AUTUMN IN DANBURY.
A FRIGHTFUL MISCALCULATION.
A SERIOUS phase of disease is that which attacks a boy on a day when he
particularly objects to going to school. He tells his mother, with the confiding
frankness peculiar to youth, that he does not feel well this morning. He
don't know what it is; but he is lame in the joints, and his head aches,
and his stomach don't feel a bit good. He moves about slowly; openly refuses
food; looks dejected, negligent, unhappy. Quite frequently he can be heard
to sigh. But, in all his pain, he never forgets the clock. As time advances
to the hour which marks school-time, his symptoms increase. He doesn't say
a word about school to his mother: he feels too dreadful, perhaps, to talk
of such things. He is certainly in a bad way. His sighs increase as the dreaded
time approaches, and the physical symptoms of decay grow more and more manifest.
But the greatest suffering he endures mentally. Fifteen minutes to nine is
the
time he should start. It lacks but ten minutes of that time; and nothing
has been said to him about getting ready. He wants to believe he is all right,
because that is the prompting of hope, which is strong in the youthful breast;
but yet he refuses to believe he is, because he fears the re-action of
disappointment. Every time he hears his mother's voice, he is startled; and,
every time he detects her looking toward him, he feels his heart sink within
him. It is a hard thing, indeed, to appear outwardly languid and listless
and drooping, when inwardly one is a roaring furnace of agony; but he does
it, and does it admirably. It now lacks five minutes of the quarter: still
she says nothing. His nervousness is almost maddening. Four minutes, three
minutes, two minutes, one minute: still she makes no sign. Will his reason
forsake him?
It is the quarter. Now he should start, according to custom. One would think
he had every encouragement now; but he knows, that, even at five minutes
later, he can make school by hurrying. The agony of the suspense becomes
exquisite. He trembles all over, and be cannot help it. His hair is moist
with perspiration. It seems as if he would give up every thing, and sink
into the grave, if he could but know the result. How slowly the clock moves!
It stares at him with exasperating stoniness. The ten minutes are reached:
he
breathes easier. Not a word has been said to him about school. His mother
sees that he is too ill to go, and she sympathizes with him. Heaven bless
her! Did ever a boy have such a good, noble mother as this? Visions of sunny
fields, and shady woods, and running streams, unfold before him, stirring
the very depths of his soul, and filling his eyes with tears of gladness.
"John!"
Like a great shock the beautiful pictures fall away, and he is shot from
the pinnacle of hope into the abyss of despair. There is no mistaking the
voice.
"Mercy sakes! here you are not ready for school! Come, start your boots."
"I—I don't feel well enough to go to school," he whines, hardly realizing
the dreadful change that has come upon him with such blighting force and
swiftness.
"I guess you ain't dying, quite," is the heartless reply; and, if you ain't
in school, you will be galloping over the neighborhood. Hurry, I tell you."
"But it is almost nine o'clock, and I'll be late," he protests in desperation.
"Late?" she repeats, looking at the clock. "You've got plenty of time. That
clock is nearly a quarter of an hour fast."
Merciful heavens! He goes down before the terrific blow in a flush. A
quarter of an hour fast!
Bleeding at every pore of his heart, stunned
by a shock which was as terrible as unexpected, he crawls inside of his jacket
and under his hat, and starts on his way in a dazed manner that is pitiful
to behold.
AN ORNAMENTAL STOVE.
THE idea is just suggested, that an ornamental stove be put in the market;
not merely an ornamental article, but one that is artistic,—one that will
adorn as well as comfort the home-circle. It is a good idea, and has our
hearty support. In fact, we are anxious about it. The stove has no nobler
friend than the editor of this paper,—no one who has given it such careful,
intelligent study,—no one who has so faithfully tried to understand it.
So we feel a peculiar right to speak out. The article from which we gather
the suggestion says that there is no reason why there should not be a costly
stove. We don't exactly understand what is meant by this. Every stove we
have had any thing to do with was costly enough. But perhaps the writer refers
to the market-price. If so, we coincide with him. Stoves have been made with
a view to combine beauty and utility with economy. But we suppose the people
are now ripe for a stove that will be an adornment without reference to the
price,—just as they feel in regard to pictures,
vases, &c. An article
in bronze or polished steel, with French-plate micas, mahogany doors, and
German-silver cornice, with an electro-plated scuttle, and a pearl-handled
poker, would not be a bad idea. Such a stove, enclosed in a rosewood cabinet,
and dusted off twice a day by a team of ostriches hired expressly for that
purpose, could not fail of elevating and ennobling the atmosphere of any
home. Its artistic loveliness would render its removal unnecessary in the
spring; and this of itself would save its cost in a very little time. But,
even should it have to be moved, what of it? No man with the least discernment
of the beautiful in his nature would object to being bucked in the abdomen
by a German-silver cornice, or skinning his knuckles on a mahogany door,
or even to plunging headlong over an electro-plated scuttle; and as for sliding
backwards down an entire flight of stairs with so much of the chaste and
beautiful in his arms at once, nothing would compare to it in the way of
luxurious sensations.
Let us have an artistic stove, by all means, with alabaster boots to put
against it.
GOING TO SLEEP IN CHURCH.
DID you ever go to sleep in church? We don't mean to ask if you have done
so deliberately.
Of course you haven't. You put your head on the back of
the seat in front, just to rest it and to think of the sermon. The words
of the preacher are very distinct to you at first. They present something
for your mind to take hold of, and to wrestle intellectually with. Then they
calm you and soothe you. They become a lullaby that floats through your brain,
gently filling in the crevices, and giving you a blissful sense of rest.
