Omaha daily bee., 1917-02-04

occupation with which the
busy society woman can occupy her
restless hands and her active brain.
Bridge clubs will be postponed and
parties will be implanted, SO that the
only amusement left for abstemious
ones will be the plying of the needle.
For the women who have been work
ing faithfully and long at the war
relief quarters in the Baird building
this will be no hardship. Truth to
tell, most of the women have come
to love the work.
We Americans are not extremely
good conversationalists according to
the law-giving John Cowper Powys,
but we do love to spout" Now the
real situation seems to be that we
do like to converse, but that we can
not bear to be idle while talking.
We must have something to busy
ourselves with. If we talk when we
are working, perhaps we do prolong
our remarks to oratorical length for
we must use all our store of energy.
We are at our best when our hands
are busy and we may talk as we
work. The activity at the Franco
Belgian society's headquarters may
be made pleasant by just such a stu
alton. The talk buzzes loudly when
the circles meet, but there is work
a-plenty, and the women do it with
will. The amount and perfection
of the sewing that they do is re-
markable. Mrs. o. c. Redick, who
with Mrs. Harold Clifford, is in
charge of packing and shipping the
articles made by the society, has re-
ceived letter from the Surgical
Dressing Headquarters, which re-
ceives their output, commenting
them upon their work and saying
that the Omaha society is one of the
very most careful and satisfactory
sources of supplies that they have.
At first the women made only one
OF two articles, but now they have
become ambitious and make almost
every kind of dressing for which they
have received patterns. This makes
the work more interesting. Every
thing that they make must be done
according to pattern and, after it is
made, must be packed and shipped
according to rule. The women who
sew at the war relief room jocularly
call it the Sweat shop" because they
put in so many hard and long hours
sewing there. In the ten weeks that
the various circles have been work.
ing they have completed 1900 pieces.
This is not surprising when you
realize that in about week and ten
days Mrs. George Jewett made 100
Nf he lot -.
pieces. Everything is snowy white
and practically everything is of new
material. Large packing boxes are
lined with oiled brown paper, then
covered with sold old linen table
cloths and pieces of soft material be-
fore shipment can be made. Not a
single scrap is wasted and all ravel-
ings are carefully saved. These scraps
and rawlings with little cotton fur
nish the filling for the soft, fluffy
pillows which arc sent for the use
of the wounded. These pillows are
bright, pretty things made of gay
colored cretonnes, which will lend a
bit of color to some dull hospital
ward. Friday Mrs. Redick and Mrs.
Clifford began the packing of eighty
seven SUCH pillows, edCH one dC-
companied by two white cases. An
other work is the fracture pillow
made of unbleached muslin and filled
with cotton. Round rings like small
life preservers are made from mar
row pieces OF material and are to be
used as rests for sore elbows and in
jured heels
Piles Of bath mittens and "chaus-
sons" (woolen cases for bandaged
feet pile the tables side by side with
rolled bandages, gauze congresses,
tampons and cup covers. These last
are squares of white muslin weighted
at each corner with bright blue, red,
yellow, pink or green beads on a
little circular string. 1t is said that
the men cherish the beads on the
covers of their medicine cups care
fully, for they are one of the few
bright spots in their cherries lives,
One could talk indefinitely about
the need which the women are work
ing to supply and the various SINH
lar causes which are crying for our
attention. Society people-Omaha
people who have wealth, are giving