Would Rather Smoke Than Eat

1901

"One day," writes an American in Havana, "I came across an old Cuban woman sitting disconsolately on a rock near Morro castle. She told me in Spanish that for three days she had had nothing to eat but a loaf of bread and coffee. She looked it. I gave her a Spanish dollar and followed in her wake. She entered the first cafe she came to and bought a drink and a cigar. I couldn't help laughing to see her as she walked along the street puffing away at the weed purchased with my money. She seemed perfectly contented. The Cubans, even the women, would rather smoke than eat. They take only two meals a day, breakfast about 10 o'clock and dinner at 4 in the afternoon."

An Old Anchor

1900

Not long ago the crew of an English trawler engaged in lobster-fishing, near Kinsale, had great difficulty in getting their anchor aboard. It was firmly fixed in some massive, hard substance in the sand-bank.

When at last they succeeded in bringing it to the surface, there was attached to it a very ancient anchor five tons in weight, the shank being over ten feet long and the bend of equal proportions. Fastened to the anchor was a small cannon.

The anchor, which probably belonged to one of the ships of the Spanish Armada, wrecked on this coast, had become covered with marine matter, and this, in the three centuries during which it had been imbedded in the sand, had been converted into a rocky fossil substance.

The anchor is, of course, considerably worn; but it still presents a very massive appearance, and must have belonged to a large ship. — Youth's Companion.

Is Bride Only 11 Years Old? Dentists Helping Find Out

Nebraska, 1921

TO EXAMINE BRIDE'S TEETH

Believe That Maria Gollardo Is Eleven Years Old, But Facts Are Lacking

HASTINGS, Neb., Dec. 3. — Examination of the teeth of Maria Gollardo by Hastings' dentists will be resorted to in an effort to determine her age. Maria, a Mexican girl, was married to Jose Gonzales on November 21 and because the school authorities are convinced she is only eleven years old, the county attorney has been trying to establish the girl bride's age with a view to beginning action to annul the marriage.

Miss Clara Altman, teacher of Spanish at Hastings college, has been drafted as interpreter in the investigations but nothing definite of the girl's age has been learned. She is the foster child of Butamio Gollardo and all they can say is that when they got her in Oklahoma four years ago, Maria was losing her first canines.

Meanwhile Maria and Jose are seemingly happy and can't understand what the officials are wrought up about.

—The Nebraska State Journal, Lincoln, Dec. 4, 1921, p. 8-B.

Must Dress Spanish To Be in Style Now

1916

Last Season The Fashion Trend was To Chinese — Now It's Changed
By Margaret Mason.

NEW YORK. Feb. 11. — Sing ho! for the Spanish main, for anything Spanish is the main thing in the new trend of Fashion. Last season we were all to the Chinese and goodness knows where we will be season after next. At the pace they are going it looks as if the designers would soon be sitting around on their haunches and weeping a la Alexander the Great for more worlds to copy.

Personally it strikes me Borneo fashions might be smart for the summer season, but the designers are probably holding them in reserve for the winter months. But to return to Spain; even as a Spanish omelet the fashion designers are undoubtedly being egged on to the Spanish mode by the recent production of that much-heralded Spanish opera, "Goyesca," at the Metropolitan opera house. Incidents in the life of Goya and his paintings inspired the opera, the opera inspired our present fashions and so Mr. Goya is really the responsible party.

Goya was the father of twenty children, one of the most favored lovers of the duchess of Alba and a great artist. Not for these achievements, however, is he now known to fame, but as the designer of these feminine frocks and frills for 1916.

Quantities of Spanish lace, both white and black, are used in flounces on the new old Spanish gowns which are copied outright from old portraits by Goya and Vesasquez. One of the French houses offers a gown which is a replica of that worn by the infants in Velasquez's most famous portrait. The gown is dubbed Velasquez, and it is wired out over the hips in the same exaggerated manner as the portrait. In fact, almost all of the frocks with Hispanic tendencies show this wiring over the hips, and the bodices are tight-boned and pointed.

Crude, strong tones of yellow, red, green and orange are used to get the true Spanish effects and mantillas, scarves and sashes of gay hues, high back combs and gaudy fans are accessories after the fact. Stunning evening wraps and negligees are fashioned out of the gorgeously embroidered Spanish shawls, and in some instants they are even made into evening gowns verily reeking of Carmen and bull fights.

Indeed all the Spanish fashions are bully.

Considering the shortage of dyes and the fact that all the real blue-blooded senoritas are raven-tressed, this is bound to be a closed season for blondes, and peroxide peaches will all stop trying to conceal their dark pasts.

With our characteristic whole-souled manner of entering entirely into the spirit and atmosphere of a new mode I have no doubt that even our diet will now smack of the Spanish tendency toward onions, omelettes, mackerel and sweet peppers. Our fox-trots and one-steps will give way to the fandango, our national sport become throwing the bull and our Irene Castle go around looking like a castle in Spain.

—Fort Wayne News, Fort Wayne, IN, Feb. 11, 1916, p. 4.