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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume II, Issue 133, 10 June 1867, Page 3

Barmaids. — The service at the bar has latterly the appearance of a philanthropic recreation. The young ladies engaged in it smile a perpetual smile, and accept twopence with a scarcely conscious recognition of the till. Those at railway stations are of an order even above smiling. Serene in the consciousness of frizzled hair, and feeling that you are more or less at their mercy in reference to the train, they help you with deliberation which you could appreciate at any other moment. The railway barmaid is fearfully and wonderfully curled. How does she do it? How does she go to bed with it? Does she charge the directors for the labor spent over it, or is their barber retained on the line, and are his expenses under the several heads taken out of the travellers in the soup ? .... At times she is lucky enough to entangle the landlord and is then elevated to the dignity of wife, if that post is vacant; occasionally a waiter falls a victim to her airs, and lays his napkin at her feet; but the grand hit within her reach is to lay a customer by the heels. In London especially, there are a number of noodles without sufficient taste or sense for proper female society, and yet with undefined notion of dangling which brings them to stare at women who can be stared at with impunity, and to whom they can chatter without being laughed at or frowned into silence. Ladies have a faculty — evenwithout knowing it — a special gift of frightening one of these things to the verge of an imbecile confession of bashfulness. The noisiest bar roistern, the most accomplished chaffer at the counter, is generally dumb when brought face to face with a modest woman. Does it ever occur to him that he positively has to pay for being tolerated, and that he is regarded by his listeners as a mere "typical development" of something to drink. — London Review.^

Of what use are forms?" exclaimed a petulant legislator to Dr. Franklin; "you cannot deny that they are often mere empty things !"— " Well, my friend, and so are barrels, but nevertheless they have their uses, " quietly replied the doctor.