DE6 17 
THE BUBAL HEW-YOBIEB. 
Woman’s XXJork. 
CONDUCTED BY EMILY LOUISE TAPLIN. 
CHAT BY THE WAY. 
What we call “light, readiug” is often 
condemned as diverting our minds from more 
improving themes, and giving us nothing but 
gossip for conversation. Yet, iu point of fact, 
a woman who devotes her leisure solely to“im- 
proviog" reading, scientific or the like, is an 
excessively heavy companiou. and if her con¬ 
versation is only of her pet science she is a de¬ 
cided bore into the bargain. It maj’ be trite 
and commonplace to open the conversation 
by remarking that it looks like rain, but it 
would be a good deal worse to ask your com¬ 
panion’s opinion of the Zend Avesta, or begin 
a dissertation on the glacial epoch. 
* * * 
If a woman wishes to rise above mere inane 
gossip in her conversation she will find a 
course of newspapers and magazines much 
more serviceable tbau a regular course of 
heavy reading. To be really charming in 
conversation, one must avoid anything like a 
hobby. Have a hobby, by all means, but 
don’t ride it rough-shod over everybody. Much 
desultory reading of a good class, stored 
away by a retentive memory, will give us food 
for conversation to suit everybody. 
In point of fact, we do not believe that wo¬ 
men are usually less interesting in conversa¬ 
tion than men; the latter are apt to have 
larger opportunities in contact with others. 
Yet we meet so many men who cauuot 
talk of anything in the world except their 
business, and surely they are not more inter¬ 
esting than a woman who talks only of her 
clothes and her household. 
* * * 
It would be just as well for the aspiring 
conversationalist to remember that bit in 
JPunch. where Jones says of his friend Brown: 
“Oh, he’s such a bore. He’s always talking of 
his own affairs when I want to talk of mine.” 
* * * 
To gracefully suppress our own affairs, 
while we let our friends talk of theirs, is the 
first step towards agreeable conversation: add 
to this a knowledge of the world’s doings aud 
a spontaneous good-nature, aud there need be 
no fear of trivial gossip. It is gossip to talk 
of Miss Volfe's pictures or the Crown Prince’s 
illness: Gladstone'slatest utterance or Thack¬ 
eray's letters; but it is conversational small 
change, more easily passing current than such 
unwieldy coin as deep sciences, unless we all 
take Mrs. Gradgrind s udvioe, and go and be 
somethiugological directly, 
* * A 
Some very pretty new sofa cushions are of 
linen,ha ving conventional designs embroidered 
in crewels. A cushion of cream-colored linen 
had a central design of fruit in gobelin blue; 
around this were leaf arabesques in tan, olive, 
and low shades of yellow. A warm gray 
cushion had a design of honeysuckle worked 
in old red. low yellows, and maroon. These 
cushion-covers are laced together with cord 
and tassels to match the design in color. 
* * * 
The makers of fancy-work seem never to 
tire of bags as an object on which to expend 
their ingenuity. Just now these convenient 
receptacles are in high favor to carry fan, 
handkerchief or seeut bottle. A very pretty 
handkerchief bag was of old pink satin, with 
an outer casing of drawn work in white pon¬ 
gee, and old pink strings. Every other woman 
one meets iu Philadelphia seems to carry a 
plain square bag of dark-colored felt, simply 
gathered together at t he top. What they car¬ 
ry iu these bags is known only to the posses¬ 
sors, but some of them seem to have a capacity 
of half a bushel. They are not carried hv 
strings; the owner firmly grips the bag by 
the neck and holds it in that way. Boston 
girls used to carry a shopping bag shaped like 
an old-fashioned purse thrown over one shoul¬ 
der. Such shopping bags are very effective 
as a means of concealment for unsightly 
packages. 
CONCERNING WOMEN. 
MARY WAGER-KXSHER. 
