The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, December 25, 1895, Page 13

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 25, 18Y95. She neither works nor worries, this for- tunate girl of to-day. This view of the case did not originate with me. A man sat near meon the boat one night, weary and toil-begrimed. He was nota icularly pretty sight, this homeward- bound workingman. His hands were roughened and twisted with hard wor and they were not even comparatively clean. The man’s eyes lacked luster, and his shoulders had the . pathetic droop which ‘tells that patient endurance has come to fill the void where once ambition vaulited. Presently a daughter of luxury flitted before us, prating of the sunset. Chaper- oned and well attended was she. Well groomed, too, after the fashion of her kind. The odor of violets filled the air about her, us it did when Peter the Great walked abroad. The delicate frou-frou of silk ac- | companied all her movements. A suggestion, too, of the chiming of silver bells where my lady’s chatelaine jangled its chains. ! Seeing, hearing, smelling—so many senses were delighted. That subtle seventh | sense none the less. For in the beams of 's eyes, thrilling the tones of her was magnetism —bred of her per- and happiness. man beamed at the apparition, m back and sighed a sigh of deep conten to look at this highest pro: t of civilization. With a sort of proprietary pride, as if he fect healt My wor] lean himself had had some hand in bringing about tt Appy consummation, the work- man leaned over and spoke boastfully and admiringly to his fellon And this was what he said: “She neither works nor worries.” Rt P The highest product of civilization? A girl must have I know not how many generations of progressive grandfathers before she can step forth what Chimmie Fadden euphoniously describes as “a turrow-brs To be entirely correct a girl must have who came into England with ancestor: the Conquerors and others who did things in other our own Colonial day: There is no way. No amount of Ilatter-day sh of education and will make the matter right. v, like charity, covers a multitude of ins, but it can never make its possessor worthy of the name of “turrowbred.” As to the education, there’s plenty of latitude there. . One must be able to smile well and to write swell little notes. year or two abroad is more effective than a life-time of study in a convent, and also much more exciting, which is the main thing. One’s health simply must be perfect. It's bad form to be out of repair in this year of grace—hopelessly bad form. Arte our society girls ever guilty of iliness? That is the sin against the Holy Ghost of Mother Grundy’s religion. They do about everything else. capture burglars, they ride, they drive, swim, they golf, tney get married all over the pages of the newspapers, they elope with each other’s sweethearts and they buy themselves rather bad bargains | in counts. But whatever happens, well-bred girls are never ill nowadays. R e e About the grooming? That’s more dif- ficult. First, there’s the bath. Everybody is teking a cold bath in the morning now. Ever since Father Kneippe over in Ba- varia took to making English princesses run barefoot over the snow the shower- bath falls alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and nobody cares whether or not she is rubbed dry afterward. Father Kneippe says it doesn’t matter, | and the consciousness of being correct will almost drive away an attack of the shivers. The cold bath is but a sortof morning cocktail. The hot bath at bed-time is for cleanli- ness,and is as sedative in its effect as the shower is tonic. The bed-time bath is followed by the Jumi-lumi of Hawaii, as nearly as my lady’s maid can administer that sacra- ment. A Hawaiian woman learns the gentle massage of her country almost asa science, | studying for a lifetime to improve ber | method. She can take the tired awey— every bit of it. She takes away the wrinkles, too, and thinks it slovenly for a wornan who is not very old to wear them. | She is needed in our midst, this lumi- Jumi woman of Hawaii. Wouldn’t it pay somebody to bring over a whole shipload of her? . % = Beauty doctors are a sign of the times, but not nearly so much affected by “our hest people” as they would like to be, for- sooth! Superfluous moles and stray hairs must be removed without doubt, but the plain, unpretentious man of science can at- tend to those matters quite well. He can even soften down the hump on my lady’s nose if it .is too aggressive, and it is quite the surgical fad of the hour to do something or otner to that time-hon- ored and useful invention, the human nose. Cosmetics, by the way, are most emphat- ically “out.” Face massage, the steam bath, medical science, all these are legitimate beautifiers. But paint or powder on a lady’s cheek? Queile horreur! Yet it is written in history and in books ion that