short week
To feel as I used to feel,
Before women washed with chloride of lime,
And scrubbed with brushes of steel!

Oh! but for one short week
Of the good old-fashioned wash,
Before a laundry meant utter rot,
Lime, wax, and such chemical bosh!
A little swearing would ease my heart,
At that ogress, false, inhuman;
So to the papers a line I'll drop,
On the Modern Washerwoman!

With fingers ready and fleet,
With features indignantly red,
A poor Clerk wrote of his linen in rags,
And this is what he said:--
"Stitch! Stitch! Stitch!
Yet _I_ can't keep a decent shirt!
The thing has reached an unbearable pitch,
So--as an appeal to the poor and the rich--
I sing the new Song of the Shirt!"

* * * * *

Illustration: EUPHEMISM.

_Cab Tout (exasperated by the persistent attentions of Constable)._

"LOOK 'ERE, OLE LIGHTNIN'-KETCHER, W'ERE THE MISSIN' WORD ARE YER
SHOVIN' US TO?"

* * * * *

ROBERT ON THE GREAT QUESTION OF THE DAY.

JOLLY old Crismus being cum round agen, as ushal, we had our
Crismus-Heve supper, as ushal, and henjoyed owrselves till a rayther
latish hour, as ushal. Upon cumpareing notes, we didn't find as we had
werry much to complane about, the grand and nobel old wirtue of
horsepitality perwailing much as ushal.

Howsumdever, upon cumparin notes a second time as to the most poplar
subjecks of conwersashun at the warious Eleckshun Dinners, on Saint
Tommas' Day, or the day when the hole of the Common Counselmen has to go
to their Constittuents for to be elected--though what St. Tommas ewer
had to do with it I never could dishcover, no more can BROWN--we found
as they was amost all on 'em a torkin about sum grate change, as a lot
of outsiders called County Counsellors was a going for to try to get
made; the werry principellist being, BROWN said, that they might have
occashonal use of the Manshun Ouse, and so give grand Dinners to the
West-End Swells, and so get them to wote for their having jolly hansum
allowences with which to pay for 'em! But quiet ole JOE, who's one of
them rum fellers as don't say much, but thinks a deal, says, in his
quiet way, as how as it's werry much wus than that, for, from what a
werry ancient Deputty said, as he was a helping him to his jugged air,
he had werry little dowt but that County Counsellors was acshally a
going in f