uld _not_!

* * * * *

THE NEW TALE OF A TUB; OR, THE NOT-AT-HOME SECRETARY AND THE
LAUNDRESSES.

[Illustration: "CAN'T SEE YOU NOW, I'M WASHING--MYSELF."

"The Women are crying out for the protection of the Factory Acts,
which has hitherto been denied them, and which the Home Secretary
declines to pledge the Government to support."--_Daily Telegraph,
Friday, June 12th._]

_London Laundry-woman, to her Tub-mate, loquitur_:--

They tell us the Tub is humanity's friend, and that Cleanliness is of
closest kin
To all things good. By the newest gospel 'tis held that Dirt is the
friend of Sin.
Well, I'm not so sure that the world's far wrong in that Worship of
Washing that's all the rage;
But we, its priestesses, sure might claim a cleanly life and a decent
wage!

Listen, BET, from your comfortless seat on the turned-up pail,--if
you've got the time;
Isn't it queer that Society's cleansers must pass their lives amidst
muck and grime?
Spotless flannels no doubt are nice--and snowy linen is "swell" and sweet,
But steaming reek is around our heads, and trickling foulness about our
feet.

If the dainty ladies whose linen we lave, we laundress drudges, could
look in _here_,
Wouldn't their feet shrink back with sickness, and wouldn't their faces
go pale with fear?
White, well-ironed, all sheen and sweetness, that linen looks when it
leaves our hands;
But they little think of the sodden squalor that marks the den where
the laundress stands.

Scrub, scrub, scrub, at the reeking tub, for eighteen hours at a
stretch, perchance,
Till our bowed backs ache, and our knuckles smart, and the lights through
the steam like spectres dance;
Ankle-deep in the watery sludge, where the tile is loose or the drainage
blocked!
Oh, I haven't a doubt that the dainty dames--if they only knew!--would be
sorely shocked.

Typhoid! Terribly menacing word, the whisper of which would destroy our
trade;
But dirt, and damp, and defective drainage will raise that ghost on a
world afraid;
And at thirty years our strength is sapped by insidious siege of the
stifling fume,
Or what if we linger a little longer? Scant rays of comfort such life
illume.

Grievances, BET? Well, I make no doubt that the world of idlers is
sorely sick
Of the moans and groan