LADIES' EXPRESS.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume II, Issue 186, 11 July 1874, Page 2

LADIES' EXPRESS.

[The Editor will be glad to give insertion to any local contributions from his lady friends that may be considered interesting in the family circle, or to the sex generally.]

TO THE LADIES. Round fob Music. (original.) Fill high 1 Fill high the sparkling bowl That cheers the heart, llat thrills the soul; With rich libations at their shrine, We pledge Eve’s daughters fair divine, While freely flow the vine's bright tears, We wish them many happy years. In goblets, rippling to their brims, Like liquid genu, the nectar swims ; But yet our hearts are full os they— Oh 1 there the fair exert their sway. The vine's rich sweets enraptured smile, As quaff we our fond toast the while. F.JJP. Gisborne, July 8,1874.

“ Now, I am a Government clerk, with two hundred a year, and yet my wife expects me to dress her in first-class style. What would you advise me to do —-leave her?” Those Words I unintentionally overheard in a public conveyance. I went home, pondering them over. “ Leave her ?” Were you not to blame, sir, in selecting n foolish, frivolous wife, and expecting her to confine her desire*, as a sensible woman ought and would, i within the limits of your small salary P Have you, yourself, no “ first-class ’’ expenses, in tin way of trips, dinners, and cigars, which it might be well for you to consider while talking to her of retrenchment ? Did it ever occur to you that under all that frivolity, which you admire in the maid, but deplore and condemn in the wife, there may be, after all, enough of the true woman to appreciate and sympathize with a kind, loving statemeat of the case, in its parental as well as marital relations ? Did it ever occur to you that if you require no more from her in the way of self-denial than you are willing to endure yonrself—in short, if you were just in this matter, as all husbands are not—it might bring a pair of loving arms about your neck, that would be a talisman amid future toil, and a pledge of co-operation in it, that would give wings to effort? And should it not be so immediately—should you encounter tears and frowns—would you not do well to remember the hundreds of wives of dissipated husbands, who through the length and breadth of the land are thinking—not of “leaving" them, but how, day by day, they shall more patiently bear their burden, toiling with tneir own feeble hands, in a woman's restricted sphere of effort, to make up their deficiencies, closing their ears resolutely to any recital of a husband’s failings, nor asking advice of aught save their own faithful, wifely hearts ? What course shall they pursue ? And to all young men, whether clerks or otherwise, we would say, if you marry a humming-bird don’t expect that marriage will incontinently convert it into an owl; and if you have caught it, and caged it, without thought of consequence don’t, like a coward, shrink from your self-assumed responsibility, and turn it loose in a dark wood to be devoured by the first vulture or beast of prey.— Fanny Fbbn. An anonymous contributor writes to us to say that he thinks the “ improvers ” at present so fashionable amongst ladie* are “ fictions based upon stern realities,” Lucky for said contributor that he did not send us his name.— Ed. 8.