Waterbury evening Democrat., 1890-01-09
LAST FAD OF THE DAY.
Now We Are Interested in Any
 thing Egyptian.
Procession of NatIoDs Across the ssoia; staEe-we Were Japanese, Then Rus sian, Now We Wear sca1ebs and
 Talk of Isis and the Pyra lnlds.

sian, Now We Wear sca1ebs and
 Talk of Isis and the Pyramids.
 coPYRIaHr 1889
 I called on little woman few days ago who was reduced to a state border ing on despair over the guant and mol ancholy leanness of her pocketbook, depleted first by holiday spe ndings and second by the purchase of an Egyptian tea gown.
 ''Oh, but it's beauty" she replied, half exultant and half ashamed, lon the exact model of an 'abaya.' Wait; you shall 500 mo put it on.'
 My friend is plump, brown creature with liquid black eyes, and when ten minutes later she emerged from her dressing room might easily have mis- taken her for the occupant of a wealthy harem, her soft brown silk robe with it's long and flowing sleeves and yoke embroidered in silver lending itself readily to this illusion. There was a petticoat of striped Syrian silk in rose color and silver and wide sash in the same hues. The outer gown was slashed at the sides to show brilliant lining of Egyptian red, and over the shoulders hung veil of brown gauge also embroidered with silver. On her feet she had rose pink velvet slippers em broidered with silver and seed pearls and worn over flesh-colored silk stock ings, the next thing to none. My friend, had not previously noticed, had cut her thick hair straight across her forehead, and while she chatted she bound it with brow-pendant in gold repoussee. which might have been worn 5000 years ago by Pharoah's g daughter, and clasped about her throat necklace of carnelian and silver seem ingly of antique pattern.
 don't show thts," she said, touch ing the brow pendant, outside my own chamber, but by the time give my 4 o'clocks in February I expect to be able i to appear in it in the drawing-room, perhaps even with my hair down in any number of little tails as Cleopatra wore hers, every plait fastened with little tag of silver.
 ''Of course you know that to be Egyp- tian is the latest fashion"
 This procession of the nations across the social stage is . very intsrosting comedy. It may end when we have gone the rounds of other peoples in our costuming ourselves as Fiji Islandsnp. Two years ago, in the heyday of ths Mikado, to be Japanese was the height of our ambition. Last winter, with the advent of Verestchagin and his pie lures, we furnished with bearskins and 1 struggled with the sRmovar. This winter when it reached our ears tn at the wife of the Chinese minister was ? noble lady we began to use at once in our boudoirs the musical Chinese gongs; but on second thoughts. finding that servants could not hear them, we re- stored the electric buttons, fell at the , fcet of Miss Edwards-or is it only a piece of Napoleon worship, passing 1 from adoration of the Empir, gown to remembrance of the feats of the Elm. press's husband - and pulled out ot 1 bureau drawers all the scarabs brought home by travellers who have wintered on the Nile.
 1 Openwork Hindu cloths and beautiful soft tints of mulberry, sienna brown, peach and sea-green, with combinations of white and amber. gray and blue, gray and red are seen in the stuffs which luxurious women arc beginning to cove from the Cairo bazaars There is one woman who receives her intimates over a cup of coffeo in her bedroom of a morning clad in an abaya Of maize color over creamy white with browI stripes nearly q foot wide, the garmen being, so madame assures her callers, genuine importation in which an Egyp tian lady might we'll have sat astrid' her donkey, its ample folds filling witt the wind, while her servant sabre il hand, marched behind.
 In "A Scrap of Paper," when MT Kendall as "Col. Blake" exhibits tn curious shell girdle which he declare to be not the necklace of Timbucto belle but her gown the ladies are prop erly mortified. but very tall young VIC man, whose figure is of the Kathry,
 Kidder or Bernhardt order, wore at
 recent "at homo" hip girdle of simi lar design made of deep fringe of
 dark soft leather, ornamented wit
 beads and purchased by her brothe
 from a blue-black Nubian woman belo,
 the First Cataract, not with any notio
 of it's adorning a modorn Yankee girl
 person, though it fulfils that office nc
 ineffectively.
 But Egyptian whims in dress are tn
 least important step of the new de
 parture. It is in jewelry and decors tion that the fever works strongly
 more especially since the craze bein
 in it's infancy and confined as yet to tn
 elect, the bronze and porcelain gods the crocodile paperweights, tho strang bird-shaped bottles, antiques, init, tions of antiques and frank moder
 creations are exhibited to admirin groups when the tea Is hot at in th afternoon only on tie bric-a-brac table
 of those whose friends have gazed 0 the sphynx and the pyramids. Tn cream will be oh by the time thes things find their way into tho steres Che of the nrst women m the city l yield to Egyptian seductiens was 2 elderly lady, who is the very opposit of a traveller, being able to count c . the fingers of one hand the times sh