A CHAPTER FOR YOUNG LADTES

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 321, 14 January 1874, Page 3

A CHAPTER FOR YOUNG LADTES

snyder's washerwoman.

She is aged, but has profited much by long years of experience and close observation of human nature. I am, as I verily believe, the only man she admits into her confidence. She respects me. she says, because 1 am punctual in my payments. She occasionally hints that I was not as candid as I should have been on the subje?t of buttons, which she in a weak moment had consented to attend to without any additional charge. She had no idea that any man had such a down on buttons as I and.

The last time sh^ brought home my '.'things," T, as a matter of civil enquiry, asked her how business was, when she informed me that it was quite impossible it could be worse. Paper had been the ruin of her trade, and had cau3e r l a blight to fall on the home of many a washerwoman. Gentlemen wore paper collars, and paper false fronts, and paper cuffs. Men of the present hour had nothing to wash, so to speak, they bought socks for sixpence per pair, which they wore till they wouldn't stand any more wearing, and then they were thrown away for another sixpenn'oth of the same cheap aad unendurable article. In her line of business

she called this the age of paper. I attempted to console her by drawing her attention to the fact that the customers of her own sex at least didn't wear clothing composed of paper material, to which she made answer with three emphatic nods of her head, and said " Didn't they. If I thought they didn't that was all I knew about it, "which was something less than precious little. What the men do send you to be washed they generally paid for, and they don't grind you down to the last farthing ; but here's a young lady comes on a Thursday morning and she says to you, 'Mrs Lathers, I want you to call for my dress, which must be ready for Sunday ;' and of course I call down, because 1 'ye got to keep my old man, who ain't kept himself for the last ten years ; and there's the dress, with nine flounces and two panniers, which has got more than half a day in it to wash as carefully as twenty-two yards of book muslin requires, then it is to dry, then it is to starch, then it's to iron. And when I say to the young lady, ' I can't bring this back on Saturday afternoon under one-and-sixpence Miss, because there's such a lot of doing tip in it,' she goes on as women only do before one another, and never before men, excepting their husbands, which of course being the case is of no consequence. She says that one-aud-sixpence is outrageous, that one-and-threepence would be au imposition ; but that as it umet be ready for Sunday, she will give me one-and-three-penee. And, of course, I have to take it, aud there I am a working away at those flounces, and panniers, and the body until it is so stiff with starch and flat irons that it would almost stand by itself. Here my dear old laundry woman suddenly dropped the pathetic and burst out into a fit of laughter. She apologised, but said she couldn't help it. ," Because look here," Mr. Snyder, " when I am a walking down Queenstreet on the Sunday afternoon don't I see that young lady gallivanting with a swell who looks to be as proud of her as if she was a blood relation of Queen Victoria and the rest of the royal family, and ho was shortly going to be related to her by marriage. Don't I feel an inclination to go up to him and say 'that's a lovely and beautiful dress that lady in company with you's got on, and is fit almost for the angels to carry away to be cut into rainbows ; but if you would only get hold of a good spirit-rapper and ask him to give you half-a-crown's worth of information as to what the lady has got under that dress, it might, in the course of time, alter the tone of your feelings towards her. Her drees is beautiful for a cheap material, bo is her hat, and her boots ain't bad, but if the spirit-rapper would only inform you about the quality aud whiteness of her stays, and the real value of her under'parel, you would come to find out that all she has got wouldn't reach a quarter of the value of the two looks of artificial hair she has fastened_on to tke back of her ■ head !"

"Look here, Mr. Suyder, I often hear people say how do these young ladies manage to get so much finery. Those as ask the question don't know like the likes of me. It's a painted sepelkur outside thej r are, and a dreadful lot of makeshifts underneath. Their mothers starve themselves upon boiled necks of mutton and no caper.? to keep them going in outside finery. There's a deal o' talk about woman's love and tenderness, and about men's hardness, which ain't a bit true. It's all the other way. Men have got hearts for the most part of them, but, bless you, the smallness of some women's hearts is redooced to the very lowest pitch, if you only knew it as I do. You see, Mr. Snyder, I don't altogether live by washing and mending* Sometimes I go out to deaths and burials ; J 'and when oneof these happens to beaman, the first thing as always enters the mind of his widow** is what sort of mourning .will best suit her figure and complexion, and how many plates the coffin shoidd have, and how the corpse can be made to look to the best advantage, like if it was a dead Dook or a Lord. And of course she cries a good deal, and takes on dreadfully ; but she never cries half so much or takes on half so dreadfully as when people are about her, especially when they are grand people. But if it is a wife as has died, the man is quite different. He says to me very likely, 'Do what you think is right and proper my good woman. Have everything decent.' And he goes about rather bewildered like, and smokes a good deal : but I believe that man thinks more about his wife in a kindlyhearted way than the wife would have thought about him, for she was always awfully mean in the matter of the washing bill, and. made him wear his shirts longer than she did her own things."

"Heaven save us, and you in particular, Mr. Snyder, and its thanking you I'll be for that three-and-ninepence for a fortnight's washing, due and owing, as my old man used to say, when he was a bailiff as served summonses, and hoping that if you ever do such a thing in your life as holy wedlock you will see your wife don't want twenty-two yards of book muslin, with nine flounces and panniers starched and ironed, and carried home for one-and-threepenee, and call day after tomorrow for the money."