They merge themselves so imperceptibly with your most distant thoughts as
to lose their identity. Farther and farther away they sound, until they have
disappeared entirely. The scene suddenly changes. You are in the midst of
a maddened mob. There is a struggle on your part to save yourself from their
violence. You strike out and kick out, and squirm and wrench yourself. It
is a desperate struggle. Every muscle in your body stands out like whip-cords;
every nerve is stretched to its utmost. You succeed in getting free of the
mass. Then you start on a run, with the pack running after you. You cry out
for help; you shriek at the top of your voice for succor. Blindly galloping
along, you come unexpectedly to a precipice. You make an herculean effort
to save yourself; but it is too late. With a scream of terror you go over
its edge, and are hurled headlong into the dreadful abyss below. Then you
awake. You have hit your head on the back of the pew. For
a moment there
is a dreadful vagueness as to your whereabouts: the next moment brings with
it the realization that you are in church, The words of the minister awake
you to this consciousness with awful distinctness. What did you do in that
dream? is a query that takes hold of you with frightful force. Did you throw
your arms in the air? Did you kick the bench? Did you scream out? The
perspiration gathers in great drops on your face, and sharp flashes of heat
shoot along your spine, while there is sinking enough in the pit of your
stomach to start a shaft in a gold-mine. You dare not look up. You can imagine
every eye in the assembly is turned upon you, waiting to confront you face
to face. It is a dreadful feeling,—so dreadful, that it finally becomes
unbearable; and finally you slowly raise your head, and gradually, but furtively,
glance about you. The congregation is as you left them. Not an eye is turned
towards you; and you might believe that you had not been asleep at all, were
it not for the awakening of one leg, accompanied by all the poignant sensations
of that operation.
GOING TO THE FIRE.
THERE is nothing so dreadful as the cry of "Fire" in the night,—unless it
is discovering,
after getting your clothes on wrong, that it was a false
alarm. There is a significance to a cry of "Fire" in a village, which the
city knows not of. In a city, the aroused citizen, on satisfying himself
that the disaster is not near his own premises, retires to bed in the comforting
assurance that he will feast on the particulars in the morning. But, in a
small community, every man is a neighbor: he knows everybody else, and takes
a deep interest in his affairs,—especially in his disaster. He would no
more think of remaining in bed on a cry of "Fire" than he would of remaining
in his grave on the cry of Gabriel. So, when the alarm sounds, the whole
community is aroused, and in a state of intense excitement. The first dash
the awakened citizen makes is over two chairs and a table to the window.
He catches a sight of the flames, and, immediately locating the scene of
the conflagration, goes over the chairs and table again in a search for his
clothes. He would strike a light: but, the instant he touches the match-safe,
it upsets, and throws its contents to the floor; and he might feel around
in the dark for them seven years, without finding one of them. But, darkness
or no darkness, he is deadly earnest. He prances around like a madman; and
every shout and hurrying footstep going by add fresh impetus to his movements.
And, every other time his bare foot descends, it comes down on the heel of
an overturned shoe, and nearly overthrows
him. These shoes are under his
feet all the time till he comes to need them; and then he has to flop down
on his knees, and prowl over the entire floor, before finding them. It is
awful to be in such a nervous state in the dark. To pick up your wife's clothes
ten times to where you do your own once; to strike your naked toes against
the casters of the bed; to step on the round of a chair instead of on the
floor; to get on your pants, and then discover you have left off the drawers;
to try to find the other arm-hole to your vest; to get the left shoe on the
right foot three times in succession; to pull with all your might on a tight
stocking, and find that the heel is on top of your foot,—all these things
are awful. But the climax of the horror is trying to get into a pair of drawers,
one leg of which is wrong side out. You are too excited to discover the error;
although, if you should give the matter an instant of thought, you would
understand that a man never leaves that garment in any other shape on retiring
for the night. But you are too crazed by excitement to think. The whole building
may be burned to the ground before you get there; and this reflection, together
with the awful thought that the fire may be put out before doing much damage,
completely unnerves you. Every movement you have made about the room has
tended to confuse that most valuable garment; and when you finally secure
it, and jab your foot at it
for an opening, the perspiration rolls down your
face to a degree that is blinding. But it is after getting one foot in, and
while waving the other around for the other leglet,—that leglet which is
turned inside out,—that the real agony commences. The thoughts that fill
a man's mind as he reels about like a drunken man, and madly jabs the wondering
foot at the garment in unsuccessful thrusts, cannot be properly depicted.
How he perspires! how he breathes! how he foams at the mouth! how he sobs
and swears!
AN EXASPERATING ARTICLE.
NOW that the house-cleaning is over, a new exasperation sets in. This is
the tidies. All winter long they have been making. The woman from the next
house has either been in and on her knees, examining your wife's worsted
and patterns, or your wife has been on her knees over there, examining hers.
It is the same thing. About a quarter-ton of worsted has been used up. It
has been over the floor, or the tables, or bureau-tops, pretty much all of
the time. It has got entangled with the comb and razor-strop, and other things
which you have wanted. Its favorite receptacle has been the handkerchief-drawer;
and every time you have wanted a handkerchicf has been the signal for a
pitched
battle with that contemptible worsted. Once in a while it has been left on
a chair, the crochet-needles sticking upward: this has instructed, if it
hasn't amused you. The house has been put to rights; and that mass of worsted
and needles, having evolved into block-flowers, step-ladder angels, and crooked
butterflies, is now spread out on the backs of the easiest chairs and the
sofas. We don't like tidies. We don't object to them as works of art; but
we dislike them because of the irritation they cause. They are designed to
set off a chair; but it is the man who sets off that chair. When the head
of the house comes home at night, wearied with toil and argument, and drops
into the easy-chair, the action may be strictly construed into a direct effort
to be comfortable. He leans his head back, and closes his eyes. She pounces
on him at once. "Merciful goodness" is all she is able to exclaim as she
bounces his head from the work of art. She does recover sufficient breath,
however, to wonder "what on earth a man can be thinking of to lay his greasy
head against a tidy. But that's just the way when one tries to be a little
decent, and have the house look a mite respectable." As he cannot sit bolt
upright in an easy-chair, Nature never having intended he should, he sneaks
off to a sofa, and drops down there. He has just got fixed so he can close
his eyes and think, when he is suddenly lifted by the hair, and opens his
eyes to behold a horrified
woman, with an apparently petrified finger pointed
directly at a ruffled tidy.
"My dear," says he meekly, "is there any substantial objection to my going
out and perching myself on a clothes-line?"
But the sarcasm is lost on her.
"What's the use," she angrily demands, "for your lopping yourself down on
any thing like a great horse? Why don't you sit on a chair like anybody else?"
