Page:Punch (Volume 147).pdf/5

July 1, 1914.]

 ["Giving evidence recently before a Select Committee of the House of Commons, Miss C. E. Collet, of the Home Office, said the commercial laundry was killing the small hand laundry."—Evening News.]

little crafts! How soon they die!
 * In cottage doors no shuttle clicks;

The hand-loom has been ousted by
 * A large concern with lots more sticks.

The throb of pistons beats around;
 * Great chimneys rise on Thames's banks;

The same phenomena are found
 * In Sheffield (Yorks) and Oldham (Lancs).

No longer now the housewife makes
 * Her rare preserves, for what's the good?

The factory round the corner fakes
 * Raspberry jam with chips of wood.

'Tis so with what we eat and wear,
 * Our bread, the boots wherein we splosh;

"Tis so with what I deemed most fair,
 * Most virginal of all—the Wash.

'Tis this that chiefly, when I chant,
 * Fulfils my breast with sighs of ruth,

To think that engines can supplant
 * The Amazons I loved in youth.

That not with tender care, as erst
 * By spinster females fancy-free,

These button-holes of mine get burst
 * Before the shift comes back to me;

That mere machines, and not a maid
 * With fingers fatuously plied,

The collars and the cuffs have frayed
 * That still excoriate my hide;

That steam reduces to such states
 * What once was marred by human skill;

That socks are sundered from their mates
 * By means of an electric mill;

That not by Cupid's coy advance
 * (Some crone conniving at the fraud),

But simply by mechanic chance,
 * I get this handkerchief marked "Maud."

This is, indeed, a striking change;
 * I sometimes wonder if the world

Gets better as the skies grow strange
 * With coils of smoke about them curled.

If the old days were not the best
 * Ere printed formulas conveyed

Sorrow about that silken vest
 * For all eternity mislaid;

Ere yet the unwieldy motor-van
 * Came clattering round the kerbstone's brink,

Its driver dreaming some new plan 
 * To make my mauve pyjamas shrink.