So far as possible, a child should tie given a 
room for his sole and separate use, and made 
responsible for its neatuess and tidy appear¬ 
ance. The effect of such an endowment upon 
nearly all children is magical in developing 
taste and order. I was very much struck by 
this when the laddie, now 10 years old, was 
given a room to be exclusively his own. It 
was fitted up in the simplest manner, but sup¬ 
plied with all the conveniences the average 
young gentleman requires, and the delight 
the child has taken in his room has been un¬ 
bounded. It is there that he studies his les¬ 
sons, makes the daily note in hjs diary, and 
has on .shelves aud jn c^cs and fastened to 
the walls his treasures of bird masts, of euri- 
pus vegetable growths of AeJIs, nos, pres, 
pictures, coins, and hundreds of curios gath¬ 
ered from near and far, all labeled by his own 
hand—a room daily growing in interest and 
kept by himself in perfect order. Even bis 
shoes and slippers are rauged with exactitude 
as to their bools and toes, aud his bottles of 
specimens, swimming iu alcohol, are duly 
sealed aud made to look as “scientific” as pos¬ 
sible. Where formerly his belongings were 
tossed about in boy-fashion, and I was bur¬ 
dened with the delivery of contiuual admoni¬ 
tion and much “pickingup,”I amuow delighted 
with a method and order charming to see, 
Where houses are small and children are 
many, of course each child cannot have a 
separate room, but wherever it can be accom¬ 
plished it should be, for the advantages to be 
derived from it are mauifold. 
I heard a woman in middle life, only the 
other day, bewailing the unhappiness of her 
earty girlhood caused by not having had a 
room to herself. For a downright happy 
place for young people, there is no house so 
well adapted as a roomy, old fashioned one, 
in which one cau stick pins and drive nails and 
put up all sorts of decorations ad libitum, 
and where there is nothing too good to use, 1 
remember very well the great difficulty I had, 
after returning home from school, with a 
dozen paintings 1 had executed under the 
“Teacher of the Fine Arts,” to persuade my 
father to drive up nails enough in t he “parlor” 
walls to bang them on. It was not the dread¬ 
fulness of the art that troubled him, but the 
defacing of the walls that he objected to in 
driving in nails, aud I cau see him now, in 
memory, sounding the “ satin" papered walls 
for the studs, aud deploring meautime the 
havoc he was being led to commit. However, 
after the pictures were framed and bung, he 
thought that no great barm had been done af¬ 
ter all, and that the fortunes of the family 
would survive the nail-driving. An object of 
continual care was the piano, lest its shining 
sides and chubby legs should be scratched or 
marred! I can well remember my terror lest 
some unwary visitor should give the legs a dig 
with a chair-rocker, or bring the back of 
his chair into close proximity to the sides of 
that precious rosewood box! Of course the 
care and preservation of what we have are 
necessary, but it is a nrstake not to enjoy 
everything about us to the utmost, and that 
without worry. And there Ls no time for en¬ 
joyment like the present. To postpone the 
pleasure of what you desire and which is right¬ 
fully within your reach,is folly. Take it uow 
aud make the most of it. 
If piano legs are still standing monuments 
of anxiety (in the millennium they will be 
made of cast iron like stove legs, maybe) there 
is considerable comfort to be found in India 
rubber caps, tips, etc., to prevent things from 
being scratched or unduly worn. Furniture 
that mars the wall cau be provided at small 
expense with rubber knobs at the back. Rub¬ 
ber tips drawn over books on which towels 
and other things are hnng, save a deal of wear 
to the articles hung on them. Chairs that 
scratch the floor and make a noise can lie 
booted with rubber aud in many ways can t he 
haishuess of everyday life be softened by the 
use of this wonderfully useful material in or¬ 
der to utilize which Silas Goodyear during 
eleven long years of experiments kept his fam¬ 
ily in painful impoverishment. 
Mending bureaus are rapidly increasing, 
greatly to the comfort of bachelors aud of 
mothers of families, besides furnishing em¬ 
ployment to women who have a faculty for 
repairs. 
It is the opinion of some eminent physicians 
that croup is allied to diphtheria aud that 
croup patients should be isolated. Many pa¬ 
rents do not appreciate the extreme infectious- 
ness of diphtheria in any form, and of scarlet 
fever. What is dipbtberetic sore throat in one 
child ofteu develops as malignant diphtheria 
in another, just as scarlatina in one person 
proves to be scarlet fever in its extreme form 
in another. Tbc only safe and the only right 
thing to do is to isolate any case of either, no 
matter how- slight the uilrueut, for in these dis¬ 
eases there is no risk to be taken. Scarlet 
fever is fully as infectious as small pox and 
more to be dreaded while diphtheria is equally 
to be feared To disinfect a person thorough¬ 
ly who has been ill with either disease is not an 
easy matter. To change the clothing merely 
by no means removes the danger of transmit¬ 
ting the malady to others, as the hair aud 
beard are first-class mediums for carrying aud 
disseminating the seeds of these terrible dis¬ 
cuses. 
