Fashions

In the first years after the war, at Covent Garden, London, a pair of "plus-fours" was seen. Following this outrage the tuxedo, dinner garment of touts dining in company and gentlemen dining alone, appeared frequently in the boxes, where none without full evening dress dared enter in the days when good King Edward reigned. Last week the management of Covent Garden made evening dress once more obligatory.

Charles Dickens tells how the ladies of his time put in their albums the nail parings of royalty. Flaxen hair, if long and on the skull, brought ten shillings an ounce in England in 1662. Last week in California a moving-picture star was offered $5,000 for the trimmings of his next haircut. The buyer stated that he sold the stellar tufts, together with reproductions of photographs, for $10 and up per package.

The Commonwealth College Fortnightly (Mena, Ark.) recently discoursed on the art of hitchhiking, i.e., the method of progressing from place to place without fare, by the simple means of cadging rides from motorists:

"Yesterday a freakish stunt, today it is a mode of travel.... One should equally avoid the appearance of mendicancy and that of prosperity . . . don't wait to be invited to ride . . . walk on the wrong side of the road. ... It is bad ethics for a man to ask women motorists for a ride. However, it is permissible to look at them in an interrogative way, and if the ride is then proffered, it would be impolite to refuse it. . . ."

Fraeuleins of Berlin appeared recently with new parasols--sun-shades that ruffled in the wind like huge red roses. They were made of chicken feathers--the down of ordinary white hens, glued on the silk, painted red. In London, dead silver foxes have long been smartly worn around the neck. Recently Mrs. F. P. Long (Philadelphia) appeared in Hyde Park on a Sunday morning parade with a silver fox docilely scampering beside her on a leash. On a nearby street Lady Mary Paston was seen leashed to a small African tree bear.

In Atlantic City, stylists whispered last week of veiled ankles. How veiled? By a net hem attached to skirts, slender flesh-stalks showing through. . . .

Turtles

Forty years ago, in Middletown, N. Y., a farmer named Lewis C. Andrews found a turtle in a field and whiled away a pleasant hour cutting his initials and the date "1886" in the turtle's mottled back. Last week a neighbor, Levi Sinsabaugh, found the turtle in a field, the letters, the date, still clear in his back. Farmer Andrews placed the reptile under a wicker chair, called neighbors in to witness his achievement.

At Imperial, Cal., (below sealevel) Mrs. Ben Hulse begged neighbors and passersby for news of Florentine, a common land turtle, who had been tied by Mrs. Hulse in the Hulse back yard, grown restless despite lavish care, been seen last proceeding toward the Mexican border.

Ducks

In Euclid Village, O., one Joseph Koman, 71, and one Frank Rupor, 68, shared the chores on a farm. Both had spent their strength; in the perpetual lassitude of old age they pottered and dug and weeded. Sometimes one did more than the other, and then little fights ensued in which the old man who had been for that day the most energetic berated his friend for letting him spend the little energy that life had left to him. One day last week Koman went out to feed the ducks. Rupor followed him querulously, complained that he wasted food, showed favoritism to the handsomer ducks. High words-- rascal, duck-dodger, miser--followed. Rupor struck with a spade, Koman fell down dead. The policemen who came for Rupor found him asleep. . . .