this thing bhappens sometimes—in San Francisco. The chiropodist, the manicure, each is as much a pecessity of the hour as the * For the rest, a | They | 7 Ay 7 | 1 | | | | | cook, or as the very lady’s maid herself. | | "A woman’s feet must be veritable | ! “Trilbys” now, and ready to have their { portraits taken at a moment’s notice. And they mustn’t even dare to be in con- dition to become the centers of intolerable pain, which is agreat improvement on the 's that nobody has had time to for- ret. to the fingertips, the deft little mani- cure soaks, trims and polishes to the pomnt | of absolute perfection. | ‘hen she folds her own hands demurely, | surveying her handiwork with lifted eye- | bro w. | Now, Madame,” she ventures to sug- | gest, “take care of the hands.” | They are the product of her art, those | { hands, and they are no longer for use, but | for ornament. * All this time we've left my lady shiver- ing from her bath, which really isn’t fair. Father Kueippe says she will be just as | warm in linen mesh underwear as if she | wore fanne As it’s very much the fad to be sanitary ust now, and as the linen underwear is rather absurdly expensive, it happens to be very much the thing. | Of course, it's in a single piece, the gar- Pt o | | | ating from her as did the odor | ot the children glibly dub “combera- | | tions.” If she hasn't the linen fad yet my lady | dons a union suit of silk or of wool so finely woven that the garment could be | drawn through—a bracelet to say the least. . Now this talk about Paris silks and ensand things is tiresome. Il isnon- sense, too. | You can get everything just as good and every bit as expensive right here in | San Francisco. You demand the proof? Listen. It is Patricia talking with her uiet home dressmaker. B et G 19 | those economical liitle affairs you can | wear with any dark skirt. | It will be necessary for you to havea | Louis Quinze jacket.” “And the silk- ) gid “It must be a rich brocade.” “And it will take—?"" “Eight yards; yes, eight yards includ- | ing the sleev: “The silk will cost—?"" | “Four dollars a yard. Yes, certainly. | You will require silk of respectable quality.” “And trimmings?"”’ “Ah, certainly, trimmings. Beyond a oubt you must have trimmings. A vest | of white satin, full, like this. At the | sides & bit of spangled trimming, just to | brighten up a little only—twenty dollars | say for trimming if you already have | lace?” | “Of course you understand there are to be full ruffles of lace, and the twenty | dollars for trimming of course is exclusive of lace.. Oh, yes, certainly.” | “Oh, to be sure, I have plenty of lace, | ana as for findings and making—2” ! “Findings and making. Ob, yes, cer- | tainly.” | “The findings and making will be abo ut ——just $42, including the silk linings, of course. . And, notwithstanding the high price of | coal this season Patricia went away per- fectly satisfied after arranging for one or ih\'o simple dark skirts with good silk ilnings, to .complete her scheme of | economy. | = e I've just peen reveling through some trunks that a dear girl has brought straight from Paris. | Ifthe things of beauty stowed within | those trunks are no better than could have | been planned and made in San Francisco | where is the man who will rise to say,even | s0, that they are not “‘the highest product | of civilization”—in clothes? The lingerie is a story of itself, and a problem in economics or ethics or some- { thing besides. | There are the ‘“comberations” and the | black silk and wool tights that every well- | regulated woman is wearing. The dear girl who owns the trunks is wearing this practical sort of thing her. self, and never anything more feminine. But the hemstitched and handwrought underwear that would have been enough | for our grandmothers proved irresistibly | attractive all the same. There’s a trunk full of it, the dainty | handiwork of French nuns, done in the convents as it used to be done in castles | where high-born dames were virtual pris- | oners, depending for excitement upon their embroidery frames. Delicate ribbons are everywhere among the laces and embroideries of this cambric lingerne. There are chemises galore, revived in the | hope that the big sleeves of to-day would make them possible again. They are the prettiest garments ever in- vented, but the robes de nuit of this ward- | robe that might be a trousseau are as | elaborate and more useful. | Gowns of lamb’s wool. striped in soft grays and delicate shades we ca!l the “baby colors,” are lace and ribbon trimmed, and charming enough to tempt the very Marthas to luxurious lolling in “my lady’s chamber.” Short skirts of lamb’s wool, embroidered or belaced, fill a long-felt want beneath the wide flaring silken petticoats of the day. And then the corsets. Yes, corsets still, Jenness Miller to the contrary notwith- standing. Not in the least like the hideous structures generously