The reckless way in which people often ex¬ 
pose themselves to these diseases at funerals is 
so foolhardy as to he criminal. One of the 
saddest cases came to my ears a few days ago 
—-a child had died in Illinois of scarlet fever 
or diphtheria (1 do not remember which] aud 
seven of Its playmates were chosen to act ns 
pallbearers and carry the coffin to the grave. 
Five out of the seven died w r ithin a few' days 
of the same disease. It would seem that 
whore laymeu are so idiotically lacking in 
common sense, their lack of intelligence 
should be supplemented by the advice aud 
warning of physicians, whose duty it is 
always to act as a Board of Health in such 
matters. In point of fact there should never 
be a funeral service held over the body of a 
person who has died of an infectious disease, 
and the burial should be conducted in the 
most private and exclusive way. It is show¬ 
ing no regard or affection for the dead, to 
make their final exit from the world a source 
of suffering and unhappiness for others. 
The Bible is rich in good advice—this to 
housekeepers. “Take no heed unto all the 
words that are spoken, lest thou hear thy ser¬ 
vant curse thee.” 
Tissue paper flowers make very pretty lamp 
shades, when hung over one side of a porce¬ 
lain shade, and extending as far below the 
shade as it is desirable to modify the light. 
A wire of one of the stems can be bent over to 
hook on top of the porcelain which makes it 
readily adjustiblo to any side of the lamp. 
When one is not deft iu making flowers, the 
tissue paper (costs two cents per sheet) cau he 
made into large rosettes. Cut the paper into 
circles, squares or oval pieces of the desired 
size: then cut the edge into tabs an inch wide, 
all around, aud pinch each tab through the 
middle, from the surface inward.so as to give 
it a crumpled appearance. Each succeeding 
layer should, of course, be smaller, und treat¬ 
ed similarly. Variety and good effect can be 
produced by making the center of each rosette 
of a different shade from the larger part. 
Wheu all the pieces are crumpled, pile them 
regularly on top of each other, as to size, and 
ruu twice through near the middle with a 
small wire, such as florists use in bouquets, and 
cutthetwoendsof the wire on the underside of 
a suitable length to form the hook to run over 
the top of the lamp shade. I know a. deft-fin¬ 
gered girl who made quite a little money iu 
making and selling these pretty, fluffy, useful 
appendages to lampshades. Two widely dif¬ 
ferent shades iu the same color, look well to¬ 
gether—such as pale pink aud deep crimson. 
Colored curta ins look very bright aud cheer¬ 
ful at windows in the wiuter, but some eyes 
are very sensitive to light in other thau its 
natural white or colorless state. While all 
draperies in red, yellow or blue absorb the 
other prismatic rays, and give respectively a 
red. yellow or blue light So iu all things 
pertaining to the house, health should be of 
prime importance, and the health of the eyes 
should be of exceeding importance. 
In our last issue we said Dr. Livermore-Potts. 
We should have said Dr. LongsUore-Potts. 
WISE WORDS ABOUT WOMEN. 
Woman once made equal to man becomes his 
su per i or.— Son'll tea . 
All the reasonings of men are not worth 
one sentiment of women.— Voltaire . 
Where there is room in the heart there is 
always room in the house .—Moore . 
Domestic happiness, thou only bliss of Par¬ 
adise that has survived the fall.— Cauper. ... 
It is iu vain for a man to be boru fortunate, 
if he be unfortunate in his marriage.— Dacier. 
Unhappy is the nan for whom his own 
mother has not made all other mothers vener- 
able.— Richter ... 
That man that has a tongue, I say, is no 
man if w ith his tongue he cannot win a wo¬ 
man.— Shakespeare . 
No true woman will permit her aspirations 
to prejudice her miud against domestic res¬ 
ponsibilities .—Chopin . 
To bo man’s tender mate was woman born, 
and in obeying nature she best serves the pur¬ 
pose of Heaven .—Schiller . 
A woman’s heart, is just like a lithographer’s 
stone; wlmt is ouee written upon it cannot la? 
rubbed out.— Thackeray .. 
She who makes her husband and her child¬ 
ren happy, who reclaims the one from vice, 
and trains up the other to virtue, is a much 
greater character than ladies described iu ro¬ 
mances, whose whole occupation is to murder 
mankind w ith shafts from their quiver or their 
0} os.— Gotdsm ith . ... . 
“Woman is the masterpiece of the universe,” 
says Lessing. . 
“Women are false only wheu men are ty- 
rauts,” says Bcrnardin de St. Pierre. 
“God’s prose ismun, his poetry is woman,” 
says Napoleon... 
