Though in the good old-fashioned days
    The feminine factotum rarely
  Was honoured with a crown of bays
    When she had won it fairly;
  She did emerge at times like one
    For manual work a perfect glutton,
  Blue-stocking half, half Amazon,
    As chronicled by HUTTON.

  But now you’ll find her counterpart
    In almost every English village—­
  A mistress of the arduous art
    Of scientific tillage,
  Who cheerfully resigns the quest
    Of all that makes a woman charming,
  And shows an even greater zest
    For gardening and farming.

  She used to petrify her dons;
    She was a most efficient bowler;
  But now she’s baking barley scones
    To help the FOOD CONTROLLER;
  Good Mrs. Beeton she devours,
    And not the dialogues of PLATO,
  And sets above the Cult of Flowers
    The Cult of the Potato.

  The studious maid whose classic brow
    Was high with conscious pride of learning
  Now grooms the pony, milks the cow,
    And takes a hand at churning;
  And one I know, whose music had
    Done credit to her educators,
  Has sold her well-beloved “Strad”
    To purchase incubators!

  The object of this humble lay
    Is not to minimize the glory
  Of women of an earlier day
    Whose deeds are shrined in story;
  ’Tis only to extol the grit
    Of clever girls—­and none work harder—­
  Who daily do their toilsome “bit”
    To stock the nation’s larder.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Overburdened Mother.  “GIT A MOVE ON, ALBERT—­KEEPIN’ THE ‘OLE BLOOMIN’ WORLD BACK—­AN’ A WAR ON, TOO!”]

* * * * *

ONE OF OUR DIFFICULTIES.

Under this title I refer to a lady whom I will call Mrs. Legion, for there are many of her all over the country, bless her conservative old heart.  She has been in service as cook or cook-housekeeper most of her life (she is now getting on in years), and constant preoccupation with kitchen affairs has somewhat narrowed her outlook, so that the circumvention of the butcher, whose dominant idea (she believes) is to provide her with indifferent joints, is more to her than the defeat of HINDENBURG; and so far as she is concerned the main theatre of the War is neither Europe nor the Atlantic, but the coal merchant’s yard, which disgorges its treasure so grudgingly.  Not only is her first thought for her cooking, in order—­the transition to her second thought is automatic—­that her employer or employers may be comfortable; but it is her last thought too.

With such singleness of purpose to crystallize her, she cannot absorb even the gravest of warnings; not from unwillingness or stupid obstinacy, but from sheer inability to grasp any novelty.  That her beloved master and mistress—­either or both—­should not have the best of everything and plenty of it is, at this advanced stage in her career, unthinkable.  Even though she read it in print she would disregard it, for her attitude to them papers is sceptical; even Lord NORTHCLIFFE, with all his many voices, dulcet or commanding, has wooed in vain.