; sometimes it is worn about her dress and sometimes around her neck. It holds the gathers of house and stage dresses and encircles her night robe. Aside from the worship of the girdle, she loves a knife, “ because it cuts and is true.” In all her great undertakings she keeps a blade in her hand or: before her eyes as a reminder that failure can be mended but never made perfect. Mary Anderson loves a pearl, because it is pure and cold. Campanini pins his faith to a prune, and there is no time in the year when the stone or fruit of the black, sticky confection may not be found in his vest pocket. Ellen Terry’s fetish is a bottle with a paper stopper, which is never empty, because the cork remains. Mme. Patti likes the ivy, because it clings and is poisonous, and the leaf is a favorite design with her.