Another old grievance--needless extravagance in the Army--raised its head in 1900, when a correspondent in _The Times_ complained that the latest regulations issued by the War Office were like a tailor's list, and contained details of seventy-seven kinds of gold lace! No wonder was it, as _Punch_ noted, that the fathers of subalterns in crack regiments had to guarantee them a minimum allowance of £600 a year. This was just before the South African war, which immediately led to a general rise of prices--the universal excuse "owing to the war" foreshadowing what took place fifteen years later. Parallels abound, though on a smaller scale. Marriage is ironically declared to be impossible for self-respecting and self-protective girls owing to the dearth of servants. "Like the Dodo, the domestic servant is extinct," and _Punch_, in his list of suggested exhibits for museums, includes the following:-- _Domestic Servant_ (Mummy).--An extremely rare and finely preserved specimen of a vanished class, whose extinction dates from 1901 A.D. It is therefore of the highest interest to the Anthropologist and the Comparative Anatomist. Its duties are now performed, perhaps more effectively, by the automatic "general" and the electric dumb-waiter. When alive, it commanded the salary of a prima donna, etc. Aversion from work was already abroad. A fond parent is shown in this year commenting on the recalcitrant attitude of her daughter: "No, she won't work. She never would work. She never will work. There's only one thing--she'll 'ave to go out to service." Still "smart" Society went on its way unheeding. The increasing publicity of social life is satirized under "Public Passion" in the recital of a young wife who writes: "We are _never_ at home. I believe it is fashionable to go to hospitals now and be ill amongst all sorts and conditions of people." The honeymoon was passing because brides could not face the awful loneliness of a _tête-à-tête_ existence, and welcomed a speedy return to a semi-detached go-as-you-please existence amongst their friends. A week-end honeymoon at Brighton is indicated as the maximum period which could be endured by a modern couple. In fashionable speech inanity began to be replaced by profanity. Unbridled language on the part of aristocrats and smart people led in 1903 to the famous conversational opening of a burlesque Society novel: "'Hell!' said the Duchess, who had hitherto taken no part in the conversation"[7]--which _Punch_ takes as his text for a discourse upon further developments and reactions. The device of engineering and paying for personal notices in the papers and simultaneously denouncing the scandalous enterprise of pressmen, and the introduction of "freak" parties from America are noticed and reproved in 1903, when amongst other recreations of the Smart Set we read of "Shinty, a wild and tumultuous version of hockey, in which there are absolutely no rules."