LADIES' COLUMN.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 125, 30 June 1870, Page 7

LADIES' COLUMN.

A fair correspondent asks us for some advice relative to colours in daess. A good eye for colour is a rarer gift than is usually supposed. Ladies, who possess it, look better dressed than others who do not, although they probably spend far less money on their wardrobe. It is not possible to instruct everybody in the arrangement of colours, but a few general rules may help most persons. Avoid, in the first place, blazing contrasts, such as bright red next bright green, or bright blue next bright yellow; such contrasts, are not harmonious; let one of the two colours always be subservient to the other. It is not so much what colour a material is, but how that colour is made to appear. It is necessary to bear in mind that all colours have their complementaries, which add to, or detract from the beauty of the adjoining colours, according to what they may be. Thus, the complementaries of red are green, of blue are orange, of yellow are violet, If you cut out pices of gray paper in an ornamental form, and stick a piece on each of the three colours we have named, you will find, in a shaded light, the gray will be fully tinted by the complementaires of these colours. But you cannot lay down precise rules. An experienced artist can bring auy two colours together by properly modulating them. And the hand of nature never errs: whether it brings together scarlet and crimson, as in the cactus; scarlet and purple, in the fuchsia; yellow and orange, as in the calceolaria; or the colours in the various plumage of exotic birds, the harmony is always beautiful ever perfect. We will suggest a few contrasts: one, black and warm brown; two, violet and pale green ; three, violet and light rose colour; four, deep blue and pink; six, deep red and gray; seven maroon and warm green; eight, deep blue and pink ; nine, chocolate and pea green; ten, maroon and deep blue; eleven claret and buff; twelve, black and warm green. Practice, if it does not render you perfect, will, at least, greatly improve your eye for colour. The ladies are coming to the front in New South Wales. "A mother" appeals to the rest of her sex to take up the question of immigration, since, as she says, " the men are too much afraid of losing popularity to move in the matter." On behalf of the housewifes of the colony, she asserts that, while they are contented to be governed by their husbands, they will not (at least without a struggle) suffer themselves and their husbands to be governed hf their servants. And with a view to prevent a continuance of this ignominious state of things, she proposes to raise £50,000 by subscription to pro mote female immigration from Sweden, Denmark, and Germany. "Let us," she says, " for once act in concert ; let us use some of the money now wasted in ' drees,' and render ourselves respectable in the eyes of the world by showing ourselves capable of a great effort for a noble purpose. Is it nothing that strangers come into our house, and insult us by their impudent defiance before our husbands, our sons, and daughters, and dictate to us what we shall* do even with our own children? Is it nothing, when sickness invades our dwellings, to feel ourselves unable to secure one honest kindly heart to give us necessary help ? So far from it, we are perhaps left to close the eyes of the being dearest to us on earth. Of what value are all the gewgaws and tinsel of fashion then 1 ?" In Paris, the city of luxuries, dwells a noted woman whose smooth skin and fresh complexion proclaim her in her teens, but whose sedateness of movement causes the observer to think oi a maturer age, and af last compromise with his first impressions by assigning her twenty-five years, though she herself will confess to be one of the antediluvians, numbering no less to an sixty-eight winters. This defier of tiaio is a striking instance in her own person of the triumph of art over nature. Thousands have long sought her secret, watched her, endeavoured to bribe her cajoled hex 1 , and even threatened her, in order that they, too, might become beautiful for ever. At last she resolved to become the benefactor of her sex — at least those of it who can give her sufficient remuneration. Mine. Maniquet — for so is the young old-lady styled — receives into her house beauties whose lustre has fled, the freshness of whose charms have been withered by the blasting effects of dissipation or obliterated by the tread of Time. She places the faded belle on a couch, applies to her faco a ""■pcmltico composed of an irritating ointment, and iustmcts the patient to lie perfectly still, to preserve each feature absolutely motionless"; for a smile indulged in during the process will produce a wrinkle, ' and a frown a furrow. In a few days and nights the face of the candidate for a beauty assumes a Job-like appearance, being covered with pustules innumerable. The ointment-poultice is then removed — bringing with it the whole skin of the face, and exposing a raw, swollen flesh. Soothing unguents are then applied, and if the patient has remained qniescent, the swelling subsides, the new skin grows smooth, soft, and youthful ; the quill-like tube i through which the lady breathed and received nourishment is discarded. A mirror is produced, and 'Jap. p.uiei.t ia requested "to admire herself, and prepare to return, a renewed c-oatnre in face if not'in heart, to that world which for a month marvolled at her .absence.