A Chapter for Young Ladies.

Cromwell Argus, Volume V, Issue 219, 20 January 1874, Page 7

A Chapter for Young Ladies.

snyder’s washerwoman. j —- Sho is aged, but hits profited much by long years of experience, ami close observation of human nature. I am, I verily believe, the only man she admits into her confidence. She respects me, she says, because 1 am punctual in my payments. She occasionally hints that I was not as candid as I should have been on the subject of buttons,-which she in a weak moment consented to attend to without any additional charge. She had no idea that any man had such a down upon buttons as I had. - The last time she brought home my “things,” I, as a matter or civil enquiry, asked her how business was, when sho informed me it was quite impossible that it could be worse. ■' Paper had been the ruin of her trade, and caused a blight to fall on the home of many a washerwoman. Gentlemen wore paper collars, and paper false fronts, and paper cud's. Men of the present hour had nothing to wash, so to speak ; they bought socks for sixpence a pair, which they wore till they wouldn’t stand any moraj,wearing, and then they were thrown away for another sixpenn’orth of the same cheap and, unendurable article. In her like of business

she called this the age of paper. I attempted to console her by drawing her attention to the fact that the customers of her own sex at least didn’t wear clothing composed of paper material, to which she made answer with three emphatic nods of her head, and said “Didn’t they. If I thought they didn’t, that was all I knew about it, which was something less than precious little. What the men do send yon to be washed they generally paid for, and they don’t grind you down to the last farthing ; but here’s a young lady comes on a Thursday morning and she says to you, ‘ Mrs Lather, I want you to. call for my,dress, which mud be ready for Sunday ;’ and of course I call down, because-l’vegbt to keep my old man, who ain’t kept himself for the last ten years; and there’s the dress, with nine flounces, and two panniers, which has got more than half a day in it to wash as carefully as twenty-two yards of hook muslin requires, then it’s to dry,•■then it’s to starch, then its to iron. And when I say to the young lady, 1 1 can’t bring this back on Saturday afternoon under one-and-sixpence, Miss, because there’s such a lot of doing up in it,’ she goes on as only women do before one another, and never before men, except their husbands, which of course being the case is of no consequence. She says, that ohepindsixpence is outrageous, that oue-and-three pence would be ah imposition ; but that as it must-be ready by Sunday, she will give rut mre-and-threeponce. And, of course, I have to take it, and there I’ am working away at those, •.flounces, and panniers, and the body, until it gets so stiff with starch and flat irons that it:would almost stand by itself.” . '.Here,, ,my dear -old .laundry woman suddenly'dropped the pathetic, a'nd burst out into a fit of laughter. - She apologised.,'but 'said she couldn’t help. it. ’‘Because look here, Mr Snyder, when I am a-walking down Queen-street, on the Sunday afternoon don’! 1 1 see that young lady gallivanting wit! a young swell, who looks to be as proud o: I her as if she was a blood relation of Queer I Victoria and the rest of the royal family, am I he was'shortly going to be related to her bi

marriage. - Don’t■!.feel an, inclination lo go up to him .and say, ‘that’s a lovely, and beautiful dress that,lady, in company with yihi’s got j on., and is. lit almost for the angels to carry away to be cub into rainbows ; but if you could only get hold of a good spirit-rapper | and get him to give you a half-crown’s worth j of information as to what the young lady has j got under the dress, it might,-in the course | of time, alter your feelings towards her. Her | dress is beautiful for a cheap material, so la her hat, and her boots ain’t bad, but if the spirit-rapper would only inform you about the quality and whiteness' 'of 1 - her stays, and the real value-of hey-under’pare!, you would come to find out that all she has got wouldn’t roach a quarter of the value of the two locks of artificial hair she has fastened on to the back of her head !’ “ Look, hero," Mi’ Snyder, T often hear people say how do these young ladies manage to get so ranch finery. Those as ask the question don’t know like the likes of me. It’s a painted sepelkur outside they are, and a dreadful lot of makeshifts underneath. Their mothers starve themselves upon boiled necks of mutton and no capers to keep them going in outside finery. There’s a deal o’

talk about'woman’s love and tenderness, and about man’s hardness, which, ain’t a bit true. It’s all the other way. Men have got hearts for the most part of them, but, bless you, the smallness of some women’s hearts is redooced to the very lowest pitch, if yon only knew it as I do. Yon see, Mr Snyder, I don’t altogether live by washing and mending. Sometimes I go out to deaths ami burials ; and when one of these happens to he a man, j the first thing as always enters the mind of i his widow, is what sort of mourning will host suit her figure and complexion, and how I many plates'the coffin should have,'and how i the corpse,can be made to look to the best 1 advantage,, like if it was a dead Doo’k or a Lord. And of course she cries a good deal, and takes on dreadfully ; but she never cries half so much or takes on half so dreadfully as when people ate about her, especially when they are grand people. But. if it is a wife an has died, the man is ({into different. He says to me very likely, ‘Ho what you think is right and proper, my good woman. Have everything decent.’ And he goes about bewildered like, and smokes a great deal; but I believe that man thinks more about his wife in a kindly-hearted way than the wife would ‘have thought about him, for she was always

awfully mean in the mattbi’’'of 'tfie'\vaslung bill, arid made him wear his shirts longer than she did her own-things.” , “ Heaven save ns, and yon in particular, Mr Snyder, and it’s thanking you I’ll be for that three-and-ninopenco for a fortnight’s washing, due and owing, as my old man used to say, when ho was a bailiff as served summonses, and hoping-that if you aver do such S a thing in your life as holy wedlock you ..will [sec that your wife don’t-want twenty-two j yards of book muslin, with nine flounces and ! panthers, starched and ironed, and carried I homo for oue-and-threepence,* and call day •after to-morrow for the money.”—“Snyder,” jin the Auckland Herald.