Punch (72.1877)

February 24, 1877.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

73

BOSOM SECRETS.

hen a Lady of Mr.
Punch's acquain-
tance was in Paris
not very long ago,
she ordered a dress
at a famous Mo-
diste's, but found,
when she tried it
on, that she could
hardly breathe.
On her complain-
ing to the Modiste
that the dress was
too tight over the
chest,

Que voulez-
vous, Madame f "
exclaimed that
faithful follower
! —if not fraraer—
of the fashion.
" On ne parte plus
de gorge " (" Bo-
soms are not worn
now ").

" Qu'est-ce qu'on
fait done?" ("But
how do Ladies
manage ? ") asked
her innocent Eng-
lish customer.

Mais, dame, on 6te la ouate " (" Oh! they take out the wadding "), was the
equally innocent answer.

Punch had never fully appreciated the bearings of this perfectly true story

till the otber day when he came upon the following para-
graph in one of the leading ladies' journals :—

"Buy a pair of Maintenon corsets, fitting your waist measure.
The other parts of the corset will be proportioned as you ought
to be. Put the corset on, and fill the vacant spaces with tine
jewellers' wool, then tack on a piece of soft silk or cambric over
the bust thus formed to keep the wool in place, renewing it as
often as required. This is the most natural and effectual mode
of improving the figure which I have heard of."

Now Punch sees how exactly the Parisian Modiste's
plan came home to her own business and her customers'
bosoms.

A CASE FOR CLERGYMAN-HELPS.

Given occasion for Gentleman-Helps generally, does
not a plea suggest itself in particular for Clergyman-
Helps ? To a certain extent every Curate is a Clergy-
man-Help, but to complete that character he should live
in his Employer's Parsonage? or Palace, clean boots and
shoes, knives and forks, wait at table, officiate in the
stable, and work in the garden, being all the while as far
as possible treated as one of the family. His wages of
£100 a year or so would then supply him with some of
the comforts of life, and perhaps enable him to put by a
little provision, besides, for a season of being out of place,
or a rainy day of disestablishment and disendowment.

As to married Curates, subsisting on their mere
stipends, a Clergyman-Help of that sort might be em-
ployed as gardener and man-of-all-work, to milk, and
feed the pigs, and so forth, whilst his wife could, in a
genteel way, take in washing and keep a mangle. _ How
such couples continue to make both ends meet without
recourse to some such means, is a mystery suggesting that
in the Established Church the Age of Miracles is not yet
over.

THE "DREADNOUGHT " ASHORE.

Bear a hand there, Ladies and Gentlemen with a shot in the locker
for poor Jack ! The publication of the last Report, read the other day
at the Fifty-Sixth Annual Meeting of the Seamen's Hospital Society,
will tend to correct a confusion of ideas, injurious- to that charit-
able institution. When people are advertised that contributions
and subscriptions thereunto are received by the Bankers, Messrs.
Williams, Deacon, & Co., Birchin Lane, or by the Secretary,
" Seamen's Hospital, Greenwich," they are apt to imagine them-
selves invited to contribute to the maintenance of Greenwich
Hospital itself. Supposing Greenwich Hospital well enough en-
dowed, and supported besides with public money, they are apt to
decline that invitation.

The smaller Hospital has got to be confounded with the greater,
especially among seamen of the Mercantile Marine, in consequence
of the removal on shore of the Seamen's Hospital from on board the
old Dreadnought, so long a conspicuous object in the Thames, sug-
gestive of pleasing associations with whitebait. But the Report
abovementioned now informs its readers that the Seamen's Hospital,
Greenwich, receives no aid from Government whatsoever, except
houseroom; the use of the Infirmary on their premises at Green-
wich, instead of the loan of a ship, to the additional comfort of the
patients indeed, but the proportionate increase of expenditure of
quite fifteen per cent, for their maintenance, requiring to be met by
voluntary contributions.

Now all this is explained, it may be hoped that the Seamen's
Hospital will cease to suffer from a misconception precisely similar
in its effect to the detriment sustained by Messrs. Shadrach's
establishment at the hands of Messrs. Meshech, through the
dissemination of " the untradesman-like falsehood,' it's the same
concern.' "

So far from being the same concern with Greenwich Hospital, the
Seamen's Hospital, Greenwich, is quite another concern. It is
free to sick seamen of all nations. Within the scope of its cosmopo-
litan hospitality, come not only medicine and surgery for nautical
sufferers, but also the provision, if possible, of employment for them
when cured. It contains two hundred beds constantly occupied ;
and to keep charity going at this rate needs voluntary contributions
yearly to the amount of £8,000, or, rather, according to a state-
ment made in Cannon Street, of £10,000. It nearly paid its expenses
last year, but not quite ; and owes £1,539 6s. Od. Every Briton,
whose song is "Pule, Britannia!" must see that, as an insti-
tution subservient to the spirit of that chorus, the Seamen's Hos-
pital (late Dreadnought) is a charity beyond all others for which the
hat may justifiably be sent round. Its expenditure has much in-
creased lately through the rise in provisions, amounting to £506

additional in the last year alone. A hospital, however, need not,
like almost every individual member of the community except
butchers, be the worse off for " Progress." Subscriptions, donations,
and bequests in plenty, on the part of a generous Public, will doubt-
less enable the Seamen's Hospital Society to keep pace with the
times, whilst all but the most economical housekeepers are out-
running the constable. The Dreadnought (that was) should have
nought to dread.

A page of the Society's Report is occupied with a table of Ports in
the United Kingdom whence patients were sent them last year—so
many from each ; together with a list of annual subscriptions sent
also by those Ports—some of them. For, in several instances, op-
posite to a considerable figure in the Patients' column, the Subscrip-
tion column presents " Nil." We need only remind those who thus
show their unremitting interest in the Hospital, that ex nihilo nihil fit
—"Nothing can come of nothing"—in the long run; though they
have made their own nothings, thus far, produce something consider-
able. Let them clap the omitted figure to the left of their round 0's,
and give them their proper values.

THE EYE-OPENER FOR ENGLAND.

From the Blue Book on the Conference it appears that the Sultan
was persuaded, notwithstanding Lord Salisbury's assurances _ to
the contrary, that "the alienation of a large portion of the English
people " from the side of Turkey "was due rather to the repudiation
of the Turkish debt than to the atrocities in Bulgaria." Not quite
so, Padishah. No large portion of the English people is so very
mercenary as all that. It was not the repudiation of the Turkish
debt which principally alienated even the Turkish bondholders from
you. It was those awful Bulgarian atrocities that did it. All thai,
the repudiation of the Turkish debt did was to open the eyes of
the British Public, and especially those of Turkey's Creditors, to
the atrocity of the Bulgarian atrocities.

The Porte and the Powers.

It is whispered that a high Turkish Official, speaking of the six
Governments represented at the late ineffectual Conference,
observed, at a late Divan, that they might call themselves the six
Powers, but he, for his part, called them the six Weaknesses.

shakspearian motto recently adopted by mr. gladstone.

" I will something affect the letter, for it argues facility."

Love's Labour 's Lost, Act iv. s. 2.

vol. lxxii.