Shades of the English autumn, ambers from the yellow of a falling poplar leaf to the richly saturated brown carpeting a path through a beech wood— these are the colours of new dress materials in hairy or cellophane wools, or sheer voile weaves.

Styles and combinations of materials are interesting. Have a shirt-waist frock in wool with dark accents, or a velveteen one with a plaid jacket over it. Or have one made like a coat with bulk in the sleeve cut or wide revers. With a frock of sophisticated cut wear a demure little turned down-collar; vary it with wide collar and cuffs; have your collar or jabot of starched linen. Choose buttons, belts and scarves for originality, individuality.

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Dainty summer dance frocks have had their butterfly season. Now we turn to heavy satins, silks with a matt finish, velvets. The line is classic, unadorned or with Grecian draperies skilfully enhancing the line. Shoulders are still covered. Girdles adorn medieval gowns. Flowers may cluster at a neck-line.

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Coats retain shoulder width, usually obtained by sleeve cut as in the bellsleeve with two big tucks to accentuate width. Pull-through scarf collars are as smart as the elegant capes of fur or fur-cloth. Persian lamb is popular. Velveteen asserts itself on the collar of a tweed coat.

Swaggers may be longer or shorter, full length or two-thirds with a full, rippling back. They are smartest in plaids, the bolder the better. A smart ensemble consists of a flared tunic coat (seven-eighths) finished with fur-cloth and worn over a slim skirt. Notable also is the jacket with dolman sleeves.

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Suits are tailored and correct, or jacket and skirt seem to have come together by a happy chance, as with the flaring tunic coat with a collar of velveteen and a contrasting skirt. A tailored jacket may be topped off with a cape. Hip-length is usual for a jacket. Blouses for suits are mannish or frilly according to the wearer's type or mood.

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Hats are worn recklessly as in the case of the glengarry cap and the tyroleans, high - pointed and stuck through the crown with a bright feather. A wing or plume heightens a swathed toque. Halo or aureole hats adorn the young and beautiful.

Lounge-Sitting Room.

In a house, one room becomes the “social” room, the room where the members of the family foregather in the evenings to read, sew, chat, play cards. It is the room towards which friends of the household turn on entering. It is the most used room in the house, and it is usually the room which is never successfully labelled.

It is not a drawing-room, for there is a certain elegance, a restraint, a “cachet” attached to that name which is absent from this friendly centreroom of the home. It is not exactly a lounge. There is a certain hotel aura, a bird-of-passage, time-for-a-spot, newspaper-and-half-a-cigarette atmosphere about the word which is foreign to the intimacy of a home room. “Sitting room” is a drab description of a room where one is free to move, to romp, to laugh, to sing.

I have known a porch, a breakfast-room, a study, even a dining-room, fulfil the purposes of this eminently social room. A house is never a home unless there is one room of this description in it; but how much better a planned room caters for family life than does a room which haphazardly falls into the category. In compromise, failing to find a really suitable name, let us call it the lounge-sitting-room.

Lounge-sitting-rooms vary according to the family which owns them, and are in fact a reflection, to the discerning eye, of family life.

For the home with children I would suggest a room of brightness and comfort, but no elegance. A period room, with dangers of small feet stubbing the dainty legs of neo-Chippendale furniture would worry both children and parents.

Neither would I suggest the other extreme, a dingy utility room, with a dark dado to prevent marks of little hands showing on the walls. (It is easy to train children to respect wall surfaces).

I suggest pastel walls, deep cream, pale yellow, pink or blue—warm or cool according to the aspect of the room. The carpet should be plain or in a subdued all-over design in a much deeper colour than that used for the walls. This carpet will receive hard wear, and should be of good quality and not of too dainty a colouring. With deep cream or yellow walls, I suggest a deep blue carpet and pale gold curtains; with pink, a grey carpet and jade green curtains; with blue, a cool green carpet and curtains.

For the much-used room, loose-covers to tone with furnishings should be provided for chesterfield and chairs.

