Delaware gazette and state journal. (Wilmington, Del.) 1883-1902, 1897-08-19
cURTosIrIEs IN GLASS.


Made of Threads spun as Delicate and Airy
as the Finest Gauze.
When the story of Cinderella was first
translated into our language and the
slippers of vair, or fur, became slippers
OF verre, or glass, the translator would
have been amazed tojknow that sliprera
OF glass were not fairy impoesibility,
according to a writer in Harper's
Bazar But it is not great while
since in this country patent was
taken out upon glass slippers. That ia
really not extraordinary, since. in fact,
the uses to which glass is now put are
almost innumerable. Theirs was exhib-
tied, some years ago, a bonnet made OF
glass, with all its trimmings and fur
bellows, the flowers as natural as life,
the ribbons with the luster OF satin;
and since then an actress added to her
wardrobe the splendors Of a dress
woven all of spun glass. The glass
thread is drawn out to fineness that
makes it perfectly pliable and elastic,
il has no liability of breaking, and 1t
can be almost as delicate and as airy az
the finest gauze, and can be given any
color. How magnificent might not q
dress he woven of iridescent glass, the
wearer fairly wreathed and garmented
in cloud of luminous rainbows 1t
is not liekly, however. that this fabu.
lousy splendid material will ever be 30
cheap that such dresses would be COM
mon enough to go out OF fashion. But
the Imagination fails in the eudeavor
to conjure before it anything more re.
splendent; no empress nor oriental
beauty in history or romance; no god
desses visiting mankind, not Juno in
her immemorial toilet, was ever clad in
anything SO shining and so gorgeous as
that dress of spun glass might be. with
all its play of light and color.
1t in in curious contrast to this that
another object has been made of glass
"a coffin, whose inventor claims for it
indestructibility. OF course, it is cop
maratively indestructible, but when We
see the glass tear bottles in any collec-
tion of antiques. where decay has dis
integrated the once pure white trans.
parent glass and rendered it mass of
splendid color, ono can imagine the in
uongruous appearance of that article
after some dozen centuries, holding its
dead wrapped now in sheet Of fame,
and now as if in the sapphire of this
heart of tho sky. 1t is not likely that
glass collins will ever be largely in de.
mand but If the satin smooth and shin
ing ribbons should ever be easily had
and the lustrous flowers, and the spun
glass web, how eagerly the young and
gay would make them their own! 10
be sure. they might be regarded as
rather dazzling, and they might be
used only for occasions of extraordinary
spendor, but it might be a comfort TO
those who look for magniiicence and
shall have exhausted the beauties of
elk and satin, samite and cloth OF gold
to know that they have always SO
slightly material to fall back upon for
scenic effects.
| Meanwhile the more modest of US
may content ourselves with the imita-
tions of gems, wonderful and not to be
detected, that are now made OF glass
and with strings of the lovely Venetian
beads where a glass bubble coated
within by solution of certain fish
scales has the many tinted softness of
the pearl, and all of it's beauty, except
| the romance and poetry and pathos OF
the sea which clings to the real thing.
| The poet. talking about the fairy tales
of science. may we'll have had some OF
these simple wonders in his fancy, for
while bit OF quartz 10 simple and
primitive substance, ii is as great
wonder as some more important things
that such flinty stuff can be transformed
| into something as light as the haze
| that floats in the air.