displayed in the shop windows and labeled ‘‘corsets four bits,”” are these strictly up-to-date little affairs. Of themselves they lie in a little soft heap suggestive oi a closed-up fan. They unfold like a fan, too, and the narrow la T S Wiirrest e Cane” | Patricia wanted a silk waist—just one of | | Madame advised a Louis Quinze jacket. | ,:_bi‘S'ha ribbons that hold the whalebones 1n nlace may be tightened here and there till the wearer's figure isfitted as it should be. R e T The gowns are lovelier than any one’s dreams—any one’s but an artist’s, that is to say. achieve such effects. The artists are doing it, beyond a doubt. Those clever fellows over there who want- ed to draw effective posters and keep up with the times and a little bit ahead, be- gan it. They drew the girl of the period, adapt- ing her costume most artistically. Too | much detail is bad art; so the details were left out. The lines are few in the new costumes, but what there are are strong—effective. sl ailanie g The silken petticoats must have their appointed place. One from out the trunk is of black Even Paris modistes couldn’t | bhang—and the swish of the petticoats— that tells the story. “But awful women from the backwoods 2o over there in gowns most wonderful to behold. And they hold their dresses very high, without fear or favor. “Beneath them—ugh! *If [ could forget! “Beneath them draggle the most hideous petticoats ever beheld of man. They are made of worn-out dresses, those petti- coats—I know it, I.” % The gowns., gowns for the street, are simplicity itself. The one of gray cloth, worn by my lady in the picture, is a model of quiet elegance. Tt is lined throughout with silk—*“Oh, cer- tainly.” In the words of Madame the modiste, everything is lined througheut with silk at present—everything. It doesn’t at all pay to bother with a cheap quality of silk either. If you put up with makeshift quality of silk your linings will be hanging in ribbons about your feet in no time, and perhaps to your eternal undoing. As Oliver Wendeli Holmes sang long ago: Good heavy silks are never dear— And they are positively required for lin- ings. L P CRE Y o Our gray cloth gown has a lining of pink, ruffles of course on theinside. A small girl who was inspecting the dress begged *‘auntie’ to turn it upside down. this costume, with a few artistic buttons of cut steel. The hat is a toque of black velvet with black featbers and a handsome buckle of the steel. Thebodice and the sleeves have taffeta. linings like that of the skirt, and the protested it was prettiest within and | White ribbons and black velvet decorate | To return to the main superstructure— the gowns. One skirt of black brocade is to do duty with a variety of bodices. Itis actually a cartwheel, too, that skirt. Spread out upon the floor, in the shape into which children of the last generation used to whirl their small skirts when they “‘made cheeses,” it lies quite flat. It is a generous circle, too, this skirt, reaching out toward the borders of a small apartment. The brocade is a large and striking pat- tern, but the skirt is absolutely plain, save that it is all gorgeous within. x * " One bodice is of the black brocade, quite decollete, and with a velvet cuirass, stiff with nailheads of jet. Even the shoulders rise above the sleeves of this gown, which droop down and away. They end at the elbow, these puffs of sleeves, in a great fall of lace. Long gloves meet them, but they are of glace kid, these gloves. Another bodice for the skirt of black brocade is of yellow satin—the yellow of California, of her poppies and her oranges. The orange satin is softened with draping of black chiffon. Bands of orange satin ribbon, with a design worked in jet beads, | makes a decoration most effective. They are over the shoulders and upon the sleeves, shaping the chiffon into lengthwise puffs. A third bodice has stripes of pale green satin, alternating with black, and broken with a riotous brocade of scarlet. The | sleeves are the feature of this waist, save that the fabric is most beautiful. They are slashed from shoulder to wrist. With- in, a full sleeve of white lace veils a closer one of pink silk. * » - % * The daring color scheme is repeated in an unmistakably Paris bonnet, close and singing, too, and about twenty little girls were standing about, singing as happily as young birds could. “We don’t want people to know about this,’ the young ladies told me after a while. 