On the efficiency of female clerks Punch speaks with two voices in 1887, under the heading "Jills in Office." First of all we have an unflattering picture of the rudeness and inattention of the girls in one of those joint establishments—half shop and half post-office. In the next number we are given the reverse of the medal; the public are the offenders, and the girls act up to their names—Miss Goodchild, Miss Meekin and Miss Mannerly. The announcement in the same year that ladies were to be allowed to take diplomas in dentistry prompts Punch to some frigid pleasantries; but this is a subject on which it has always been difficult to joke with discretion. Punch found a happier theme in the institution of the "Lady Guide Association" in 1888. He applauds the scheme which aimed at "providing remuneration and employment for intelligent gentlewomen debarred by the present overcrowded labour market from earning a livelihood," but he recognized that the guides would have to be very formidably accomplished persons, since their duties comprised the giving advice and information to newcomers on every possible subject. As a "preliminary examination" was spoken of, Punch supplied a test paper containing, inter alia, the following questions:—

1. A four-wheeled cab, containing five inside passengers, two children on the box, and seven trunks on the roof, is taken from Liverpool Street Station to the extreme end of Hammersmith, and the Lady who has secured your services as guide, after having made the cabman carry the seven trunks up to the third storey offers him, as his fare, two and ninepence, which he indignantly refuses. On his subsequently claiming thirteen and sixpence, and taking off his coat and offering to fight the gentleman of the party for that amount on the steps of the house in the presence of a sympathizing crowd, what speedy measures, if any, should you adopt to effect a compromise?

2. You are engaged to conduct an intelligent, scientific, and inquiring party of sixteen people over Windsor Castle, the Marylebone Workhouse, the Thames Tunnel, Hanwell Lunatic Asylum, the National Gallery, the British Museum, and the London Docks. Do you think that your thorough knowledge of English history, your acquaintance with the working of the Poor Laws, your grasp of the progress of European Art, and your general familiarity with all the great political, commercial, engineering, economic and other problems of the hour are such as to warrant you in facing the coming ordeal with a jaunty confidence?

3. You are required by an economical Duke to provide a cheap wedding for his only daughter, and he has stipulated that the breakfast shall not, at the outside, cost more than ninepence a head. With a four-and-sixpenny bridal cake, and a sound champagne that must not exceed fifteen shillings a dozen, how do you propose to make the thing go off with éclat?

In 1890 the "Dorothy" Restaurant was started for "Ladies Only," but this condition, though the raison d'être of the venture, was soon modified: men were admitted from 6.30 to 10 p.m., and Punch was unchivalrous enough to make humorous capital out of the concession.

In regard to the suffrage and "Women's Rights" Punch remained on the side of the fence where he had got down after a good deal of vacillation. In 1879 he publishes what is apparently a bonâ fide letter from "A Lancashire Witch" protesting against Miss Lydia Becker's claim to represent the general feeling of the district. "I assure you," she writes, "that Miss Becker's followers are chiefly ladies of her own pronounced politics, or semi-foreigners, and not Englishwomen pur sang." Punch observes that "no Lancashire Witch need fear to be mixed up with the Representative Gathering of vote-claiming Spinsters which Miss Lydia Becker threatens to bring down on the Free Trade Hall. Witches who know whence comes the real potency of their charms will certainly not seek to mix voting-powder in the cauldron." This was not friendly to the Suffragists, but the tone is preferable to that of 'Arry's views on Women's Rights in 1881 after attending a lecture. There is a certain admixture of shrewd commonplace in his remarks, but the verses are chiefly remarkable as a storehouse of cad-slang, fortunately mostly obsolete. Female emigration comes up for comment in the same year, but, as the object was avowedly matrimonial, the scheme had no political significance. The picture of the large, self-indulgent, sultanic brother advising his adoring sisters, cousins and aunts to assert their rights by learning to be more independent of men is purely ironical and has no bearing on the problem of women's economic dependence. The dialogue in two scenes between Edwin and Angelina in 1883 on the working of the new Married Women's Property Act is a rather cynical burlesque. The first scene shows the Act as it is expected to work, to the advantage of women; in the second we see it as it is sure to work—to the confirmation of the status quo, the woman continuing to leave her money affairs entirely in her husband's hands.

"THE ANGEL IN 'THE HOUSE'": OR, THE RESULT OF FEMALE SUFFRAGE

(A Troubled Dream of the Future)

Women Jurors

Sambourne's prophetic picture of "The Angel in 'the House'" in 1884 is an improvement on Punch's earlier fancy portraits of women legislators, but it does not render prophetic justice either to Lady Astor or Mrs. Wintringham. Punch refers more than once in 1885 to the Parliamentary candidature of Miss Helen Taylor who stood for Camberwell, but her nomination papers were not accepted. Punch offers "Helen of Camberwell" his condolences, but they are shorn of all grace by his previous comparison of her to the Three Tailors of Tooley Street and other acidulated puns. Du Maurier's picture in 1887 of a Jury of Women antedates reality by more than thirty years; while the tension of party feeling in 1888 is illustrated by the genuine advertisement of a governess seeking work who had been "dismissed from a Conservative Clergyman's family for her Gladstonian views." Lady canvassers were already beginning to make their influence felt, and Punch recognizes their value in a "lay" which gives an entertaining account of their "unscrupulous, seductive, siren ways." At any rate they could not be ignored. The temper of "The Political Woman"—one of the "Modern Types" series—in 1890 is acid and disparaging throughout:—