To be sure. Why don't he?
GETTING YOUR PICTURE.
THE operator is just about to withdraw the cloth. His back is toward you.
The index-finger at his unoccupied hand mutely marks the place for your eye.
Every nerve in your body is braced for the ordeal. The cloth is drawn; and
the noiseless and unseen fingers of the prepared plate are picking up your
features one by one, and transferring them to its mysterious surface. What
an influence is this you are under, and which you cannot explain, which weakens
every nerve, and unloosens every cord and muscle, and sets free upon and
over you a myriad of sensations you never knew before! The eye of the camera
glares upon you like the eye of an offended and threatening power. Prickling
sensations
are felt in your scalp; and a heat evolved within with amazing
rapidity flushes to the surface of your body, and leaves it pierced with
a thousand pains. You stare at the mark with an intensity that threatens
to obliterate your sight. Heavens! how slowly the time drags! Your eyes grow
weaker and weaker, filling with water as they die out. You know that they
are closing; but you cannot help yourself. Will he never put back that cloth?
A thousand reflections upon your appearance, on the sounds in the streets,
on things irreverent, and disastrous to your composure, flood your mind,
and take such hold upon you, that you cannot shake them off. And yet no move
to restore that cloth. He stands like a statue cut from flint, and you quivering
from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head, with eyes blinded by
tears, with perspiration oozing from every pore, and every muscle strained
until it seems ready to snap, and let you down upon the floor, a mass of
disfigured and palpitating flesh. He need not put up the cloth
now.
The opportunity which he controlled to reproduce you in perfection is gone.
It matters not now how it looks, only that you get away, and be at rest.
You grow hysteric in your despair. It settles down upon you like a cloud,
compressing your throat within its grasp, until your breath surges back on
to your lungs as if it would rend them. A weight is pressing upon you. You
struggle to wrench yourself
free from the dreadful oppression, and yet not
a muscle of your body is in motion. What dreadful thing is this? You must
shriek; you—The cloth is up; the thirty seconds have expired; and you are
photographed.
A WOMAN'S POCKET.
THE most difficult thing to reach is a woman's pocket. This is especially
the case if the dress is hung up in a closet, and the man is in a hurry.
We think we are safe in saying that he always is in a hurry on such an occasion.
The owner of the dress is in the sitting-room, serenely engrossed in a book.
Having told him that the article which he is in quest of is in her dress-pocket
in the closet, she has discharged her whole duty in the matter, and can afford
to feel serene. He goes at the task with a dim consciousness that he has
been there before, but says nothing. On opening the closet-door, and finding
himself confronted with a number of dresses, all turned inside out, and
presenting a most formidable front, he hastens back to ask, "Which dress?"
and being told the brown one, and also asked if she has so many
dresses that there need be any great effort to find the right one, he returns
to the closet with alacrity, and soon has his hands on the brown dress. It
is inside out,
like the rest,—a fact he does not notice, however, until
he has made several ineffectual attempts to get his hand into it. Then he
turns it around very carefully, and passes over the pocket several times
without being aware of it. A nervous moving of his hands and an appearance
of perspiration on his forehead are perceptible. He now dives one hand in
at the back, and, feeling around, finds a place, and proceeds to explore
it, when he discovers that he is following up the inside of a lining. The
nervousness increases, also the perspiration. He twitches the dress on the
hook; and suddenly the pocket, white, plump, and exasperating, comes to view.
Then he sighs the relief he feels, and is mentally grateful he did not allow
himself to use any offensive expressions. It is all right now. There is the
pocket in plain view,—not the inside, but the outside,—and all he has to
do is to put his hand right around in the inside, and take out the article.
That is all. He can't help but smile to think how near he was to getting
mad. Then he puts his hand around to the other side. He does not feel the
opening. He pushes a little farther. Now he has got it. He shoves the hand
down, and is very much surprised to see it appear opposite his knees. He
had made a mistake. He tries again: again he feels the entrance, and glides
down it, only to appear again as before. This makes him open his eyes, and
straighten his face. He feels of the
outside of the pocket, pinches it curiously,
lifts it up, shakes it, and, after peering closely about the roots of it,
he says, "By gracious!" and commences again. He does it calmly this time,
because hurrying only makes matters worse. He holds up breadth after breadth;
goes over them carefully; gets his hand first into a lining, then into the
air again (where it always surprises him when it appears), and finally into
a pocket, and is about to cry out with triumph, when he discovers that it
is the pocket to another dress. He is mad now. The closet air almost stifles
him. He is so nervous, he can hardly contain himself; and the pocket looks
at him so exasperatingly, that he cannot help but "plug" it with his clinched
fist, and immediately does it. Being somewhat relieved by this performance,
he has a chance to look about him, and sees that he has put his foot through
a bandbox, and into the crown of his wife's bonnet; has broken the brim to
his Panama hat, which was hanging in the same closet; and torn about a yard
of bugle-trimming from a new cloak. As all this trouble is due directly to
his wife's infatuation in hanging up her dresses inside out, he immediately
starts after her, and, impetuously urging her to the closet, excitedly and
almost profanely intimates his doubts of there being a pocket in the dress
anyway. The cause of the unhappy disaster quietly inserts her hand inside
the robe, and directly brings it forth
with the sought-for article in its
clasp. He doesn't know why; but this makes him madder than any thing else.
THE CARPET AT THE DOOR.
SOME women much prefer to use a bit of rag-carpet in place of a regular-made
mat at their doors. It is a good idea. If there is any thing better calculated
to attract a man's attention than a rag-carpet at a door, we don't know of
it. It causes more hard feeling, and is productive of more hard and unforgiving
words, than any article about the house, excepting always the family hammer.
Three pieces of rag-carpet thus situated will bankrupt an upright man inside
of a fortnight, and turn a happy home into an uproarious and outrageous Bedlam.