7 It isn’t charity work at all. We have to do something with our time, and so we come down here to teach these girls as much as we can. “If anything was said about it their mothers might not let them come any more, and that would be such a loss all around.” So it seems that even the highest product of civilization likes to be of some practical use in the world. And perhaps my weary man on the ferry-boat has some occult sympathy for the violet-scented apparition. And per- haps—perhaps, only—it is not all true that ‘‘She neither works nor worries’ ot Gl SHE REFUSED HIS GIFT. The young man might have become the husband of the girl, only one night when they were at a little party she drank a cocktail that was playfully offered to her. He felt it his duty to reprimand her mildly. She resented his interference and the engagement was broken off. He sought forgetfulness in travel, while she, with woman'’s enterprise, became en- gaged to another young man. A wedding invitation was sent to the traveler as a peace offering, and as he had recovered from his first grief he sent con- gratulations and also wrote to one of his friends and directed him to purchase some suitable wedding gift and sernd it to the CALIFORNIA’S PROUDEST PRODUCT —THE END OF THE CENTURY GIRL. A flounce of gold-colored changeable silk is two feet deep. Beneath it the *‘protect- ive” ruffle of black is strongly stitched and corded. Above it another flounce two feet deep has insertions of French lace alternating with rows of black ribbon, and a ruffle of lace at the foot. A skirt of heliotrope silk has pinked flounces, each with a fall of white lace above it. All the petticoats have ruffles inside as well as out, so that all possible glimpses may be charming. The dear girl of the trunks says there are women touring about on the other side who ought to be sent home to save the credit of their country. “A French woman always holds up her dress a little—ever so daintily—just so,” she says. ‘‘And you always get the pret- tiest effect of crisp cambric and laces, or else of fresh, delicious, rustly silks. “Their dresses for the street are plain and quiet as may be, but the way they “finish’”’ within and without is a thing to marvel at. A cloak of ermine, too good forany princess, was made in San Francisco, of course. It has a great sweep and the cloak proper is of velvet; the lining is of fur. Going to and from the Friday Night Cotillon, you know. A great collar of white Persian lamb’s ‘wool—the fur that costs always the life of both lamb and mother, that the curl of the wool may be exactly right, a great collar— sweeps superbly away from the throat. Of the Paris wraps one is like a pearl. It is acape of heavy brocade showing the shimmer and the tints of the gem of the seas. It is a cartwheel shape, opera cape. 1t has a lining of pearly satin and an 1n- terlining of down for comfort’s sake. A stately collar and a foot-wide band of the long soft fur of the Arctic fox make the wrap as becoming as it is lovely 1n the this little abstract. . trim, falling in with the lines of the head as if it grew thereon. * * x % w The evening gowns, the practical, ser- viceable gowns, the hats, the fans, the knick-knacks and the paraphernalia—well, they are all there in those trunks, but you don't expect me to describe them all. And the dear girl who brought those trunks over stanas up, in the innocence of her heart, and protests, in the sight of heaven, that she bought all those things for a mere song over in Paris. Which is proof positive that the afore- said dear girl is a *‘turrow-bred.” * * o® % » One day I stumbled upon a very queer house in a very queer street that isn’t any- where near the swell quarter of the City. A little girl opened a door for me, and in the middle of a room I saw a young lady who is one of the brightest ornaments of the fashionable set. She was singing and beating time. Her sister was playiog the piano and happy pairin his (the rejected one’s) name. Now this friend, not being acquainted with the circumstances under which the first engagement had been terminated, and knowing that the bride and groom had liberal notions as to the sort of an enter- taipment to be provided for callers, bought a handsome sideboard, with all sorts of bottles and glasses and mixed-drink appli- ances, and sent the glittering barroom ar- ray to the bride’s house. Imagine, if you can, the fury of the bride. As she explained to one of her friends: “He might as well have told me to go ahead and drink myself to death.” Perhaps the traveler doesn't know that his wedding present has been sent back and is in storage, awaiting his arrival in Chicago. —————— Pullman conductor—Can you and your brother get along all right, two in a berth? Traveler—Oi course we can. We know what it is. We're twins. — New York Herald, RISTMAS - WARNING I was but 16 years old at the time, yet it is as clear to me now as though it had oc- curred but yesterday. It was during my last year at Miss B—'s seminary, and my chum and room-= mate had asked me to spend the Christ- mas holidays at her home. I had studied hard and was glad to get away and among unfamiliar scenes for a few days. We reached her home a few days before Christ- mas and found them s finishing the winter housecleani That is how it came about that we pt on the floor that night. All had been done except to put up the bed that