Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 April 1883 — GOSSIP FOR THE LADIES. [ARTICLE]

GOSSIP FOR THE LADIES.

Sparking, When the fedt* are shut and the windows Closed, Then ebxnestbesparking hour; The silent kiss, the stolen hu* Are mighty in their power. Daylight tot birds, and flowers and things Thu poets write about; Give me a candle short and thin— a wind that pats It out The Homely Wemaa. "What ladies are the easiest to wait upon?” “The homely ones," replied the clerk, emphatically. Seeing a look of incredulity Upon the reporter’s face he continued: “It’s so; Tm not bracing yon a bit. The prettier they are the harder they are to please. A handsome girl has been so flattered and Cajoled and petted, from her youth up, that she has lost her head. She eaters with a flutter, and must be shown half a hundred cosmetics. Then she settles down to a steady twenty minutes’ gossip between them aIL She is changeable, fluctuating and peevish, and if you venture to make a suggestion she skips from the store as though fired from the month of a cannon. Now, on the other hand,, a homely girl has a mind of her own. She is not constantly cloyed with admiration mid petting from her admirers, and has drunk but precious little from the golden bowl of adulation. But she knows what she wants, asks you for it decisively, and leaves you with a smile that would be charming if her mouth was only a yard and a half smaller and her teeth a little less like elephant tusks. God grant us a prosperity of homely girls. Life would stall be endurable without pretty faces, but Heaven help us if we lose our homely ones.”

Beautiful Indian Women. Many half-breed Cherokee, women in the Indian Territory are cultivated in mind, beautiful in person, industrious in habit and will compare well with the more favored woman in the North and East. They have magnificent heads of hair, long and black, all their own, and with jet black eyes and pearly teeth, dressed in that fashionable attire in which they all love to appear, they would not be recognized in Eastern drawing-rooms as that part of the original inhabitants of our country known as squaws, a name long since repudiated. Let it be known, then, that white men of worth and character are popular among the beauties of the Territory, and four out of five who come to make a home among them marry these dusky maidens, get a citizenship, surround themselves with ample acres and the comforts of life, participate in the affairs of government and become the most active and wealthy citizens of the Territory. A chief trait in the character of many white men both in this country and out of it is to get possession of its productive lands. By committing matrimony, they can kill two birda-with one stone —get a wife and farm too.— Cor. Pittsburgh Chronicle.

Woman’s Work. The quiet fidelity with which a woman wjll dishwash her life away for her husband and children is a marvel of endurance. Here is the servitude of woman heaviest—no sooner is her work done than it requires to be done again. Men take jobs, work on them, fim«h them, and they are over for good and all.. The prospect of ending them and drawing pay for the labor is alluring, but no such. allurements are held out for the wife. She washes Monday after Monday the same garments nntil there is nothing more of them to wash; then they are replaced by others of new material just tike them, and the rubbing and wringing goes on forever. She mends the stockings with tireless fidelity, the same holes meeting her gaze week after week, for if there is a darned place in a sock “he” invariably puts his irrepressible toe through it. Every morning the rooms are put in order, only to be in the wildest disorder by the time night falls. There are no jobs, each one different, no terms, no pay. The same socks, the same washing, the same room every time. There is too little brightness m the lives of women in the country. They have too little help in their domestic occupations. The “nurse” in a house where there is a baby to care for ought to be set down as one of the regular expenses as much as the potatoes for the family. A mother’s health both of body and mind is worth more than additional acres of land, or finer live stock. The heart should not be allowed to grow old. Life should not have lost its charm, the heart its spirit, and the body its elasticity at 40 years. And yet how many women are faded and wan, and* shattered in mind and health, long before they are .forty. All the joy of life is not in youth's morning. If we so will it, we can, to the last moment of life, be at least negatively happy.

Women’* No*es. The nose is the most prominent feature in the face, and is a more faithful indication of the character than is generally supposed. In dress, it gives the key-note to the whole structure by its size or shape. ’“Every woman is, or ought to be, a cathedral,” says a poet of yesterday, and M. Blanc also compares dress to a kind of architecture, throughout which a primary idea should be consistently carried, and no mingling of styles allowed. When a woman possesses a Roman nose she must he extremely careful as to her style of headgear and hair-dress-ing. Neither of these must belong to the frivolous or coquettish order. Neither must be inadequately small. If the wearer of the Roman nose fall into this error, that useful organ will look larger than ever. Our aristocracy are given to large noses. The air of palaces seems to be favorable to the development of- that salient feature, and, were there to be no, mesalliances, the highbred type of nose would soon reach a very terrific size indeed. I always look on the bright side of things, and when I hear a man of gentle birth marrying a bar-maid, or a modern Copetua and beggar maid, I always bethink me of the probable modification of the lordly noses of the next generation. With a Greek nose a woman may wear almost anything. She will be sure to have the taste to divine what is suitable and becoming, and grace enough to put it on straight—an accomplishment more rare than might be thought. But, alas! Greek noses are not exactly in fashion. Our national taste has proved degenerate, and our fickle fancy has turned to the nez retrousse, which has even found its way into the poets. “Tiptilted like a flower,” says our Laureate of such a nose. If the oogitative nose appear in full development on a woman’s face, she will probably be strong-minded and utterly careless of chiffons, if not of her