Not one man in one hundred can go through a door thus protected without catching
his foot in that carpet, to the great danger of flinging himself violently
to the floor, and flattening his nose. And it not only twists his legs, but
it drags over the sill, and catches the door as he shuts it, and starts his
temper afresh. It being too degrading and unmanly to stoop down and remove
the obstacle with his hand, he gives it a kick, and is surprised to see how
easy it is to miss it. He fetches another and more vicious kick at it, and
succeeds in removing about an inch of it. Then
he swings the door to, and,
setting his teeth together, attempts to shut it over the obstacle. The more
the obstruction resists him, the more desperately he pushes. This is on the
generally-received and very agreeable theory, that inanimate things are human
in so far as it is human to be vicious and obstinate. It is the principle
which induces a boy to pound a stick of wood which flies up and hits him.
Having convinced himself that the building will not sufficiently give to
permit of shutting the door without removing the carpet, the carpet is kicked
away (it is never
laid away); and it is either kicked the whole length
of the hall, or tumbled in a heap just outside the sill, where the next person
appearing catches both feet into it, and shoots into the room with hair erect,
eyeballs protruding, and feet madly and passionately endeavoring to recover
their balance.
A SERIOUS PROBLEM.
A READER who is recently married writes us, asking which end of a stove is
the lightest. We really wish we knew; but we don't. A stove is very deceiving;
and one has to become well acquainted with a new one to find its points of
advantage. Our friend should not be too hasty in taking hold of a stove.
A stove that is to be
moved should be visited in the still watches of the
night before, and carefully examined by the light of a good lamp. The very
end we thought the lightest may prove the heaviest (in fact, is extremely
likely to); or it may be that the lightest end is the most dificult to get
hold of and hang on to. It is a very distressing undertaking to carry a half
ton of stove by your finger-nails, with a cold-blooded man easily holding
the other end, and a nervous woman—with a dust-pan in one hand, and a broom
in the other—bringing up the rear, and getting the broom between your legs.
In going up stairs, it is best to be at the lower end of the stove.
Going backwards up a stairway with a stove in your hands requires a delicacy
of perception which very few peopie possess, and which can only come after
years of conscientious practice. If you are below, you have the advantage
of missing much that must be painful to a sensitive nature. The position
you are in brings your face pretty close to the top of the stove; and, as
no one can be expected to see what is going on when thus situated, you are
relieved from all responsibility and thought in the matter, with nothing
to do but to push valiantly ahead, and think of heaven. Then above you is
the carman, whom you do not see, with his lips two inches apart, his eyes
protruding, and his tongue lolling on his chin. And it is well you don't
see-him; for it is an awful sight. But the chief advantage
of being below
is, that, in case of the stove falling, you will be caught beneath it, and
instantly killed. Nothing short of your death will ever compensate for the
scratched paint, soiled carpet, and torn oil-cloth; and no man in his senses,
and with his hearing unimpaired, would want to survive the catastrophe.
FIGHTING THE WIND.
THE wind is governed by atmospheric changes and coal-ashes. We don't know
positively which has the greater influence; but we are inclined to stake
our all on coal-ashes. We do not believe that all the atmosphere about us
can control the wind to the degree that one hod of coal-ashes can when passing
through a sieve in the hands of a man who has got his best suit of clothes
on. We remember an occasion when the wind was blowing direct from the west,
and had been blowing from that direction all day, and bade fair to blow straight
from that direction as long as there was any direction left, that a man (whose
name we need not mention), dressed in his best suit of clothes, and with
pomade on his hair, stood on the west side of a sieve of coal-ashes, and
undertook to screen them. We remember too,—and we remember it with a vividness
that is quite remarkable,—that, when he had gyrated that sieve about three
times, that
western gale veered around to the east with such appalling
promptness, that, before he could make the slightest move to save himself,
he had disappeared—Sunday clothes, pomade, and all—in a blinding cloud
of ashes, out of which immediately emerged the most extraordinary wheezing,
sneezing, and coughing ever heard in that neighborhood. One sieveful of
coal-ashes, with the operator dressed for church, has been known to change
the wind to thirty-two points of the compass.
A COTTON FOE.
ONE of the most annoying complaints in the range of medical knowledge is
a cold in the head. But you would not think so. No newspaper which publishes
intricate recipes for complicated diseases tells, even in the most vague
way, how to cure a cold in the head. No doctor in regular practice pretends
to know any thing about it. It is the wandering Jew of ailments. It invades
every household with impunity, and snaps its feverish finger in the very
face of medical science; and medical science promptly dodges, and is glad
it can. The man with a cold in his head is a mournful fabric to contemplate.
He is ostracized from company. He is barred out from the family circle. He
loses his interest in every thing but a stove and
a handkerchief; and, were
he called upon to give an expression, it would be found that his idea of
heaven was a place where stove-founderies and cotton-mills were about equally
divided. His eyes are watery; his skin is drawn tight to his flesh; his nose
is swollen, of a fiery red, and sorer than a strange dog. What he mostly
fears is the draught; but, in spite of his most active endeavors, he is sure
to get into it; and he is hardly able to conceal his surprise at the pressure
of business the family is subjected to, which keeps the door open about
two-thirds of the time, and establishes an almost uninterrupted current of
air about his legs. Screwed up back of the stove, with his nose like a beacon
shining above it, he patiently holds his handkerchief to the blaze, and finally
slips into a mental calculation as to which will first lose its moisture,—his
cotton, or his blood. There he sits all day, with the handkerchief as a flag
of truce tendered by the fire in his head to the fire in the stove; and at
night he goes scudding through a cold hall, sneezing at every leap. Long
after every one else is asleep, he starts up with a terrific sneeze, and
finds that his feet are sticking out below the quilts, and that the handkerchief,
which he meant to have carefully located for just this emergency, is nowhere
to be found.
NOW AND THEN.
YOU know her. She lives on your street. Her features are either pinched,
or full and frowzy. Her dress is wet, ill-fitting, and of no particular pattern;
her slippers are broken down; her hair is uncombed; her voice is either shrill
or coarse. You have seen her stand out in the back-yard, and put a bare arm
up to her eyes, and under it peer out to the fence or barn, where a man,
in an ill-fitting coat, is searching for something; and have heard her shout,
"John! can't George bring me some water?" and you have heard him cry back,
"If he don't get that water, I will take every inch of flesh from his bones."
