Towards the athletic woman _Punch_ was, on the whole, more benevolent. In 1883 he pays graceful homage to a woman with the engaging name of Jessie Ace who had saved a man from drowning. In the same year young ladies are gently chaffed for beginning to affect a knowledge of the technicalities of pastime and sport. But if _Punch_ is to be believed, it was still sketchy. Rugby and Association football are mixed up with cricket, and the two charming girls at the Eton and Harrow match at Lord's mistake the two umpires for the two headmasters. The slightly more serious view taken in 1884, when several cricket matches were played by women, is noted elsewhere. Fencing and boxing for women, under male instructors, French and British, are depicted by Du Maurier as "the last new fad" in 1886. The former, at any rate, came to stay and deserved to. Ladies had long figured in lawn tennis tournaments, but in his "Caution to Championesses" in 1887, _Punch_ displayed some misgiving as to the development of this competition. Nor did he approve of the novelty of women riding astride in 1890, begging them to do anything but that, and rewriting the old nursery rhyme for these new Amazons:-- Ride a cock-horse, To Banbury Cross To see a young lady A-straddle o' course! The _Almanack_ for the same year gives four types of model middle-class wives. The French keeps her husband's accounts; the German is the _Hausfrau_ and cook; the American is an intellectual; the English plays lawn tennis. The "Manly Maiden" (No. XXII in _Punch's_ "Modern Types") described in December, 1890, is less closely observed and far less interesting than _Punch's_ "Model Fast Lady" of forty years earlier. The sketch is a rather cruel caricature of the persevering but inefficient sportswoman who is always in the way, and is destined to "develop from a would-be hard-riding maiden into a genuinely hard-featured old maid." In agreeable contrast to this acid study is _Punch's_ homage to the exploits of a Guernsey rifle-woman, Miss Leale, at Bisley in 1891, and his welcome to Mrs. Sheldon, the American traveller, on her return from her travels in Africa, in which he suggests that in time to come Stanley may be known as "the male Mrs. Sheldon." The exaggeration may be ironical, but the irony is so well veiled as to be almost imperceptible. In the years that were to come the achievements of Mary Kingsley and Gertrude Bell were beyond the reach of the most subtle disparagement. [Sidenote: _Women Workers_] [Illustration: A NEW TASTE IN MEN AND WOMEN SHE: "What a fine-looking man Mr. O'Brien is!" HE: "H'm--hah--rather rough-hewn, I think. Can't say I admire that loud-laughing, strong-voiced, robust kind of man. Now that's a fine-looking woman he's talking to!" SHE: "Well--er--somewhat _effeminate_, you know. Confess I don't admire _effeminate_ women!"]