WOMEN AND SALES THROUGH THE AGES

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 151, 14 July 1937, Page 11

WOMEN AND SALES THROUGH THE AGES

Satirists for several centuries have made fuu of .the feminine aquisition of various kinds of goods at a sale or auction, which Was never more popular than it is to-day. In tlje eighteenth centufy magazines there are various letters written by anxious liusbands seeking some method of restraining their- better lialves from frequenting auctions and returning loaded with all hinds of rubbish, simply because "it might come in useful, and it was such a b'argain." One suffering husband describes the roomfuls of fumiture, masses of houseliold linen, and hams and cheeses that his wife had bought; things she could never use, but they were to be sold cheap and she could not miss the opportunity of making a bargain. Nobody suggested a remedy for this particular kind of extravagance, and we may suppose that in a very modified form it still exists among us to-day, as Theophilns Swift, an Irish eighteenth-een-tury writer, puts it: Nod's thrifty spouse, her taste to please With rival dames at auctions vies; Is charm'd with everything she sees, And everything she sees she buys. Ned feels at every sale enchanted, Such yaried waresl so wisely bought! Bought because they may be wanted, Wanted because they may be bought.