“NO OCCUPATION.”

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18163, 27 April 1921, Page 9

“NO OCCUPATION.”

In the N.Z. census form the term “domestic duties” takes the place of the misnomer which occasioned the following satire She rose before daylight made crimson the. east, For duties that never diminished. And never the sup when he sank in the west Looked down upon work that was finished. She cooked an unending procession of meals, Preserving pnd canning and baking, She swept and she dusted, she washed and she scrubbed With never a rest from it taking. A family of children she brought in the | world And raised them and trained them and ; taught them, [ She made all the clothes, and patched, ■ n»ended and darned Till miracles seemed to have wrought them. ' She watched -by the -bedside of sickness ' and pain, Her 'hand cooled the raging of fever, She carpentered, painted, upholstered and scraped, And worked just as hard as a beaver. And .yet as a lady of leisure, it seems, The Government looks.cn her station; For now by the rules of the census report It enters her, “No occupation.” —McLandburgh Wilson, in “New York Sun.”