And, when you have looked at her again, does it seem possible that those
angry eyes have drooped in maidenly reserve, or raised in coquettish light
to the face of the man in the ill-fitting coat? Can you, by any possible
wrench of the imagination, conceive of his tenderly passing peppermints to
her? of his taking that hand in his, and bashfully squeezing it? But it was
so. Many a "God bless you" has been uttered above that bare head, many a
kiss pressed on that uncombed hair. The tightly-compressed lips have lovingly
framed tender invitations to him to take another bite of cake and pickle.
The hands that are now parboiled and blistered, and marked with scars from
the bread-knife, and scratches
from the last setting-hen, were once twined
lovingly about his neck; and the nose, which is now peaked and red, and looks
as if it would stand on its hind-legs and scream with rage, once followed
the figures of his new vest-pattern, or bore heavily against his jugular
vein. As little probable as this seems to you, it seems less to her. She
has forgotten it: she won't hear it talked of by others: she cannot bear
to see it acted by others. Two lovers are to her a "passel of fools." And—but
George is rubbing his head; and we turn aside while our heroine re-adjusts
her slipper.
A PECULIAR TORTURE.
HAVING a photograph taken is one of the great events in a man's life. The
chief desire is to look the very best; and on the success of the picture
hinges, in many cases, the most important epoch in life. To work up a proper
appearance time enough is used, which, if devoted to catching fleas for their
phosphorus, would cancel the entire national debt, and establish a New-York
daily paper. When you have completed your toilet, you go to the gallery,
and force yourself into a nonchalance of expression that is too absurd for
any thing. Then you take the chair, spread your legs gracefully, appropriate
a calm and indifferent look, and
commence to perspire. An attenuated man
with a pale face, long hair, and a soiled nose, now comes out of a cavern
and adjusts the camera. Then he gets back of you, and tells you to sit back
as far as you can in the chair, and that it has been a remarkably backward
spring. After getting you back till your spine interferes with the chair
itself, he shoves your head into a pair of ice-tongs, and dashes at the camera
again. Here, with a piece of discolored velvet over his head, he bombards
you in this manner: "Your chin out a little, please." The chin is protruded.
"That's nicely: now a little more." The chin advances again; and the pomade
commences to melt, and start for freedom. Then he comes back to you, and
slaps one of your hands on your leg in such a position as to give you the
appearance of trying to lift it over your head. The other is turned under
itself, and has become so sweaty, that you begin to fear that it will stick
there permanently. A new stream of pomade finds its way out, and starts downward.
Then he shakes your head in the tongs till it settles right, and says it
looks like rain, and puts your chin out again, and punches out your chest,
and says he doesn't know what the poor are to do next winter, unless there
is a radical change in affairs; and then takes the top of your head in one
hand, and your chin in the other, and gives your neck a wrench that would
earn any other
man a prominent position in a new hospital. Then he runs his
hand through your hair, and scratches your scalp, and steps back to the camera
and the injured velvet for another look. By this time, new sweat and pomade
have started out. The whites of your eyes show unpleasantly; and your whole
body feels as if it
had been visited by an enormous cramp, and another and
much bigger one was momentarily expected. Then he points at something for
you to look at; tells you to look cheerful and composed; and snatches away
the velvet, and pulls out his watch. When he gets tired, and you feel as
if there was but very little left in this world to live for, he restores
the velvet, says it is an unfavorable day for a picture, but he hopes for
the best, and immediately disappears in his den. Then you get up and stretch
yourself, slap on your hat, and immediately sneak home, feeling mean, humbled,
and altogether too wretched for description. The first friend who sees the
picture says he can see enough resemblance to make certain that it is you;
but you have
tried to look too formal to be natural and graceful.
AN ABUSED BOY.
YOU can always tell a boy whose mother cuts his hair. Not because the edges
of it look as if it had been chewed off by an absent-minded horse; but you
tell it by the way he stops on the street and wriggles his shoulders. When
a fond mother has to cut her boy's hair, she is careful to guard against
any annoyance and muss by laying a sheet on the carpet. It has never yet
occurred to her to sit him over a bare floor, and put the sheet around his
neck. Then she draws the front hair over his eyes, and leaves it there while
she cuts that which is at the back. The hair which lies over his eyes appears
to be surcharged with electric needles, and that which is silently dropping
down under his shirt-band appears to be on fire. She has unconsciously continued
to push his head forward until his nose presses his breast, and is too busily
engaged to notice the snuffing sound that is becoming alarmingly frequent.
In the mean time, he is seized with an irresistible desire to blow his nose,
but recollects that his handkerchief is in the other room. Then a fly lights
on his nose, and does it so unexpectedly, that he involuntarily dodges, and
catches the points of the shears in his left ear. At this he commences to
cry, and wish he was a man. But his mother doesn't notice him. She merely
hits him on the other ear to inspire him with confidence, and goes on with
the work. When she is through, she holds his jacket-collar back from his
neck, and with her mouth blows the short bits of hair from the top of
his
head down his back. He calls her attention to this fact; but she looks for
a new place on his head, and hits him there, and asks him why he didn't use
his handkerchief. Then he takes his awfully disfigured head to the mirror,
and looks at it, and, young as he is, shudders as he thinks of what the boys
on the street will say.
THE NEW-ENGLAND FESTIVAL.
THERE is no day so dear to New England as Thanksgiving. It is the event of
the year in the home-circle. On that day the family is united, if possible
to come together. The married son with his wife and children are there; the
married daughter with her husband and children are there too; and the respective
grandchildren make it hot for the proud and happy grand-parents, and very
nearly eat them out of house and home, as it were. The unmarried daughter
comes home from school, bringing a companion with her; and the nephews and
nieces are astonished at the magnitude of the bustles and the number of hair-pins
these two bring with them. But the chief object in the home-circle to the
old folks is the unmarried son, the son of their declining years,—the boy-clerk
in New York. He comes home to the old roof-tree young, fresh, and hopeful.
He has not yet developed;
and all the hopes of his parents are centred, founded
as a rock, upon his future. He arrives the evening before, takes a hearty
supper, and goes out to look up a billiard-room. Thanksgiving Day, to be
natural, should come and go with a sunless, leaden sky. The family, having
retired late, rise late. Not much breakfast is eaten in a New-England home.