“Would you know clearly what the becom¬ 
ing is, inquire of noble women,” says Goethe. 
“Among pnjj hundred men you will And 
two witty pges.l’ says Mine, de Girardin, 
“w-hilo among n hundred wpuienonly one wifi 
b«stupid" , f .. .. . .... 
t I 'I/!11/1 it fit 
“Woman is the most perfect of all crea¬ 
tures,” says Balzac. “She hovers between man 
and the angels, and is but a little lower thau 
they.”...... 
“All that is evil in women comes from 
man,” says the Abbd Martin, “In spite of 
the stupid education we have given them, aud 
in spite of our barbarous prejudices, they are 
tO-day the glory of Europe and the intelligent 
companions of our life. Woman has become 
so great that man must also become great iu 
order to reach her. ”.... 
Sydney Smith, writing sixty-tive years 
ago, took the true ground when he said: “Na¬ 
ture has boeu as bountiful of understanding to 
one sex as to the other. Education makes the 
only mental difference. Pompous and foolish 
men have a jealousy in regard to the educa¬ 
tion of women, but not men of sense and lib¬ 
eral politeness. “Nothing is so honorable to a 
woman as not to be spoken of at all.' is a tav- 
ority phrase of Noodledom. But I really 
thiuk those ladies who are talked of as Mrs. 
Somerville and Miss Martiueau are talked of, 
may bear their misfortunes with a great de¬ 
gree of Christian patience.”. 
Domestic Ccofionu) 
CONDUCTED BY MRS. AGNES E. M. CARMAN. 
Ella Wheeler Wilcox thinks that fre¬ 
quent washing of the face is injurious to the 
skin. 
Dry dressing we think very much superior 
to the old-fashioned soggy article. 
It is a question in our mind whether the av¬ 
erage fancy work does not detract from in¬ 
stead of add to the appearance of a room. 
A gift bestowed because the giver feels it 
obligatory never carries with it the blessed 
atmosphere of the heart-bestowed gift that 
we all love to receive. A trifle given with the 
good-will-towards-all spirit is usually appre¬ 
ciated l'ar more than a priucely token from a 
heart that knoweth not the delights of giving. 
KITCHEN TALKS. 
ANNIE L. JACK. 
On’CF. more the year has rolled rouud and 
Christmas is near. We think of it with min¬ 
gled pleasure and regret, while the happy 
children of the household are unbounded in 
their anticipations. And the giving, so 
“ blessed,” is a beautiful part of the commem¬ 
oration, provided it is done of one’s own heart 
—a free-will offering of affection aud regard. 
For I heartily despise conventional giving, 
just because it lias become fashiouable, but 
always cherish the gift, however simple, that 
proves the giver has thought of my individu¬ 
al taste or need in the Christmas reminder. 
A book that has been desired: any of the use¬ 
ful helps to tidy housekeeping; a calendar 
that gives its wishes and its wise words at the 
same time; a basket of well-kept fruit, or a 
bit of the giver’s own work in any form, is 
more tbau a purchased gift can ever be. 
It. is a good plan in a household for the 
children to learn to give out of their abun¬ 
dance to those who have not; for in no other 
way can they learn the blessing of giving. 
Tbc kitchen is already putting on Its holiday 
trim, and we are talkiug of the house decora¬ 
tion. There is uotbing prettier thau the 
American holly and several berries from the 
woods will add brightness, then the several 
ground evergreens are especially pretty and 
easy of access to country people. The chil¬ 
dren have been stringing the scarlet seed of 
asparagus to twine in, and mountain ash ber¬ 
ries that have dried in the dark retain their 
color. Above all, whether there bo u rich 
feast, or the simplest repast, lot there be love 
and good fellowship among young and old at 
this time. For wheu the anniversary comes 
round, we who are older feel always the shad¬ 
ow over us. that seldom darkens the thoughts 
of the young. Shall we all he here w hen an¬ 
other year rolls around ? Or perhaps we sit in 
the depth of a great sorrow aud live in the 
memory of the past. But Christinas should 
be a season of giving, whatever bo our lot and 
condition, if we remember the Christ Child, 
and they who first worshipped Him. The 
Star of the Eust shines brightly iu my bed¬ 
room window just now, and awakens strange 
g&tjMfUaufOttU gMvctUjSfafl. 
When Baby was sick, we itave her Castorla 
When she was a Child, she cried for Castorla, 
When she became MUs, she clung to Castorla, 
*'»>»<?K|Jg pjjjlfjft*. tfh® fbpm Ptf&rla 
