Take up the housewife's burden-- No lofty rule of queens, But long and sordid service-- The slave to ways and means. Have done with flighty folly! Throw off your infant past! 'Tis yours to cope with butcher's bills, To make the mutton last. Take up the housewife's burden-- The truceless wars of peace; Go, humour whimsy housemaids, And wait your cook's caprice. And when your hopes are highest (When both ends nearly meet), Your lord's untimely lavishness Shall all your thrift defeat. Take up the housewife's burden-- Ye shall not shun the call; Nor cry too loud on Culture, When darns and dusting pall. Go, face the test of wifehood-- To wield the adoring rod, And treat a Man as merely Half baby and half god. The then fashionable alternative is ironically extolled in an irreverent parody of Kingsley's lines, as adapted for a Young Lady's album:-- Be smart, dear girl, and let who will be other; Break from the fold, not stick there like a lamb; So shall your lot, as maid and wife and mother, Be one Grand Slam. An article by Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick in the _Cornhill_, on English and Teuton domestic ideals, served _Punch_ in 1904 as the text for a ballad comparing the thrifty German _Hausfrau_ with the extravagant English wife. The infatuated writer sums up entirely in favour of the dainty, decorative Dolly as against the patient, industrious, but dowdy Grisel. Yet in the same year _Punch_ was much exercised with the inevitable decline of chivalry:-- Doubtless the better sort would gladly nourish Those notions which occur in Arthur's tale; Doubtless Romance might still contrive to flourish, Changing its knightly for its Daily Mail, If Woman would but give our modern gallants A livelier chance to ventilate their talents. Men ride abroad in rubbered automobiles, Naked of armour, bar the nauseous smell, Not bound on any ransom save to owe bills Contracted by some errant damosel, So that in Carlton's Halls, superbly gowned, She may adorn their Dinner-table Round: But here their service ends. They fain would wrestle With horrid dragons or a heathen crew; Ride _ventre à terre_ to help the weaker vessel, Behaving just as Lancelot used to do; Only you cannot keep it up much longer When once the weaker sex becomes the stronger. [Sidenote: _Matrons and Militants_] An equally interesting feature of the times was what might be alternatively called the Revolt or the Apotheosis of Middle Age. Perhaps the first mention of what threatened to be an unfair competition of the matron with the maid is to be found in the verses in 1896, where we read of the modern woman:--