The meeting of those long separated, the feeling of reverence and gratitude
peculiar to the day's observance, the haste to get to church, and the fact
that a dinner calculated to tax every facility of the stomach will soon be
served, tend to make the breakfast a hasty and imperfect meal. That dinner
is a spectacle. The room is enlivened by suitable decorations. The table
is set out with the best plate and ware. The cooking is simply splendid.
The variety of food is almost unlimited. Every chair is occupied. Every heart
shows its gladness in the beaming face and bright eye. Home again!—home
with the self-sacrificing and generous father,—home with the dear mother's
cooking steaming deliciously in every nostril. Heaven bless her! What an
awful mockery Thanksgiving dinner would be without her! How her eyes shine
as she looks from the well-appointed board to the enjoying ones surrounding
it!—bone of her bone, and flesh of her flesh. What fun there is at that
table! How everybody praises the cooking! and how greasy and shiny are the
chubby
faces of the grand-children! They do not understand fully the significance
of the feast; but they are happy in the midst of its vapors and odors, and
intend to have the wish-bone, if they have to smash an own brother or sister
flat with the earth. Ah, happy father! years have come and gone since this
home was founded. And how it has grown! There is moisture in his eye, and
a tremor to his lip, as he looks over the glad faces about him to see—who
of that band so dear to him may be out of gravy or "stuffin'." Ah! it seems
to us that we could knock the stuffing out of any man who could look with
an evil eye upon such a scene.
But the dinner draws to a close, precious as its associations are; and each
guest, with several pounds of food in his or her stomach, held down by a
quarter of mince-pie, withdraws from the table, and carefully fondles his
or her stomach surreptitiously and uneasily. The afternoon wanes apace. The
unmarried daughter shows her married sisters how to do up their back-hair
in the latest style, and tells of the number of pieces of underclothing it
is now necessary to have, with other information too subtle for the masculine
comprehension. The men-folks are off about town, looking at the improvements,
and enjoying memories of the past and the gripes all to themselves.
And then comes the night, and with its deepening shadows the re-united family
are beneath the
old roof-tree. The day is spent; and the morrow will see
them speeding on their different ways,—that morrow, which comes whether
we will or not, when every one returns to his own, leaving behind him the
dear old home and a warmed-up turkey. To-morrow the family must dissolve
into its respective fractions; but they are together now, and no dread of
the morrow shall mar the silent joy. And the night has come. It has been
a day of pleasure, a day of rejoicing, a day of glad memories, a day of praise,
a day of thanksgiving; and as night broods over the home, and one after another
the dear ones awake, and scream for the camphor, and chew nervously at bits
of sweet-flag, they all realize the wonderful significance of the day. Heaven
be merciful to the home that has no Thanksgiving, no glad memories, no camphor,
no sweet-flag!
SHE GOT THAT CHICKEN HERSELF.
IT is just as necessary to have poultry for a Thanksgiving dinner as it is
to have light. A Danbury couple named Brigham were going to have poultry
for their dinner. Mr. Brigham said to his wife the day before the event,—
"I saw some splendid chickens in front of Merrill's store to-day; and I guess
I'll get one of them this afternoon for to-morrow."
"I am going to tend to that myself," said Mrs. Brigham quickly.
"But I can get it just as well: I'm going right by there."
"I don't want you to get it," she asserted. "When I eat chicken, I
want something I can put my teeth in." And a hard look came into her face.
He colored up at once.
"What do you mean by that?"
"Just what I say," she explained, setting her teeth together.
"Do you mean to say I don't know how to pick out a chicken?" he angrily demanded.
"I do."
"Well, I can just tell you, Mary Ann Brigham, that I know more about chickens
in one minute than you could ever find out in a lifetime; and, furthermore,
I am going to buy that chicken, if one is bought at all in this house." And
he struck the table with his fist.
"And I tell you, John Joyce Brigham," she cried, "that you don't know any
more how to pick out a good chicken than an unweaned mud-turtle; and, if
you bring a chicken in this house, it will go out again quicker'n it come
in; and you can put that in your pipe an' smoke it as soon as you want to."
"Whose house is this, I want to know?" he fiercely demanded.
She frankly replied at once,—
"I suppose it belongs to a flat-head idiot with a wart on his nose. But a
woman who knows a spring chicken from a hump-back camel is running the
establishment; and, as long as she does, he can't bring no patent-leather
hens here to be cooked."
"You'll see what I'll do!" he yelled; and he pulled his coat on, and jammed
his cap on his head, with the forepiece over his left ear.
"You bring a chicken here if you think best, Mister Brigham," she
replied.
"You see if I don't!" he growled, as he passed out, and slammed the door
behind him.
That evening there was a nice, fine chicken in the pantry: but he didn't
bring it. Perhaps he forgot to get his.
Dinner came the next day. Mr. Brigham took his seat at the table as usual;
but it was evident that he intended mischief. Mrs. Brigham filled a plate
with chicken, mashed potatoes, and boiled onions. It was a tempting dish,
emitting a delicious aroma. She passed it to Mr. Brigham. He did not look
towards it.
"Brigham," said she, "here's your plate."
"I don't want any chicken," he said, looking nervously around the room.
"Are you going to eat that chicken?" she demanded in a voice of low intensity.
"No, I ain't. Wooh! ouch! ooh!"
She had sprung to her feet in a flash, reached over the table, caught him
by the hair, and had his face burrowing in the dish of hot onions. It was
done so quick, that he had no time to save himself, and barely time to give
utterance to the agonizing exclamations which followed upon his declaration.
"Are you going to eat that chicken?" she hoarsely demanded.
"Lemme up!" he screamed.
She raised his head from the dish, and jammed it on the table.
"John Joyce Brigham," she hissed between her set teeth, "this is a day set
apart by the nation for thanksgiving and praise. I got that chicken to celebrate
this day, and I ain't going to have my gratitude and devotion upset by such
a runt as you are. Now I want to know if you are going to eat that chicken
like a Christian, or if you are going to cut up like a cantankerous heathen.
