Fashions
"TIME brings all things"
In Deauville a slender woman appeared on the beach in a bathing-suit of green-stitched ostrich plumes, tossed from her shoulders a corresponding peignoir, plunged into the surge. In a moment she emerged, her costume as bold as ever. The feathers, put together with a new waterproofing process, shed water like a duck's back.
"Always remember mamma telling you that the most expensive corsets are the cheapest in the end ... ."
Thus women of dead decades admonished their maturing daughters. In due course the daughters, in spite of the inconvenient and often painful constriction of their middle parts by rigid cases, grew up and produced their kind. After marriage and until death they continued to lace. They laced up the front and down the back and along the side; they armored themselves with elastic and steel and whalebone, long, short, and medium, constructed in a thousand exacerbating shapes. Some of these women still survive. They continue to demand corsets that lace. They constitute, however, only 15% of the U. S. corset buyers, the Bureau of the Census made clear last week, reporting a banner year (1925) for the corset and brassiere trade. The daughters of the lacing women have trifled with their mothers' advice; they purchase only the vaguest and least expensive corsets, girdles, slip-ons. There are 166 corset and brassiere manufacturers in the U. S.--one less than in 1914.
They played it on the Corso, in the Bois de Boulogne, among the busses of Trafalgar Square--the game of Beaver. One walked with a companion; one saw a bearded man; one shouted "Beaver," scoring a point for every beard. Game score, as in Fives, was 21. The vogue of Beaver passed two years ago, but recently, on Long Island, a similar pastime started--the game of Babbitt. One drives the highroad, keeping a sharp eye out for Babbitts.* When a Babbitt is sighted, one points a finger at him, shouting "Babbitt." Babbitts travel together, and frequently whole games can be scored from a single car. Score is kept as in tennis-- fifteen, thirty, forty, game.
Elks
"Boom" went the drums, the horns brayed, the feet shuffled, the crowd clapped, "Boom, Boom, BOOM. . . ." To the music of many bands, with 100 floats, drill teams, drum corps, 100,000 Elks paraded through the streets of Chicago. Every one of them was smiling. Every one of them had on his badge. They were partaking in the big parade that marked the third day of their 62nd National Convention, held last week.
Already they had dedicated their splendid Memorial Temple on Lake View Avenue to the patriotism of the 70,000 Elks who served the U. S. in the War. Tears had gushed from thousands of eyes as the orator of the day, Rush L. Holland, recited his great address: "On this spot now made sacred . . . this imposing dome . . . the poppy fields of France. . . ." They had frolicked, shot clay pigeons, watched horses run, started a balloon race for an Elk trophy, elected Charles Grakelow of Philadelphia the new Grand Exalted Ruler. Other officers were loyal Elks from: Montgomery, Ala.; Blackfoot, Idaho; Dubuque, Iowa; Woburn, Mass.; and Mexico, Mo. Cincinnati was chosen the next reunion city. They had read their report, 400 pages long,
setting forth the good each lodge of the 1,500 has done since the last reunion. They had sat through boat excursions, business sessions, dinners, dances, vaudeville shows. They had decorated floats, waved flags, worn paper caps. Now, the big time over, they were ready to go home.
The new national Elk headquarters is a memorial to Elks who served in the War. Representing an investment of $3.10 for each of the 800,000 members of the brotherhood, the memorial is a structure "embodying beauty and permanence, one of the finest memorials in honor of the heroes of the War." Under a keystone chiseled with the inscription, THE TRIUMPHS OF WAR PERISH--THE TRIUMPHS OF PEACE ENDURE, bronze doors open through a colonnade into a circular hall containing twelve windows and four niches in which statues personifying Charity, Justice, Brotherly Love and Fidelity will soon be enshrined. The building faces Lake Michigan at the corner of Lake View avenue and Diversey Park.
Sculptor James E. Fraser will make the statues; Edwin H. Blashifield is working on the murals; Egerton Swartout of Manhattan was the architect, a designer of trite but heroic fancy and considerable resource. He built the Missouri State Capitol, the Victory Memorial in Washington, the Mary Baker Eddy Memorial in Boston, the Post Office and Court House in Denver, the Municipal Auditorium at Macon, Ga., and similar edifices.
Holocaust
In Paris a factory burned, 8,000 lovely women were destroyed. Their smooth arms, shaped for the admiration of a great public, dwindled in flame, still clutching to bare bosoms a trail of cloth or towel; their dark or flaxen heads became lumps of strange matter that smoked and stewed and reeked; their carmine lips, half-parted, twisted for a while as if in a vain effort to breathe the fire, until, under the rapture of this last kiss, they closed forever. None escaped. They were wax models, destined for the windows of department stores, milliners, hairdressers, in the U. S.
Shoebag
A humble shoebag, heavy with potency, set amidst the whispering grandeur of mattresses, old iron, papers and rubber tires, joggled tracklessly through the streets of Springfield, Mass., borne on a junk wagon to ignominious barter. The frowzy-whiskered junkman shifted about in his seat when a motorcycle policeman ordered him to the curb, fluttered two dirty palms in astonishment. The officer settled on a blue mattress as a hawk onto a mouse, prospected deeper into the indiscernible vagaries in the rear of a junk-wagon, retrieved the humble shoebag, departed triumphantly with it for its heartbroken owner -- one Peter Audaim -- after informing the surprised junkman that within it was concealed $1,200, Peter's life savings but recently drawn from the bank. The single clue to the identity of the junkman was the blue mattress which frugal Peter's unwitting spouse had included in her clever deal.
Calithump In Woodbury, Conn., one William James Coutts was last week married to a Miss S. E. Skilton. This couple failed fo observe an oldtime Woodbury custom: they failed to provide free cigars to as many bummers as could elbow their way into the wedding reception. Therefore the small sons and nephews of these bummers (also the hoodlum daughters and nieces) assembled automobile horns, Klaxons, tin pans, fish horns, blank cartridges, a fire siren; gave the Coutts on two successive nights what the local press described as "an oldtime calithumping."
First Families
One Howard F. Barker, author of "American Speech," recently compiled a list of the ten first U. S. families:
Smith.................................................................. .... 1,304,300
Johnson................................................................ .. 1,024,200
Brown.................................................................. ....... 730,500
Williams............................................................... ....... 684,700
Jones.................................................................. ......... 658,300
Miller................................................................. .......... 625,800
Davis.................................................................. .......... 537,900
Anderson............................................................... ....... 477,300
Wilson................................................................. .......... 422,300
Moore.................................................................. ......... 363,400
Local circulation of names varies. In New York Cohen is second to Smith, Schwartz fifth. In Chicago Johnson is ahead of Smith and Anderson third. Boston's first five are Smith, Sullivan, Brown, Johnson, Murphy. Meyer is third in Cincinnati.
* A Babbitt is any person who by his muddled features, raucous costume, attitude or gesture defines himself as inescapably belonging to that type of Native American popularized in the novel of Sinclair Lewis.