The Sun.
London, England, 1857-10-22 00:00:00

A WORD OP TRTJTB FOB US:

• (From Punch.)
" To Mr. Punch, was pirfectlY digested the
other day by a letter in the Tines signed by,' Eleanor'....
but I do not believe a woman ever wrote a word of it—.
attributing to women extravagance in matters of dress,
and calling upon us to spend less on our clothes—in fact,
to go without new things this autumn altogether—ai d
give the money to the fund for the relief of the India.;
sufferers.
"The letter was printed in large lettere wed I dar_
say the editor chuckled very much over it, and thought
it a fine thing to get a letter, signed with a wornan'e
name—as he would say in his slang mannish style—
' pitching into' women. Bat, I repeat, I don't believe
it was written by a woman, not a
wend of it. I have
no doubt it came from some mean-spirited wretch who
is always grumbling at his poor wife's milliner'searel
dressmaker's bill, for the few things she absolutely
cannot get on , without—one, perhaps, who 'grudges
her even her wretched allowance, and shuffles about
every petty 121. 103. cheque as the quarter-day corns.
round—for lam certain he does not allow her more
than 501. a-year. Relieving the Indian sufferers is all
very well, but suppose, instead of calling upon women
to give up their little indulgences in the way of dress
—tin sure it's much more for the men that we dregs
than for ourselves, whether married or single—the
men were to give up some of their expensive, bad, low
habits—tl-eir cigars, for example, or their curious and
particular wines, or their little dinners at the club, or
their share of a drag to the Derby, or any other, of
the thousand and one expensive pleasures in which
they are in the habit of indulging apart from their wives.
" Talk of our extravagance, indeed ! People make
mighty fuss about the milliner's bills of a certain bank-
rupt's wife. Well, and if she was a well-dressed woman
—I suppose it was her milliner's bills that ruined her
husband ! I should like to kno w how people—even men
—dare attribute this man's having got through 250,0001.
to his wife's extravagance, when it was proved ire court
that even her milliner's bills didn't exceed 3,0001. But
that is always the way with men. They think nothing
of the money they fling 'away in selfish, and too often
degrading pleasures ; but let a poor -wife express a wish ;
for a new bonnet, or a dress fit to be pen in, and it i 3 at
once grunts, and sulks, and talk about women's' extra-
vagance
" And then, as if it wasn't enough to have the men
talking such stuff, out must come this ridiculous •
Eleauce in the Times, for all the men to cast up to u;,
and say, 'Look, there's one‘of your own sex at you, at
That was eiactly what my husband said. How-
ever,
as /said, I don't believe ' Eleanor' is a woman at
all. I believe it's that Mr. Jacob Omnium, who, I under-
stand, writes the greater part of the Times under various
aliases.

"I maintain that, instead of spending too much of
our husband's money, our allowances, as a rule,
whether for housekeeping or for dress, are far too shabby.
We are kept perpetually on the fret t) make both ends
meet. I'm sure the struggle I have with my'tradesmen'e
books every week nobody would believe 1 Of course,
it's very easy for men to laugh, and say its because we
don't understand arithmetic. I only wish they under-
stood ready-money dealing, and not getting into debt,
as well as we understand compound addition, substrac-
tion, multiplication, and division.
- .

" I belie7ve if Eleanor' really wants to give advice
that will end in saving, she ought to advise nll the
married men to give their6eque-books and their bankers'.
books to their wives, and bring them their money, and
let them keep it, and pay it is, and draw it out—in
short, to make the women paymasters and cashiers, and
the husbands to receive quarterly allowances for pocket-
money from their wives, instead of paying their poor
wives miserably insufficient allowances for dress, as is
their usual practice.
"I have no doubt the saving in incomes that would
thus be produced would not only leave a handsome con-
tribution to the Indian Relief Fund at the end of the
first year, but would, in a very short time, pay off the
national debt, if it could be appropriat,:d to that pur-
pose, particularly if the wife had, in every case, the
option of determining what allowance she would make
her husband for pooket-money and clothes. I was very
glad indeed to find even from a man an admission of our
essentially economical nature and habits. To be sure, it
was from an American—the inhabitant of a country
where there hai been some slight progress made to•
wards recognition of the rights of our sex. I trust, Mr.
Punch, maa as you are, that you wilt not be mean
enough to throw this letter into your waste-paper bas-
ket, or refuPe to print—l should prefer capital letters—
this passage to whioh I refer, from this enlightened
American writer :

" 'A Word for Womeo,—Some of the papers are
lecturing woman upon an extravagance_ in dress, and
advi,ing them to retrench, especially during the present
financial difficulty. Doubtless there are many cases of
unwarrantable extravagance in this way ; but do people
ever col:eider tbat two or three glasses of brandy and
hal'-a-dozen regalias, nalulged in daily by a man, to say
nothirg o' five and ten dollar dinners, amount to more
in a year than would be required to dress a woman 141:0
to the full requirements of fashion ? Much of this talk
about the txtravagance of women is nonsense. They are
almo t univEr alty careful, and many a trader would to-
day have been sate and sound if he had listened to the
prudent counsels of his wife rather than the reclde3s
promptings of his own ambition. It is natural for mean
men to endeavour to shift the responsibility of their
folly to other shoulders, but it is rather too much to
charge a commercial revulsion like this upon one's wife
and daughters.'—New York Paper.
"For my part, I think tho passego ought to be printed
in letters of gold and hung up over every double-bed in
England, between the watch-pockets.— I am, Mr. Punch,
your constant reader, " A VICTIM,"

ST. PAUL'S WESTMINSTICE-ROAR.—With the intention
of affording better church accommodation to the densely
populated neigh bourbon(' of the Waterloo and %Vast-
rninster roads, inhabited as the district is by persons of
the humblest class, it was detsrinin4lll some months
since to e:eet a new church. The building, which is
rapidly approaching completion, and which is ictenilt d
to accommodate 1,200, stands in a very cnnmanding po-
sition nearly facing the Waterloo-road.