Answer me at once, or I'll jam your old skull into a jelly."
"I—I'll eat it!" he moaned,
Then she let him up, and he took his plate; and one Thanksgiving meal, at
least, passed off harmoniously.
THE SQUIGGSES ARE GRATEFUL.
THANKSGIVING is strictly a New-England day. Its religious element makes it
harmonious with
the well-known sentiment of New England. It is a day for
feasting, and giving thanks unto God for his care and love during the year;
and was observed by the Squiggses, a representative family, in an eminently
characteristic manner. They had chicken for dinner. Mr. Squiggs won the chicken
the night before at a raffle. The day dawned auspiciously. The young Squiggses,
three in number, after a late breakfast, went out to slide on the ice. Mr.
Squiggs proceeded to fix up a length in the back-fence, which had needed
repair for several weeks. Mrs. Squiggs busied herself with the affairs of
the house, in the intricacies of which she was soon completely submerged.
When the church-bells pealed forth their glad notes, calling a grateful people
to the temple of a merciful God to worship him for his goodness, Mr. Squiggs
was trying to saw a barrel in two for a chicken-coop, and was carrying on
like a corsair because of the eccentricity of the saw; and Mrs. Squids was
disembowelling the chicken. At half-past twelve, when the worshippers were
coming from church, Mr. Squiggs was beating the soot out of a length of
stove-pipe; and Mrs. Squiggs was sweeping out the parlor, or "front-room"
as the Squiggses called it. The three little Squiggses, with appetites like
a shark, had returned from the sliding on the ice, being driven therefrom
by hunger, and were huddled about the kitchen-fire, with a dreadful heart-sick
look in their
faces, produced by the dinner-hour, when there is no visible
prospect of a dinner at hand. The kitchen was all confusion; the "front-room"
was cold, and floating with dust, in which Mrs. Squids appeared like a being
of mythology, with red arms, and a towel wrapped about her head; the air
outside was cold and cheerless in the contemplation of an empty stomach;
and the blows on the stove-pipe sounded most dismally. About three o'clock
P.M., the dinner was served. The little Squiggses, having been cuffed alongside
the head by their impatient father, and walked over several times by the
hurrying mother, were in an active condition for an onslaught on the meal,
and fell to work in a most vehement manner. The father, who had omitted to
ask God to bless the food, or to thank him for his mercies, said they acted
like hogs. This was a harsh criticism; but it had no visible effect on their
enthusiasm. When the meal was over, the three boys slid out for the pond,—their
faces shining with the friction of the feast,—the father went out to hunt
up some bits of board for a coal-bin, and the mother went to work to "clear
up." Late in the afternoon the boys returned, having succeeded in swapping
off a three-wheeled wagon for a quart of walnuts. In the evening the father
went down to the saloon and lost seventy-five cents at raffling, and about
ten o'clock returned. The boys, having had a good time, were lying on the
floor close to the stove, asleep; and the mother was busy letting in a square
of dark cloth into the rotunda of a pair of light pants. With the memory
of his losses still upon him, the father intimated to the boys, with his
boot-toes, that it was time to retire, which they did. Then he pulled off
his boots, and moved around in his stocking-feet, occasionally pausing to
make some vivid observation on nut-shells, preceded by that simple but fervent
expression,—
"Ouch!"
Shortly after, the twain retired; and thus closed a day set apart for rejoicing
and thankfulness before God.
MR. COBLEIGH LOOKS AFTER THE BREAD.
MRS. COBLElGH had to run over to a neighbor's see about pickling some green
tomatoes. She had a loaf of bread in the oven; and she told Cobleigh to take
care of it. Mr. Cobleigh was home with a boil on his knee. She said, "It
won't be any trouble to you. In about fifteen minutes, it will be done at
this end; and then you turn it around so that the other can bake. I'll be
back in time to take it out."
Then she threw a shawl over her head, and started. About five minutes after
she was gone, one of the neighbors came in to show Mr. Cobleigh
a
double-barrelled gun which he had just bought. After Mr. Cobleigh had carefully
examined it, and held it up, and aimed at imaginary game with it, he was
forcibly reminded of a gun which his father owned when Cobleigh was a boy,
and when the family were living in Sandersville. There were a number of
astonishing incidents connected with this remarkable fowling-piece, which
Cobleigh proceeded to relate in a vivid and captivating manner. Suddenly
the neighbor snuffed up his nose, and hastily observed,—
"I say, what's the matter here? Any thing afire?"
Cobleigh glanced at the stove, and then at the clock, while his face became
pallid.
"By Jove!" he ejaculated, "my wife told me to look at that bread in fifteen
minutes; and she's been gone over a half-hour. That's what's burning." And
Cobleigh, with an expression of genuine distress, essayed to rise; but the
neighbor promptly came to his relief.
"Let me tend to it; you can't get around easily," he said.
He opened the oven-door, and a puff of smoke came out.
"It's a goner, I'm afraid," he said, dropping on his knees.
It appeared to be so. Two-thirds of the loaf was as black as the ace of spades;
and there were
little flakes of live coal scattered over its surface. With
that impulsive, trusting nature peculiar to a man, the sympathetic neighbor
thrust his hand into the oven, and laid hold of that blazing, baking tin
without the faintest hesitation. Then he drew out his hand, with the awfullest
howl ever heard on that street, and—
Poor Mr. Cobleigh! In his anxiety for the bread, and sympathy for his wife,
he had approached to the rear of his friend, and was looking over his shoulder
at the ruin, when the astonished arm was swung back; and the owner thereof
instantly lost sight of his own misery in the terrific yell which ascended
just behind him. The arm struck an obstacle; and the unfortunate Mr. Cobleigh
rolled over on the floor, screaming with all his might,—
"You've busted it! O heavens! you've busted it!"
It was an anguish no mortal words could allay. The neighbor saw this at a
glance: so he picked up his gun, and silently scudded home. A moment later,
Mrs. Cobleigh came in; and the instant she opened the door, Mr. Cobleigh
ceased his moans, scrambled to his feet, and stalked majestically to their
bedroom, where he locked the door, and put the bureau against it. Three minutes
later, Mrs. Cobleigh knocked at the door for admittance; but of course it
was not opened.