own looks.' Of the Jewish nos© the same observations are- true as with regard td the Roman is, whefi the nose is large. OceasiOnally—though not very frequently—this nose is beautifully formed, and not too large for oturn odern notions of feminine loveliness. It may then be treated as I have suggested in remarking on the Greek variety. The turn-up nose may be adorable, or it may be a trial I Much depends on its Complexion; much OU the precise degree of Upward curve. This olitre should be similar to those at the corners of the lips, and, wheu it is, what a piquant harmony is the result! Oh, lucky girl with such a nose, what A queen of "hearts you may be! Add bnt the instinct of coquetry to this nose and you have a creature as. dangerous as Helen to the peace of man. It must not be a shaky, fleshy, flabby thing; a curt decision and a spice of dainty selfassertion must characterize it It Was suoh to ideal nose that inspired the following sentiments: “We confess a lurking penchant, a sort of Bneaking affection which we cannot resist, for the celestial nose in a woman. It does not command our admiration and respect like the Greek, to which we could bow down as to a goddess, but it makes sad work of our affections. The snub, too, is not so unbearable as in a man. It is a great marrer of beauty, undoubtedly; but, merely regarded as an index of weakness, it claims our kindly consideration. A woman, moreover, has generally tact sufficient to conceal (often to their entire annihilation) those unprepossessing characteristics of "the snub and the celestial, which in a weak man become every day more and more, strongly marked. A oelestial nose in a 1 woman is frequently an index of wit.”' And this, be it remembered, wab'iyritten long before the apotheosis of the tumed-j up nose. And what, style of architecture are we to construct upon ? ask thej owners of such noses. Anything co-, quettish and airy, frivolous and quoint.| Severe simplicity consorts not with thej snub. A little insolence of ornament? suite it; floating ribbons, a rampant ai-j grette; a head “sunning- over with curls;” a flounce turned back and forth; a hat twisted north and south, east and west. Suoh as these would be incongruous with the Greek, an insult to the! Roman, an injury to the Jewish, and a flat contradiction to the cogitative.! With the “tip-tilted” they make a happy harmony.

How Could He Have Known It ? ; Italians love to converse with Americans, and listen, like children, to what is told them about the United States. They are so ignorant that anything that is told them about - America is received with expressions of surprise and delight., Mr. Story, the sculptor, says he never, knew an Italian staggered by anything* he narrated, but Qnce, and then he( stated a simple "fact: I was walking with my respectable old padrone, Nisi, about his little gar-, den, one day, when an ambition to know something about America inflamed his,' breast. “Are there many mountains ?” he asked. ! “Yes.” “And have yon any cities?” “Yes, a few little ones. ” - He was evidently pleased that they were small, and, with a feeling of natural, pride, said, “Large as Rome, of course, they could not be. And rivers, too, have you any rivers ?” “A few.” “But not so large as our Tiber,” hej replied. “We have some rivers 3,000 miles long,” I answered. The effect was disastrous. The good man stood and stared at me, as if petri-, fied, for a moment. Then the bloodi rushed into his face, and, turning on hi* heel, he took off his hat, and said sudden-] ly, “Good morning,” and carried my fact and his opinions together to his private room. From that time forward ho asked me no more questions about America. A monk once informed me that Columbus was an Italian, and that he had discovered America, and that he was a remarkable man; to all of which I assented as being true, if not new. But now a severe abstract question began to tax my friend’s powers. Ha said, “But how oould he ever imagine that the continent of America was there ? That’s the question. It is extraordinary, indeed 1” At last his face lightened, and looking at me he said, “Perhaps lie may have read that it was there in some old book, and tfo went to see if it were or not.” Vainly I endeavored to show him that this view would deprive Columbus of his greatest distinction. He answered invariably, “But without having read it, how could he ever have known it?”

The Yalue of Willow Wood. Qn account of its comparative incombustibility, the eminently useful for the floors of buildings designed to be fire-proof. It grows to a large size and furnishes a great amount of lumber. There is a white willow growing at Stockbridge, Mass., which, at four feet from the ground measures twenty-two feet in circumference, and extends its branches fifty feet in every direction. Tradition says it was brought from Connecticut in 1807 by a traveler, who used it as a riding switch. The Hon. Jesse W. Fell, in - giving an account of experiments in tree planting on an extensive scale in Illinois, says: “Were I called upon to designate one tree which, more than all others, I would recommend for general planting, I would say, unhesitatingly, it should be the white willow.” Prof. Brewster says: “In England, where it is often fifty or sixty feet high in twenty years, there is no wood in greater demand than good willow. It is light, very tough, soft, takes a good finish, wiil bear more pounding and knocks than any other wood grown there, and is used for cricket bats, for floats to paddle wheels of steamers, and brake blocks on cars. It is used extensively for turning, planking, coasting vessels’ furniture, ox yokes, wooden legs, shoe lasts,” etc. Fuller says: “It groweth incredibly fast, it being a by-Word that the profit by willows will buy the owner a horse before that by other trees will pay for a saddle.” The basket willow, well cultivated, will yield a net income of $l5O a year to the acre. On the whole, therefore, it would seem that the various kinds of .Willow, the economic value of which has been hitherto entirely overlooked in this country, are eminently deserving of attention, and will amply reward those who cultivate them. —Popular Science Monthly. Dushig 1882 the murders committed in the United States averaged two a day, while the executions only averaged two a week. " ■ --Ms. v . ■'f . - -T2L : " ;>> '- '