LADIES’ EXPRESS.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume III, Issue 239, 16 January 1875, Page 2

LADIES’ EXPRESS.

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

o CREMATION. (the dying maiden’s farewell to her LOVER.) Then the night wore on, and we knew the worst, That the end of it all was nigh ; Three doctors they had from the very first — And what could one do but die ? “ Oh, William 1” she cried, “ strew no blossoms of spring, Eor the now ‘ appratus’ may rust; But say that a handful of shavings you’ll bring, And linger to see me combust. “ Oh promise me, lore, by the fire-hole you’ll watch, And when mourners and stokers convene, You will see that they light me some solemn, slow match. And warn them against kerosene. ”It would cheer me to know, ere these rude breezes waft My essences far to the pole, That one whom I love will look to the draught, And have a fond eye on the coal. “ Then promise me, love, —and her voice fainter grew—- “ While this body of mine calcifies, “ You will stand just as near as you can to the flue, And gaze while my gases arise. “ Eor Thompson—Sir Henry—has found out a way (Of his ‘ process’ you’ve surely heard tell), And you burn like a parlour-inatch gently away, Nor even offend by a smell. “ So none of the dainty need sniff in disdain, When my carbon floats up Io the sky; And I’m sure, love, that you will never complain, Though an ash should blow into yonr eye. “ Now promise me, love”—and she murmured low—- “ When the calcification is o’er, You will sit by my grave iu the twilight glow— I mean, by my furnace-door.

“Yes, promise me, love, while the seasons revolve On their noiseless axles, the years, You will visit the kiln where you sew me, ‘ resolve,’ And leuch my pale ashes with tears.”

A MODEL PEASANT WOMAN. Annie Smith is a type of a class of women found in America —and in some parts of England—but no where else. She is wife of Cyrus Smith, a small squatter, living near Omaha, Misssouri, in a log hut, on a patch of forest land, which he has wrung from nature by the toil of his hand and the sweat of his brow. In station she is a little above a peasant; in feeling she is little below a lady. She has a thousand tasks to perform ; to light her fires ; to wash and dress her children, to scrub her floor, to feed her pigs and fowls, to milk her cows, to fetch in herbs and fruits, to dress and cook the dinners, to scour and polish her pailsand pans, to churn her butter aud press her cheese, to make and mend the clothes; but she laughs and sings through these daily toils with such a gay humour, such a perfect taste, such an easy compliance, that her work seems like pleasure and her care like pastime. She is neatly dressed; beyond, as an Englishman might think, her station in life, were it not that she wears her clothes with a perfect grace. Her hands feel soft, as though they were cased all day in kid. Her manner is easy, her countenance bright. Her idiom, being that of her class, amuses a stranger by its unconscious sauciness of tone. But her voice is sweet and low, as becomes her sex when her sex is at its best. Oddities of expression you will hear from her lips, profanities, never. Dirt is her enemy; and her sense of decency keeps the whole homestead clean. She rises with the sun, oftentimes before the sun ; her beds are spotless, her curtains and hangings like fallen snow. A Sicilian crib, with sheets unwashed for a year, is a thing beyond her immagination to conceive. No herding with the kine, no sleeping in the stable, so common in France, in Italy, in Spain, is ever allowed to her son, to her servant by Annie Smith. A Kentish barn in hoptime, a Caithness bothy iu hay-time, would appear in her eyes to be the abomination of abominations. Her chicks, her pigs, her cattle, are all penned up in their roosts, their styes, their sheds. A Munster peasant puts his pig under the bed, a Navarrese muleteer yokes his team in the house, an Epirote herdsman feeds his goats in the ingle, and an Egyptian fellah takes his donkey into his room. But these dirty and indecent habits of the poor people in our lazy Old World, are not only unknown but incomprehensible to American women of the grade of Annie Smith. Another thing about her takes the eye; the quality of her every day attire. In England, our female rustics, from the habit of going to Church on Sundays, have caught the custom of dressing themselves in better clothes on one day of the week than on the other six days. They have, in faet, their Sunday gowns, compared with which their ordinary wear is nothing bnt mops and rags. The Suffolk farmer’s wife, whom you see coming out of Church to-day, her face bright with soap, her bonnet gay with ribbon, has no objection to be seen by you again to-morrow grimy with dirt and arrayed in patches. Not so in America, where Annie thinks it would be in bad taste for her to dress gaudily one day, and shabbily six days. True economy, she says, makes her dress herself cleanly and nattily, even when the materials of her gown are poor. One good suit is cheaper than two suits, though oue of them may be coarse in texture and mean in make. Good dressing is a habit of the mind, not a question of the purse. Any woman with a needle in her hand may be tidily dressed. All round Smith’s holding lies a colony of bachelors ; Annie’s house is a pleasant centre for the young; and as bachelors are apt to grow untidy in their ranches, she finds it pleasant fun to suggest without words the blessings which accrue to a man who is lucky enough to procure a good wife.— New America, by IE Hepworlh Dixon.

A Punster challenged a sick man’s vote at a city eleelion, on the ground that he was an ill-legal voter,

Saw-dust Brandy.— We have heard (says the Medical Press and Circular) 4 of butter made from the Thames niud, which extraordinary discovery existed only in the muddled braiu of some “knowing one of “ high class” port and sherry, whose composition was as much allied to grapejuice as the moon to green cheese, and which filthy decoction is unfortunately as common in the British market as real grape wine. But what will our readers think of the latest discovery reported in an American contemporary, the Clinic — saw dust brandy, which a German chemist is said, upon good authority, to have produced. We are friends to the temperance movement, says the editor and want it to succeed ; but what chance will it have when a man can take a ripsaw and get drunk with a fence rail? What is the use of a jirohibitory liquor law if a man is able to get the ileliiium tremens by drinkingthe legs of the kitchen chairs? You may shut an inebriate out of a gin shop and keep him away from taverns ; but if he can become uproarious on boiled saw-dust and dessicated sills, any effort at reform must be a failure. It will be wise, therefore, if temperance societies will butcher the German chemist before he goes any further. His recipe ought not to be made public. He should be stuffed with distilled boards until he perishes with mania a potu.