Ladies' Carriages.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume IX, Issue 2909, 28 May 1888, Page 3

Ladies' Carriages.

The statistics afforded by the English Railway Companies respecting the unpopularity of ladies' carriages are curious indeed. The special accommodation provided for this supposed exclusive sex is so ignored and despised & that Lai'clly one-seventh of it is made use of, while within ono week there were no less tlian 5000 lady passengers in the vehicles dovoted to smoking! How the whirligig of time brings in his revenges 1 lam old enough, says the Argus' Home correspondent, to when there were no smoking fJScarriages, and when, if a poor male creature ventured 'on half a pipe, a feminine shriek would go up to heaven from the whole train against him. The moral of it is (for there is nothing immoral in it, but only natural) that woman will have man for her companion, rather than her own sex; if as her slave without his tobacco, so much the better, but if nst, as her tyrant, smoking like a limekiln. It is a mistake—which leads some people (not me) into trouble—to suppose that ladies who use the smoking carriages are rather " faster" than the rest of their sex, and inclined to flirtation. They are even less inclined (and one can't say more than that); they are almost always wrapped up in (sometimes in his railway rug) and devoted to some swain, who in his turn is devoted to his cigar. Rather than Hi separate from him they welcome s-uoke ' / and risk suffocation. I wish they w would not, for their manner, though genial enough to their beloved object, is frigid to us outsiders, and their presence is a check on conversation