BURSTING OF THE RIVINGTON WATER PIPES.—C,m-
siderable alarm was created among the people residing
is the neighbourhood of the valley lying between Cow-
ley-hill and Denton's-green on Friday night last, by the
sudden bursting of oue of the huge Rivington enter
pipes, by which Liverpool is supplied. All the email
brooks, ponds, and ditches in the neighbourhood were
soon overflowing, and in two hours there was an exten-
sive river of about 200 yards wide, covering potato, Ins-
tore, and stubble land, and reaching past Denton's
green-lane to the brook, upwards of half a mile. Mr.
clarke, of St. Helen's, at once proce,eded to the hydrant
at Moss-bank, and there stopped the progress of the
water ; but for some time after it continued to rush out,
as the breach was made near the centre of the valley
some two or throe miles long, and it did not subside un-
til Saturday evening. Some idea of the force may be
imagined when it is known that the pipe burst under-
neath, and the water threw up the earth, sand and soil,
and carried it away, leaving a bole of 11 feet 6 inch°,
deep, and 48 feet by 9 inches wide.—Wolverhamptom
Chronicle.

BALLOON OBSERVATIONS IN WAR.—In the early pal t
of the mars of the French Revolution. a special depart-
ment of the Ecole Polytechnique trained officers it, the
principles of the management of balloons. The battle
of Fleurua, gained in 1794 by General Fleurus over the
Anetriane, has been ascribed principally to the accu-
rate information conveyed by a balloon observatory.
The aeronauts, at the head of whom was the cele-
brated Guyton Morveau, mounted twice in the
course of the day, took deliberate observations, and
made them known by pre-arranged telegraphic sign'.
When ascending the second time they were discovered,
and cannon brought to bear against the balloon ; it -
effectually, however, for the latter soon asoinded out of
range of the shot. Balloon observers also accompanied
the army of Napoleon in the Egyptian expedition, but
were subsequently laid aside. There are no practical
impediments to the employment of balloons in this
manner. A balloon of 30 feet in diameter is amp'e
when pure hydrogen is used to inflate it, as would be
always the case on the field of battle. Hydrogen- for
this purpose was generated by the French by transmitting
the stream of water through red hot iron pipes. The ap-
paratus was p mtable, like a cavalry shoeing forge, and
could inflate a balloon 30 feet in diameter in about two
hours.

• STATISTICS OF ALGERIA.—It appears from (English)
official returns that in 1855 the number of " civil Eu-
ropeans," or rather European civilians, in the French
province of Algeria amounted to 155,607 (to which
number it had risen from 112,748 in 1849), and that
there were 143,387 Europeans resident there in 1854,
of whom 79,577 were French, 6,279 Anglo-Maltese,
39,339 Sp-tniards, 8,138 Italians, 5,887 Germans,
1,919 Swiss, and 2,251 not spec fled. The French
Algerian army in 1853 (the last year given) numbered
70,496 men, and in 1849 it numbered 75,000. It appears '
that the native population of the colony in the dig.
tricts under military government amounted in 1854 to
2,056,298 souls—viz., 625,296 men, 630,800 women,
and 800,202 children. In the districts '‘‘ occupied by
Europeans there were in 1854 143,387 Europeans (se
already shown), and 105,865 natives, thus making a
total of 249,252 soulr. The total amountof Customs and
navigaticn dues received in Algeria in 1854 was
2,552,7691,, or 102,1111.—viz., 1,937,647 f. from import
dues, 329 f. from export dues, 217,896 f. from " other
Customs' receipts," and 366,896 f. from na, igation
dues. There entered inwards at ports in Algeria, in
1854, 6,817 vessels of .437, and they:
cleared outwards 6,703 vessels, of
These incluie' the vessels esgaged in the AslgaetriaAnl ceorrth
0tf0n5428,240 tonst..
ing trade. 119 British ships entereedinwrd
imports into Algeriag
and that
ports, in 1854. The value of th
fromoi nf tlhBeFse4rxapnwocraetssa
1484021L12736a4,r0e4648:faf. .I,,tioeordrl ,a6:82764,209,4:30712.8:2.4T;9111.e
(Frenchport s
produce),
and 4,295,059 f. (foreign and French colonial
produce). The imports from England were 6,263,0811.,
those from Spain 2,759,1401., and those from Bar
bary 1,961,1721. The imports from all other countries
were under 1,000,0001. The staple exports from tl e
colony appear to be skins, wool, coral, wheat and
barley, flour, pulse, tobacco, olive oil, and lead. These
are the chief (according to the value etumerateJ), by the
list is a long one. The land cultivated for grain in
Algeria includes 761,570 hectares, or 1,993,675 acres ;
the average produce of soft wheat in 1854 was 11.63
hectolitres per hectare, and of hard wheat 10 85 hecto-
litres per hectare ; and the total produce of soft and
hard wheat was respectively 207,082 and 5,054,275 hec-
tolitres. The total produce of grain of all sorts in 1854
was 9,371,640 hectolitres, or 25,772,010 bushels, and
the total value 137,743,847 f., or 5,509,7531. 2,287
hectares of land were cultivated for tobacco in 1853, the
produce having been 1,631,623 kilogrammes, valued at
1,435,926 f.