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The children will love their own stools or small chairs upholstered en suite. Cushions may be multi-coloured or all of one tone, according to the type of room, but they should be large and strong. A frilly cushion in such a room merits the fate it will soon meet.

Book-shelves are at home in this room, and a reading lamp or two. The main lighting should be suitable for reading or sewing. This is the room where the piano is placed if music is desired in the evenings. By the piano should be a cupboard or shelves for music. While the children are young, the toy-cupboard may be kept in this room.

As an evening draws towards its close and the family prepare to drift bedwards, a ritual should be gone through. Each person, before retiring, should glance round the room and collect and put away any personal belongings—toys, sewing, drawing materials, scattered newspapers, periodicals or sheet music. A friendly push to chairs out of place, a straightening of volumes on the book-shelf, a fluffing-up of cushions, and the room is ready to greet you on the morrow.

Child Behaviour.

The train slowed down at a refreshment station. The noisy crying of a small child, to which we had grown partly accustomed while the train was in motion, smote our ears anew. The mother rose, grasping child and handbag. An older boy, of about three years, demanded, “Get some for me! I'm coming too!”

“Stop grizzling!” scolded the mother. “You've been grizzling all the afternoon. You stay here, or I won't go.”

With the child still calling out after her, she stepped out of the carriage and moved along the platform.

I looked at her through the carriage window. Judging by her voice, I expected to see an older, weary, nerveworn woman; but she was a girl, young, strong, fresh-faced. The children, too, were well-built and healthy. No occasion here for whining, grizzling, lack of temper—even on a train.

I felt sorry for her. Her children will make her old unless she alters her tactics with them. Children, naturally copy the tone of voice of those about them. A pleasant-spoken mother has the pleasure of hearing her children speak in the same way. I myself remember the hurt bewilderment when, as a tiny child, my father first spoke to me in an impatient, angry tone. Even a small child will respond to a courteous request and resent a snappy order.

All children are very quick to learn which grown-ups mean what they say, be it spoken ever so quietly; they know too, and take advantage of, the person who, loud-voiced and badtempered though he or she may be, can be cajoled into altering a decision.

A good rule for parents is: “Never give an order to a child, unless you are determined that it is to be carried out. Always express that order courteously, if necessary giving reasons for it, without pandering to a child's method of procrastination—the interminable ‘Whys,’ before an order is obeyed.

Common Infectious Diseases

Before detailing the different diseases which come under this heading, let us refer to some of the terms so often used, but too little understood in this connection.

First of all, what is meant by the word “Infectious” and in what way does an infectious disease differ from any other disease?

When we speak of an infectious disease, we mean a disease which by contact or transfer of infected matter, can be transmitted from one person to another. Take, for example, a child suffering from measles. The patient can readily infect a healthy child through contact, the infection being carried by means of the discharges from nose, mouth, or throat.

On the other hand, a non-infectious disease is one which cannot be trànsmitted from one person to another, as for example, appendicitis.

Some of the infectious diseases are not of a serious or dangerous nature, provided proper care and attention are given to the patient, while others, such as Diptheria and Smallpox are of a serious nature. Certain of the serious infectious diseases come under the list of Notifiable Diseases, which means that all such cases must be notified by the doctor in attendance, to the Health authorities, who arrange for an inspector to investigate the conditions under which the patient is living, and where necessary, to control all contacts so that the risk of spread of the disease may be reduced to a minimum. The patient is isolated, or in other words is confined to certain quarters to which no one other than those necessary for the nursing of, and attendance upon the patient, is admitted. Contacts are controlled according to the nature of the case, in order to prevent them spreading any infection they may have contracted whilst in contact with the patient.

Our Health Inspectors act quietly, considerately and efficiently, and play an important part in the life and welfare of the community.

Now let us take it for granted that each disease is caused by the entry into the body of the germ or virus peculiar to that disease, and which will produce exactly the same disease in each body that it may infect.

Incubation Period. —From the moment of entry into the system until the patient manifests the first symptoms of illness is known as the Incubation Period.