University of Virginia Library

NOT AS HIS MOTHER DID.

NO man shows his insignificance and utter uselessness about the house to such a degree as when his wife is mopping up. He feels this, and so does she; and he knows she feels it, which is worse still. To offer an adverse remark on such an occasion is about as insane an enterprise as an individual can embark upon. But a Patch-street man did it Saturday. His wife was mopping the kitchen-floor, and he was moving about the room to keep out of the way of the wet mop, when he unhappily observed that that wasn't the way his mother did it. It was done in a flash. There was a sharp report, as if three

pounds of very wet and very dirty cloths had settled across a human face; and in the same instant a man went over a chair, and half way under a table, looking very much as if a mud volcano had kicked him in the head.