Punch (33.1857)

October 24, 1857.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

167

Young Lady (loq.) " Not much ieauty at the Crystal Palace this morning."

PINDAR AT NEWMARKET.

Yankee Doodle came to town

On a little pony,
Now he's brought a big mare down,

Sleek, and strong, and bony.
Any weight she '11 carry which
. Ain't laid on by a noodle :
Winning the Cesariwitch,

See our Yankee Doodle.

Racing men, in diaries

Where they note their losses,
Write how smartly Prioress

Licked them British osses.
Jonathan, let's liquor on

This new uniting fetter ;
Always a good friend to John,

Now you've grow'd a Better.

NO GRIST UN A COTTON MILL.

The suggestion was made by one of our most ardent
lovers of art that, at the closing of the Art-Treasures'
Show, Manchester should send invitations to all the artists,
English, and foreign, whose works had contributed so
largely to the glory of the Penge-Hill Exhibition. It was
to have been a grand artistic fete of all Nations. It
would have been a glorious Social Congress of all the
R.A.'s in the Academic world. However, the notion was
not carried out, and " because Manchester, you know (says
David Roberts) is not exactly what you may call an
inviting town."

Our National Defences.

Some public-house patriot was repeating the old National
boast that " an Englishman's House is his Castle." " I am
not so positive about that," said a critic of the Westminstei
Revieio ; "but I am sure that an 'Englishwoman's Dress it
Her Castle ; ' for it is such an enormous size now, that it
is morally and physically impossible for any one, friend or
enemy, to come near her! "

A WORD OF TRUTH FOR US, EVEN FROM

A MAN.

"To Mb. Punch, Sib,

"I was perfectly disgusted the other day by a letter in the
Times signed by 'Ellinob '—but I do not believe a woman ever wrote
a word of it—attributing to women extravagance in matters of dress,
and calling upon us to spend less on our clothes—in fact to go without
new things this autumn altogether—and give the money to the Fund
for the relief of the Indian sufferers.

i" The letter was printed in large letters, and I dare say the editor
chuckled very much over it, and thought it a fine thing to get a letter,
signed with a woman's name—as he would say in his slang mannish
style—'pitching into' women. But, I repeat, I don't believe it was
written by a woman, not a word of it. I have no doubt it came from
some mean-spirited wretch who is always grumbling at his poor wife's
milliner's and dressmaker's bills, for the few things she absolutely
cannot get on without—one, perhaps, who grudges her even her
wretched allowance, and shuffles about every petty £12 10s. cheque as
the quarter-day comes round—for I am certain he does not allow her
more than £50 a-year. Relieving the Indian sufferers is all very well,
but suppose, instead of calling upon women to give up their Utile in-
dulgences in the way of dress—I'm sure it's much more for the men that
we dress than for ourselves, whether married or single—the men were
to give up some of their expensive, bad, low habits—their cigars, for
example, or their curious and particular wines ; or their little dinners
at the Club, or their share of a drag to the Derby, or any other of the
thousand and one expensive pleasures in which they are in the habit of
indulging apart from their wives.

"Talk of our extravagance, indeed ! People make a mighty ins?, about
the Mdliner's bills of a certain bankrupt's wife. Well, and if she
was a well-dressed woman—I suppose it was her milliner's bills that
ruined her-husband ? I should like to know how people—even men—
dare attribute this man's having got through £250,000 to his wife's
extravagance, when it was proved in Court, that even her milliners'
bills didn't exceed £3000? But that is always the way with men.
They think nothing of the money they fling away in selfish, and too often

degrading pleasures ; but let a poor wife express awish for a new bonnet,
or a dress fit to be seen in, and it is at once grunts, and sulks, and talk
about 'women's' extravagance.

" And then, as if it wasn't enough to have the men talking such
stuff, out must come this ridiculous ' Ellinob ' in the Times, for all
the men to cast up to us, and say, ' Look, here's one of your own sex
at you, at last!' That was exactly what my husband said. However,
as I said, I don't believe 'Ellinob' is a woman at all. I believe it's
that Me. Jacob Omnium, who, I understand, writes the greater part
of the Times, under various aliases.

" I maintain that, instead of spending too much of our husband's
money, our allowances, as a rule, whether for house-keeping or for
dress, are far too shabby. We are kept perpetually on ike fret to make
both ends meet. I'm sure the struggle I have with my tradesman's
books every week nobody would believe! Of course, it's very easy
for men to laugh, and say it's because we don't understand arith-
metic. I only wish they understood ready-money dealing, and not
getting into debt, as well as we understand compound addition,
subtraction, multiplication, and division.

" I believe if Ellinob, really wants to give advice that will end in
saving, she ought to advise all the married men to give their cheque-books,
and their banker's-books to their wives, and bring them their money, and
let them keep it, and pay it in, and draw it out,—in short, to make the
women paymasters and cashiers, and the husbands to receive quarterly
allowances for pocket-money, from their wives, instead of paying their
poor wives miserably insufficient allowances for dress, as is their usual
practice.

" I have no doubt the saving in incomes^ that would thus be produced,
would not only leave a handsome contribution to the Indian Relief Eund,
at the end of the first year, but would, in a very short time, pay off
the National Debt, if it could be appropriated to that purpose, particu-
larly, if the wife had, in every case, the option of determining what
allowance she woul/l make her husband for pocket-money and clothes.
I was very glad indeed to find even from a man, an admission of our
essentially economical nature and habits. To be suie, it was from an
American,—the inhabitant of a country where there has been some
slight progress made towards recognition of the rights of our sex. I
trust, Mr. Punch, man as you are, that you will not be mean enough to