A WASHERWOMAN ON POSTAGE.

Auckland Star, Volume VI, Issue 1636, 17 May 1875, Page 2

A WASHERWOMAN ON POSTAGE.

(To the Editor of the Evening Stab). Sib, —I hear that you be a good natur'd man, and do answer all hard questions that we poor people puts to you. Ibe a poor woman, with a sick old man, and three little grand children orphan's as are to keep, and one son in England. My old man's friend comes in the other evening, and my old man says :—" How we be a tax'd here !" So the other answers: " Well, you be a taxed to pay for the mails as goes to England and for the passenger boats for our great men to get here in, and for the banks and merchants to send their letters in, and you must a pay such taxes, although I do grumbles at this myself sometimes." And then the two of them did fell too a grumblin' loud over the taxes which we pays for sending letters about and a getting fast vessels for the letters to go in, and our great men to get along comfortable. But I think to myself, thinks I, " Well, we be a taxed in this blessed country!" Two days afterwards I goes to the post with a letter for my one boy, as I have in England, and the man there he says to me, " Come, old lady, this won't do, you must put a shillin's worth of stamps on this." So I plucks up courage andi says to the gentleman, "What! am I to be tax'd. again npon my letters; I be awmost ruin'd with your tax's awready !" And so he squares himself to look big at me, and says he to me: "It aren't any taxation this; you V havn't a been to my Universate, or yoa> would a been taught that there." Well, Mr Editor, my eyes they filled up with tears when I heard this, for it was the last shillin in the world that I had to give to put stamps upon my letter, and I were a aggravated sore at bein told this warh't taxation. I could not send my letters by \ any one else, who would have tuk it for me for thrippens and then that aire fella tellin me that I wara't tax'd, and that they had pruo'd it to be Greek at the Univarsate that you payin for" the Post-office warnt taxation ! Now, Mister Editor, what I want to ask you is, to tell me what it be. They do make me pay so much mare on my sugar, on my tea, on my soap, on my starch, and button-blue, of which I use a good deal, and on my clothes, and on the lawleys for my grandchildren and this is all to help, in fact to pay the cost of,, sending the letters about to the marchants and the other great people we've got here and elsewhere in New Zealand. AaA^^aJn they make me spend another shillin',||rft last I had in the world, to send homevJWletter to my poor boy, that they till me tj»» great man at the, Universate have {■•'., shown by Greek such as they talks M that Univarsate that this ain't taxation*

.•and that we ben'fc a tax'd in this country. So you plase, siiv be so good and so kind to tell me what be the name you do call a takin' my money by this way from me [ —Yours, &c, Dorothy Scrubs.