BARMAIDS.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 110, 17 March 1870, Page 6

BARMAIDS.

The substitution of women, for men as servants in our taverns is a reform of comparatively recent date. Tas ancient " drawer" has no prototype at the present day. The potboy of the period is altogether an inferior creature, who discloses no possibility of literary or romantic interest. He is amere subordinate, and renders suit and service to those peculiar products of the age which have developed in barmaids. We do not refer to the maids of the inns who may linger at country" hotels and taverns. As a rule, indeed they have lost the sweet flavour of rusticity and those characteristics of mild flirtation which were once the theme even of poets. They are fast becoming: like their town sisters, and in many cases only serve an apprenticeship, soas to speak, in the provinces, before adventuring upon the metropolitan stage of their career as barmaids. It is in London, however, and at the railway refreshment stations, that the barmaid" of this paper is to be seen in full bloom. The young ladies who officiate at a West-end restaurant are generally at the top of their profession. They study the costumes and graces of thecalling with a certain feeling which might fairly be termed artistic. The hair is fearfully and wonderfully made ; the complexions are delicately perfumed,- the figure is designed with a knowledge of the anatomical eccentricities of fashion, which could only beacquired by constant study. Not that the West-end barmaid always requires the assistance of pads, paints, and powder. Sometimes, though very seldom, she leaves the effect to nature. We must remember that she, like art actress, is exposed to the glare of strong direct lights, and that she is worse off in one respect than the actress, inasmuch as she is vieAved at much closer quarters. The two conditions impose on her a necessity for cosmetics, aud a greater secretive faculty for the use of them. She manages, on the whole, toproduce a most agreeable picture. Occasionally she dresses en suite with her associates, and the group (say a trio) will stand the most critical inspection on all points. Her life is a wearisome one enough. She must listen tothe most stupid compliments, and accept them as a part of the busiuessfor which she is paid. Her working hours are long, and at night particularly arduous. She is usually, despite the supposed demoralising inflence of frizzled hair, and the rest of it, an honest, hardworking girl, ratber ignorant, and rather silly, though not perhaps half so much a fool as the man of little fashion who spends his time about the place with a view to an ignoble conquest. Another and quite a different description of personage is tlie fast, barmaid of the Haymarket and WB-. music-hall. She is not particular to a shade in the manipulation of the hare's foot, and lays on the red and white and the eyebrow pigment with the audacity of a scene painter. Her manner is coarse and slangy. She expects to be invited to drink wine on being looked at. Words seem to have lost their signification to her, as shenever winces at what floats in the way of talk, with the vile tobacco of trio place at which she presides. Still she must possess a wonderful temper. The class of snobs or cads who frequent fast bars must be the most irritating set of idiots on the face of the earth. Yet the barmaid ever greets them with, a smile so broad and generous that you expect it to crackle the beautifyingenamelling of her visage. Her great object is to get one of these fellows to order champagne. On each bottle of this stuff disposed of she has a percentage. She terms it " fizz," and will pretend to fall into ecstasies at the prospect of a glass of the chemical essence of gooseberry sweetened up with tartaric acid and suo;ar of lead. You can perceive her landlord with diamond rings sitting on a velvet sofa, and enjoying the stratagems of the staff, while his wife, on the opposite side, exhibits the jewellery of a duchess on her fat fingers, and nods sleepily over an eleemosynary claret cup supplied at the instance of a semi-drunk dandy. — " St. James's Magazine."

A correspondent of a Calcutta paper, remarks the Bombay " Gazette," makes a curious suggestion to tobaccosmokers. Alluding to the alleged discovery, by a Parisian chemist, that watercress is a perfect antidote to nicotine, he says :—": — " It lately entered into my head to try how some of it dried would smoke. To my great satisfaction I found that when put into my pipe, after a couple of days' drying in the sun, it had all the flavour of the best • cavendish without the treacle, and it was even stronger than cavendish. Here, then, is a perfect substitute for tobacco, without the deleterious and deadly poison so freely contained in. the latter ; and it is at the same time cheaper. Watercre3s,with its' fine stalks and leaves, when dried, requires no cutting to fit it for the pipe ; and while a pound of cut tobacco ranges from Es.2 to Rs.4, here we have an article, a rupee's worth of " which, when dried, would weigh moro than a couple of pounds." A working shoemaker, Mr. Jeremiah Thomas, has been brought forward tc* contest a vacancy in one of the municipal wards in Birmingham. He is supported by the mass of woi'kmen voters,, and his candidature is said to have som.& prospect q(£-being successful.