STRANGE PREDICAMENT OF A PRETTY LAUNDRESS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1740, 22 May 1888, Page 3

STRANGE PREDICAMENT OF A PRETTY LAUNDRESS.

The inhabitants of the famous town of Sevres, outside Paris, have (the Paris correspondent of the Daily Telegraph says) been thrown into fits of sensation owing to the disgraceful conduct of the local authorities, who persist in returning a young laundress, named dlle. Wilmin, as an ablebodied lad fit for service in the army. The blanchisseuse is one of the belles of Sevres, and even breaks the hearts of swains who dwell in, the adjacent township of Meudon, of Babelasian memory. It appears that Mdlle. “Wilmin’s progenitor was an unlettered person, who was also deaf. It is likewise to be presumed that the parish registrar or births, deaths, and marriages was hard of hearing, for when M. Wilmin pere announced that he had christened his daughter “ Henriette ” the Registrar wrote “ Henri,” and on passing ..-the papers to M. Wilmin for “ his mark ” that worthy did not notice the mistake. Hence the Belle Blanchisseuse of Sevres has all this time been eligible for the army. Strange to say, red tape is so insatiable and exacting that the number of the young woman was drawn in the conscription by the local mayor, and she was told off in due order to the second contingent of recruits. She will now very probably have to present herself before au assembly of generals,, prefects, mayors, and doctors at "Versailles, so as to give them due and incontestable proof that ■hebelongs not to the sterner sex, but to the softer sex. One of the most amusing circumstances iu the case is the anxiety shown by the local authorities to make their returns tally as much as possible with facts. “ Henri Wilmin, blanchisseuse, was of course a contradiction in terms, so the municipal scribes, with the zeal for precision characteristic of the plodding official mind, altered the word blanchisseuse to blanchisseur. Thus the demoiselle had no loophole to escape. It, is to.be hoped that she may be spared for one of her swains, and not ebliged to become a soldier in spite of herself. The Council of Revision, or “Recruiting Board,” in whose presence all conscripts have to appear, will of course set matters right. But they may effect a judicious compromise by calling upon the Belle Blanchiseuse to serve as a vivandiere. In any case life has been made very unpleasant for the “ Lovely Laundress,” and she is pestered by the banter and balivernes of all her iriends, neighbors, and associates.