A SKETCH FROM A PARIS SALON.

Tuapeka Times, Volume I, Issue 28, 22 August 1868, Page 5

A SKETCH FROM A PARIS SALON.

I hung about what I thought was the prettiest woman in the room, and finally obtained an introduction. The lady is of a noble Hungarian family, fair, with that dark brown reddish- hair which is just going on to begin to be golden, but never shines out. I will tell you how she was dres3ed in my imperfect mode of diction. Pale oval face, heavy eyebrowß, bright bronze eyes. Small festoons of hair over the brow, imprisoned by a golden metal band. A rose over the left ear. Let me go round behind, a "Bismark chignon." A'lnass of twisted hair, in a sort of Laocoon agony, was decorated with small insects (of course, I don't mean- anything impossible), glittering, gem-like beetles, from the Brazils. Three very long curia hung from the imposing mass, and could be worn before or behind, and made to perform, as I witnessed, all sorts of coquettish tricks. I learned later from a spiteful old lady that the whole of this great' art-hair triumph was stuck on in a mass, and " done in a minute." It is very beautiful, thought I, as I gazed at the ladies' backs ; true or false, it moves the heart and pleases the imagination. Now for the dress. Well, there is nothing to describe till you get very nearly down to the waist. A pretty bit of lace on a band wanders down over the shoulder ; the back is bare very low down, and more of the bust is seen than- ever last year's fashions permitted. Imagine an extinguisher's top cut off and placed immediately under the arms of a lady; imagine it a pale green with a gold fringe. Keep on-imagining, please, and picture that from the bottom of the extinguisher there spreads a most spacious white gauzy robe with a train, all tulle d'illusion, so full of small puffs, and so wide, spreading and producing in action a faint silvery rustle. How it is supported, whether by crinoline, or some new inflating material, who can ever tell ? As a great philosopher has said, " The wisest know lifble about women." Now, this is. a toilette, or, as they are now called, costume, which has to be navigated about the room. The train will get into all sorts of comic positions if not properly ruddered. To bring one of these dresses safe into sofa port is a work of skill and* daring. ;