THE HUSBAND'S COMPLAINT OF ENGLISH WIVES

THE HUSBAND'S COMPLAINT.

"Will she thy linen wash and hosen darn?"

I'm utterly sick of this hateful alliance
Which the ladies have form'd with impractical Science!
They put out their washing to learn hydrostatics,
And give themselves airs for the sake of pneumatics.

They are knowing in muriate, and nitrate, and chlorine,
While the stains gather fast on the walls and the flooring—
And the jellies and pickles fall wofully short,
With their chemical use of the still and retort.

Our expenses increase, (without drinking French wines.)
For they keep no accounts, with their tangents and sines-.
And to make both ends meet they give little assistance,
With their accurate sense of the squares of the distance.

They can name every spot from Peru to El Arish,
Except just the bounds of their own native parish;
And they study the orbits of Venus and Saturn,
While their home is resign'd to the thief and the slattern.

Chronology keeps back the dinner two hours,
The smoke-jack stands still while they learn motive powers;
Flies and shells swallow up all our every-day gains,
And our acres are mortgaged for fossil-remains.

They cease to reflect with their talk of refraction—
They drive us from home by electric attraction—
And I'm sure, since they've bother'd their heads with affinity,
I'm repuls'd every hour from my learned divinity.

When the poor, stupid husband is weary and starving,
Anatomy leads them to give up the carving;
And we drudges the shoulder of mutton must buy,
While they study the line of the os humeri.

If we 'scape from our troubles to take a short nap,
We awake with a din about limestone and trap;
And the fire is extinguished past regeneration,
For the women were wrapt in the deep-coal formation.

'Tis an impious thing that the wives of the laymen,
Should use Pagan words 'bout a pistil and stamen,
Let the heir break his head while they fester a Dahlia,
And the babe die of pap as they talk of mammalia.

The first son becomes half a fool in reality,
While the mother is watching his large ideality;
And the girl roars uncheck'd, quite a moral abortion,
For we trust her benevolence, order, and caution.

I sigh for the good times of sewing and spinning,
Ere this new tree of knowledge had set them a sinning;
The women are mad, and they'll build female colleges,—
So here's to plain English!—a plague on their ologies!

London Mag.

Compiled From Sources In The Public Domain.

Smiles & Good Reading,
Teresa
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It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
Of Human Bondage, 1915