Social abuses and grievances and disparities were not so flagrant as they had been twenty years before; still _Punch_, though no iconoclast, found plenty of scope for his reforming zeal. Cremation was not pronounced a legal procedure until 1884, but Shirley Brooks was one of the original members of the English Cremation Society formed in January, 1874, as a result of Sir Henry Thompson's advocacy of a method which had been neglected in England since Sir Thomas Browne published his _Hydriotaphia, or Urn Burial_ in 1658. In the summer of 1872 _Punch_ printed a list headed, "What is always going on." It is a reassuring proof of the stability of England that of the twenty-six entries exactly half, quoted beneath, are as topical to-day as they were fifty years ago:-- The weather. The Publicans. Strikes. Jobs. Ireland. An International Something or Other. A Big Subscription. An Inauguration. A Millenary, Centenary, Anniversary or Jubilee. A New Daily Paper. Another English Opera Company. The High Price of Provisions. The Albert Memorial. CLASS DISTINCTIONS In the report, printed in February, 1865, of an imaginary Meeting for Promoting the Education of the Rich, addressed by various artisans, tradesmen, an ex-footman, etc., we read that there was "a unanimous call for a vote of compliment to _Mr. Punch_ for his indefatigable exertions to bring all classes into harmony." Self-praise is a dangerous game, and there were occasions, already noted, on which the verdict of posterity will not confirm _Punch's_ complacency. Yet we have seen that along with his increasingly critical attitude towards the working-man he seldom failed to recognize the need of friendly personal relations between employers and employed; he regretted the fact that in many industrial areas the masters lived away from and out of touch with their men. But the local conditions of the great industries render social cleavage inevitable to a considerable extent; it is in the domain of unorganized labour, and in particular that of domestic service, that class distinctions lend themselves more freely to comment, criticism and satire. Nowhere else are master or mistress and man or woman brought so close together; the crowded life of fashionable society was once described as "friction without intimacy," and the phrase might well be applied to the relations between servants and their employers. [Sidenote: _Mistresses and Servants_]