Neilie and I should have slept in. Butthe servants had been tardy and we had arrived a couple of days before they expected us. So the mattress was laid on the floor, and though I was urged to change places with another member of the family the novelty of sleeping in a half-furnished room and on the floor, as it were, was altogether too enticing for me to permit the exchange. We went upstairs early, taking a lamp and a book along—I think it was *‘The Chil- dren of the Abbey.” And there we lay, propped up on the pillows, reading aloud to each other by the ghostly glare of the lamp standing on the floor near the bed. Then we fell asleep, leaving the lamp where it was—though we had meant not to do that. * K * X Suddenly some one shook me violently and a voice marvelously clear and sweet called to me, ‘“Margaret, my child, get up quickly; you are burninz!” Starting up and turning I saw behind me a figure clad in white,with beautiful auburn hair streaming round her shoulders and down her back. In one hand she carried a lichted candle, and with the other she was carefully feel- ing her way toward me. I called “mother,” for it was the image of my mother, who had been dead twelve vears. The figure turned, stretched out her hands, and, as I started toward her, she disappeared it seemed through the door, but when I reached the door all was dark- ness—the figure was nowhere to be seen. I rushed back into the room and saw the chairs and bedclothing on fire, the mattress partially destroyed. Hurriediy I snatched a pitcher of water from the washstand and had the flames extinguished just as T heatd a voice outside crying, “Fire! fire!” Tcalled from the window, “Itis all out; for heaven’s sake, do not awaken the folks downstairs.” It was the night watchman, who had seen the smoke and flames through th dow and was rushing to the house to wake the occupants. sured him the flames were extinguished and that there was no further danger. Then I returned to the bedside of my friend and found her uncon- scious. She awoke when the water had been thrown on her, only to see the danger she was in and return to unconsciousness through fright. I quietly secured a bottle of camphor from the next room, and in a few minutes my friend was all right. The next morning when we appeared at the breakfast table and related our experi- ence of the night before we were severely and very vproperly reprimanded, and warned to neveragain read in bed by lamp light. I told them nothing about the fair wraith that gave me the warning, however, fear- ing their derision. But I told Nellie, and she believes me. [ do not care whether the world believes it, or not. I shall always remember that Cbristmas, for mingled with the joys of the season were sad, vet pleasant thoughts of the white- robed figure, but for whose watchfulness perhaps I should not have lived to enjoy the day. Ia STEAM AND ELECTRICITY. “In popular writings,” said Professor W. C. Unwin in a recent lecture on *“The Heat-Engine” before the Institution of Civil Engineers in London. “nothing is commoner than to find the efficiency of electric machinery and of steam machinery contrasted to the great discredit of the lat- ter. The dynamo, it is said, has an efficiency of ninety to ninety-five per cent, the steam-engine an efficiency of only ten per cent. What a barbarous machine, after all the labor of a century, the steams-, engine must be! “The comparison is ge nerally made by an electrical engineer and the first refiection which uceurs to one is that of all people the electrical engineer should be the last to abuse the steam-engine, for whatever may be the case in some future century, at present the dynamo is absolutely depend- ent on the steam-engine. Without the steam-engire the dynamo would be a nse- less mass of metal and wire. But. passing over the moral aspect of the question—the ingratitude of the electrical engineer—the comparison is an unfair one and shows a want of apprehension of the important law of the motivity of heat, which is one of the two fundamental laws of thermo- dynamics. ‘Heat energy 15 undirected, or mob en« ergy. It liesin the nature of the terrese trial conditions in which use has to bs made of it that only afraction is converted into mechanical energy. The task of the steam-engine is to do its best with the fraction which is convertible, and in that point of view it is notan ineflicient ma- chine. The dynamo bas a much easier task. Energy is applied to it in its directed or wholly convertible form, and naturally in transforming one kind of directed energy into another kind of directed energy only a small fraction need be wasted.” - / “Happy?” murmured the bride. ‘“Ah, yes. I have a good, noble husband, and just think of the number of people I got even with by not inviting them to my wedding!” And there shone in her eyes the strange, terrible light that revealed the Woman Who Did Somebody.—Detroit Tribune.