Entries Tagged 'Bloomers' ↓

When winter’s snows promise to make hazards too hazardous for indulgence in golf playing, the old and interesting game of billiards will amuse the house-bound. Now the occasional woman has played billiards, for many years, and played it well; but it was not until Lord Dunraven’s pretty daughter, Lady Aileen Wyndham-Quin, came over this year, to see her father race his handsome yacht, that billiards came suddenly into great social favor. Lady Aileen, it appears, used her cue not only with uncommon facility, but proved how exceedingly graceful a slender woman can appear when in evening dress she pockets her balls or smashes her opponent’s most careful combinations. The English girl’s exhibitions of prowess not only set her feminine friends in America seriously thinking, but valorously practicing on the baize-covered tables, until the majority of even callow debutants know something more than how to prettily chalk their cues. After many of the smartest autumn dinners the women quickly wandered down, from coffee, small talk, and satin-hung drawing-room, to the big leather-upholstered basement billiard-room, where the men found them, pink of cheek and bright of eye, over a game of sufficient strength to command even masculine respect and a desire to engage therein.–Demorest Magazine.

Tourists returning from abroad report a new fad which has, for the moment at least, superseded the erstwhile popular craze for souvenir spoons; instead, milady now collects dainty handkerchiefs. From the days of Josephine to the present the handkerchief has been an important item in the expenditure of a fastidious woman; a good dresser considers her toilet incomplete without a bit of snowy lawn or linen, which, though scarcely ever seen, and it may be severely plain, must yet be above reproach with regard to fineness of texture. An inveterate globe trotter, who has just returned from the other side, rejoices in an exquisite collection of these cobwebby nothings. At every city or town where she stopped, no matter how short her stay or how insignificant the village, another square of linen as faithfully added to her spoils, and, curiously enough, she readily recalls where each was purchased. So that her handkerchiefs, in a measure, serve her as a sort of note book.

The fact cannot be disputed that no single factor in modern life is doing so much to degenerate our young womanhood as this mad race on the part of girls, impelled by necessity or not, to go into the business world, says the Ladies’ Home Journal. These may sound like strong words to the ears of some, but to those who are really cognizant of the immensity of the evil results that are being wrought they will simply fit the case and not go beyond it. In altogether too many of our commercial and industrial establishments, stores and factories, the men into whose hands is given the power to employ and control girls are not fit, from a moral standpoint, to herd swine. And yet thousands of our young women are allowed to go from their homes to work under the influence of these men and in the atmosphere vitiated by them. And why? Simply because it is considered more “respectable” to be employed in an office, store or factory than to be engaged in domestic service. The very word “servant” has a taint about it that the majority of young women dislike and from which they flee. But what else are they in business establishments than servants, pure and simple? There can be no difference by an imaginary one. That is all. Far less leniency is shown in our business houses to women employes than is shown, as a rule, in our homes to domestic help–infinitely less.

Mrs. John Quill and her husband quarreled at Eaton, O., over the question whether or not their daughter should wear bloomers. The Quills are old people, wealthy, and have a large family of grown-up children. Quill is 75 years old and very feeble, but he advocated bloomers. They quarreled viciously, and finally Mrs. Quill attempted to pull out her husband’s whiskers. Not succeeding, she cut them off. The fight was so bitter that both the old people are under a physician’s care, and it is feared Mrs. Quill will become insane.

“There’s one thing about the bicycle craze,” said a tailor. “I believe it is going to revolutionize men’s attire, which has been so somber for so many years. Dress reformers have done much for women, but men’s clothing is practically the same year in and year out. The leaders of fashion are not as a rule robust, and the chaps who lead cotillions have small legs. If the wheel develops their calves, as it will, I believe the age of short clothes will return, and knee-breeches for evening dress may be seen again in drawing-rooms. Bloomers are popular, for a shapely woman likes folks to know it. Thin-legged men have a chance to build up their calves in summer for the winter’s gaiety.”

The question of bloomers has assumed a new form at the Michigan University at Ann Arbor. Miss Edna Day, a pretty junior literary student, appreciates their superiority over skirts and wore them until her landlady told her she would have to don her skirts while in the house. Miss Day has complied. When outside the jurisdiction of the boarding house keeper, however, Miss Day will appear as of yore. She is an enthusiastic bicycle rider, and thinks that such a dress is much more sensible and comfortable to wear on rainy days an during sloppy weather than muddy skirts. The wives of several professors also favor them and her instructors have commended her upon the stand she has taken.

Guests of the Stamford hotel, on Michigan avenue, were horrified Sunday at an accident to a young lady which occurred right in front of that famous hostelry, which has become a kind of headquarters for those bicyclists who make use of the magnificent South side boulevards, says the Chicago Tribune. At about 4 o’clock in the afternoon a very dashing girl, with a little cap set jauntily upon her blonde ringlets, came speeding down the avenue. She was dressed in a very natty blouse and the latest style of riding bloomers, which reached well down toward the ankle. Just as she reached the hotel one of the bloomer legs caught in between the chain and sprocket of the machine and in an instant, going at the scorching pace she was, the entire bloomer was stripped off her shapely right limb. The spectators were for a moment paralyzed at the extent of this catastrophe, and two or three young ladies who were just about to mount their wheels blushed as red as a rainy sunset, but he dashing damsel was equal to the emergency. With a dextrous hand she disengaged herself from the mangled bloomers and stood before her admiring and astonished audience arrayed in an extremely becoming pair of black tights and trunks to match. Thrusting the bloomers into her blouse, she vaulted lightly on her wheel and the next moment was vanishing southward over the hard roadway at a two-minute gait.

Mrs. Noya, the first female cyclist to appear on the streets of Little Rock, Ark., clad in bloomers, was arrested by the police under an ordinance against “indecent apparel.” The bloomers were of the conventional style.