A STRIKE IN THE PARLOUR.
The wife of a distinguished Private in one of the Civil Service Rifle Corps has struck for an increase of housekeeping money; for she says her husband comes home now with such an enormous appetite after having been two hours at drill, that it is utterly impossible to provide the dinners for the same allowance that she has hitherto done. Suppers, too, were formerly an unknown thing in her establishment; but now, regularly three times a-week, her lord and master complains of being so hungry before going to bed, that the tray has to be brought up purposely for him. His consumption is full three times greater than it was before he became a Volunteer. It is, therefore, under these indisputable facts,- to prove which butchers’ and bakers’ bills can be brought forward in scores too formidable to admit of a sneer, or much less a denial,- that an increase of the home estimates has been peremptorily demanded; and we believe that matters have reached such an alarming height in the establishment in question, that the lady has found it necessary to make a special appeal to her respected mother-in-law to induce her to interfere in the matter, with a view of arbitrating upon it, and getting it properly settled as it ought to be.
It was only yesterday, we are informed, that this poor unfortunate Volunteer, whose appetite is seemingly far beyond his control, finished a leg of mutton almost by himself; and the worst is, with the small Government pittance which as an underpaid Government clerk he draws, that this is a degree of voraciousness which he can ill afford. From the additional exercise that he has lately been taking, his appetite has completely outgrown the small size of his means, which at the best of times was always a tight fit; but now shortly it will be quite impossible for him, without pulling in a great deal, to make both ends meet, if he goes on much longer at the same extravagant rate. What with the drilling he gets when he goes home, his present life will soon be too much for him; though the latter, it must be confessed, though carried out with the greatest severity, has not the slightest effect in diminishing the enormous powers of demolition sharpened to an unnatural degree by the former.
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