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Southland Times, Issue 585, 31 October 1866, Page 3

Fre> t cii Womex op the Middle Class. — Tlie position of women of the classe lourgeoise, the middle class, is bizarre and anomalous. The husbands work, while their wives spend their lives dressing, ucdressing, and enjoying themselves to the best of their .ability. Their condition is far above that of their husbands, who are no better than helots, compelled to work, and do worse, to keep their better halves in a state of luxury, the daily increasing exigencies of which compel them to abandon the correct professions, no longer adequate to keep their families, and resort to desperate gambling disguised under the name of business. Woman, therefore, enjoys the convenient — if you will — but assuredly not honorable position of pretty animals kept for their pleasing appearauce to the eye, like pet birds, dogs, or monkeys, or worse. Now it does not require any extraordinary degree of capacity to find out that the eagerness of the male part of the community to enter into the bouds of wedlock is declining every day, and but for their sense of decorum and propriety, the " lovely creatures " might, like the Eomans in the ballet of the Sabines, inform the public by an expressive pantomine, that husbands are as scarce an article at present as wives in the early days of ancient Rome, or in the Australian colonies. Young ladies find even in this degenerate day admirers to tell them that a kind look from those beauteous eyes is worth all the treasures of Australia, they are ready to lay down their life for a smile, that to kiss the hem of their garment is a dream, the realisation of which the boldest mind does not venture to imagine, &c. &c. But let us suppose, for instance, that the maiden should take her sospirante at his word and say : " "Well, this golden hair, pearl-like teeth, and other treasures you have enumerated all are yours. Take them, and be happy." "What would the ingenuous say ? Something to this effect : " Minute Mademoiselle ! One instant, dearest. How much will Monsieur votre, papa give me if I consent to take unto myself all these charms, those treasures of felicity, and so forth?" And what is worse is, that this avarice and cupidity on the part of the lords of the creation, which once upon a time was, and very justly, considered shameful, is now-a-days perfectly reasonable, the modern education of girls in a middling condition of life giving them ideas of life and habits which, without a fortune, condemn them to an existence of misery and disappointment. — Alphonse Karr. Erench Fighting. — A fine and interesting example of the Erench style of boxing was recently given impromptu by two well-known members of a great club. One was tall and powerful, and the other short and weak; but owing to the superior style of art in Erench boxing, the latter was completely victorious, and made the big one roar with pain, by fixing his teeth resolutely in his foe, after slipping dexterously behind for that purpose. This was much applauded by the spectators, who considered it the coup de jarnac of modern times. " My bark is wrecked," as the dog remarked, when thrown overboard in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.