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Colonist, Volume III, Issue 241, 10 February 1860, Page 2

The Anti-Steel-Hoop-and-Unneces-sary-and- Unbeseeming- AmplificationSociety.—The object of the association is to pledge all gentlemen-at-arms to discontinue, condemn, repel, resist, and avoid the very appearance of an exaggerated crinoline. As the subjoined paragraph will prove, Miss Martineau will be likely to support this, or any similar society of "hnsbands, fathers, or brothers," whose sufferings have at last reached the stage where longer endurance would reflect upon their manliness. They are sworn, therefore, against all " haycocks" and "Dutch tumblers," which it will at all events be confessed not quite the thing to introduce into church. Here is Miss Martineau's Sermon on the greatest abuse of the Age, in Once a Week: she begins—strongr minded woman!—-by calling a spade a spade:—" Do the petticoats of our time serve as anything but a mask to the human form—a perversion of human proportions? A woman on a sofa looks like a child popping up from a haycock. A girl in the dance looks like a Dutch tumbler that was a favorite toy in my infancy. The fit is so the reverse of accurate as to be like a silly hoax—a masquerade without wit; while, at the same time, it is not an easy fit. The prodigious weight of the modern petticoat, and the difficulty of getting it all into the waistband, c reates a necessity for compressing and loading the waist in a manner most injurious to health. Under a rational method of dress the waist should suffer neither weight nor pressure—nothing more than the girdle which brings the garment into form and folds. As to the convenience of the hooped skirts, only ask the women themselves, who are always in danger from fire, or wind, or water, or carriage-wheels, or rails, or pails, or nails, or, in short, everything they encounter. Ask the husbands, fathers, or brothers, and hear how they like being cut with the steel frame when they enter a gate with a lady, or being driven into the comer of the pew at church, or to the outside of the coach, for want of room."

The Dandy's Troubles in Connemara. —At morn lazily turning in his bed to ring for valet or waiter, how shall his superb dignity be perturbed to fiud that there exists no , belle alliance between the upper and lower house, and that his highness must go to the stair-top, and hallo for whatever his emergencies require. No marble bath awaits him now, with its tepidly congenial joys; but there stands at his door a little tub, which he contemplates as ruefully as the stork of the fable the shallow dish of the fox, and which just contains a sufficiency of water to perplex a rat of irresolute mind whether he should walk or swim. The accommodation is, in fact, so limited, that Frank, in attempting some daring flight of ablution, broke his tiny bath to pieces, and away streamed the water to announce the fact down stairs. Up came the astonished waiter, and surveying the wreck with a sorrowful countenance exclaimed, « By the powers your onner, its Meary's looking-glass you've been and ruinated intirely!—and how will she keep herself nate and daysint —subsequently explaining to us, that this vessel, filled with clear spring water, had served, prior to its dissolution, as the mirror ofthe pretty housemaid. I had my doubts as to the tale of a tub; but Frank,* at all events thought it his duty to have an interview with the bereaved Meary, and returned therefrotn with one of his ears considerably enriched in coloring. I strongly recommend the tourist to make himself a 0.8., by procuring a portable bath, of waterproof material, such as is now made for travellers. He will then have no difficulty to contend with, beyond a slight indisposition on the part ofthe waiters to supply him liberally with the element required. " Bedad," said one of them to me, "if the rain's to be presarved, and carried up stairs, and trated in this fashion, I'm thinking it 'ill get so mighty fond of your attintions, that it 'ill never lave us at all, at all! Again, the fine gentleman may be disconcerted to find that windows very generally decline to be opened, or, being open, prefer to keep so, except in case of his looking out of them, when they, are down upon his neck like a guillotine. His look-ing-glass, too, just as it is brought to a convenient focus, may perhaps, dash madly round, as though urged by an anxiety, which it could not repress, to assure in white chalk, that ifc really cost three and sixpence I— An Oxonian's Twin Ireland.