Then she put her mouth to the keyhole, and shouted.—
"I wouldn't make a fool of myself, if I was you, John Cobleigh. It is
a great pity I can't be gone out of this house A SINGLE MINUTE, but
that the whole place has got to be turned upside down, and things go to
ruin."
She actually said that.
THE quilting-season is upon us. The frames are up stairs in the garret, with
the nails conspicuously standing out in them. The man of the house brings
them down. It takes about an hour to bring down a set of quilting-frames
in a proper manner. In the first place, they have to be got out from under
five barrels, two trunks, and an assortment of boxes; and it's wonderful
the quality of tenacity one nail possesses when it gets caught under some
object you cannot see. The frames catch against the chimney, or entangle
with the rafters; while there is never any unity between them in descending
a narrow stairway. No one really knows how a man gets down stairs with a
set of quilting-frames; but anybody not irredeemably deaf knows that it is
being done, if on the same street with the performance. Then the frame is
bolstered up on chairs in the best room, and the long arms stick out, and
catch the unwary husband in his clothes, and, in turn, are dropped to the
floor just as the weary wife is about to take a
stitch; and the remarks she
makes as the quilt suddenly collapses are calculated to instantaneously transform
his scalp into a parade-ground. Four pounds of cotton-batting are required
on this occasion: three and a half pounds go into the quilt, and the other
half-pound he carries around with him on his clothes.
THE dining-room stove is not up yet, of course. It is a little too early,
and the cleaning is not yet done: besides, the heat from the kitchen-fire
is a great help, as you will perceive while turning up the sleeves to your
overcoat, so as not to get them in the breakfast coffee.
HOUSE CLEANING.
A WOMAN feels as if she has missed her destiny in some way if she has not
arranged the cleaning-season so as to take in one wet, miserable Sunday.
THERE is not a woman living who has the honesty to admit she likes to clean
house. She realizes just how despicable it is, just how much misery it inflicts
on those about her. That is the reason she dare not come out openly before
the world, and boldly confess what is really a fact.
No stove is to be put up until the house is cleaned: it is immaterial what
the weather is. And, in the week the rejuvenating is going on, a man has
more misery thrust upon him, and driven into him, and filtered through him,
than it would seem possible for one human being to hold.
WHAT strikes a man as being almost supernaturally remarkable is the fact
that house-cleaning and the line-storm invariably strike the earth at one
and the same time. He can't very well protest against the heavens; and he
well knows there is no earthly use of arguing the matter with his wife.
IT has been satisfactorily demonstrated, that, when a man steps on a bar
of soap which has been left on the top step, it will start down stairs with
him, and, though having much the best start, will yet be overtaken and passed
by him before it gets half way down. This sounds almost like an Eastern allegory;
but every married man knows it is true.
THERE is a fire in the kitchen,—a good fire. If the man of the house feels
cold, why don't he go in there? It is a good place, is the kitchen. Every
fly in the family is in there to receive him, and sing to him, and prance
around with him. The table is loaded with fly-specked dishes; and there is
a four-
gallon pail of boiling water on the stove, and mop-cloths and white-wash
pails and tinware on the floor, with a poorly discriminating girl with red
arms diving to and fro with a pan of hot water in her hands. It
is
a little singular that the half-frozen and wholly crazed man does not take
to the kitchen for comfort.
SHAKING a carpet is a feature of house-cleaning which thoroughly enlists
the attention of the man of the house. It is done after dinner. The reason
the woman selects this time is because he is dressed, and has to go back
to business again without a chance to change his clothes. He carries the
carpet out doors. It is not rolled up; it is in a wad shape: and he gathers
it up in his arms, and starts for the door, with one end of the carpet dragging
between his feet. He scorns to stop and roll it up. He has got his arms full.
It presses into his bosom, and leaves rifts of sand and grit on his shirt-front;
it bulges into his face, hot and dusty, and fills his mouth and nose and
eyes. Then the long end gets under one foot as he is going down the back-stoop,
and the other foot mounts up the breadth; and he stumbles, but catches himself,
and prevents falling to the ground on his face by deliberately yet blindly
jumping off the stoop. He finally gets the carpet on the line. It is very
warm. There is a breeze from the west. He
steps on the west side of the carpet,
and hits it a lick with a stick: instantly the wind turns sharp around to
the east, and he is ingulfed in dust. He darts around to the east side, and
hits it another lick: the wind veers around to the west simultaneously; and
he is plunged into a sneezing-fit, which seriously threatens to dislocate
his neck. Then he pauses, and looks around uneasily. He sees that a carpet
has the same effect on the wind as a sieveful of coal-ashes, and he doesn't
understand it. He gets a clothes-pole, and stands around at the north end,
and hits the carpet a terrible rap: the wind promptly sails around to the
south, and catches him full in the face with a pint of dust before the pole
has fairly left the carpet. He doesn't stop to reason now: he would be a
jackass if he did. He grasps the pole with all his might, and madly smashes
it against the carpet, and dances around the line, and coughs, and sneezes,
and swears. After that, it is pulled down; and the hired girl, with the strength
of an ox, takes hold of an end with him, and they proceed to shake it. His
hands are in blisters across the palms; and his fingers, aching with the
grasp on the pole, can seem to find no hold on the woof and warp. At every
other shake they glide off, starting the nails, and causing his arms to tingle
clear to the elbows; and, every time he picks up that carpet, he does it
with renewed energy and a weaker
backbone. The most we can hope for a man
in this position is, that he is not a deacon of a church, and the hired girl
a member of it.
NO words can satisfactorily paint the bleakness, the dreariness, the dejection,
the awful gloom, of a house being cleaned. The windows are out;,the carpets
are up; and the dining-room table is full of dishes. Every other chair contains
either a basin of water or a wet cloth or brush. The air is permeated with
soap and wet and mould and new white-wash. All the furniture is piled
promiscuously in the centre of the rooms, excepting what is left in a heap
in the hall. In front of the bed-room closet-door is a rocking-chair full
of bed-clothes; and, when the man wants to get there after an old coat, he
has to climb and shove to get the door open, and, after once in, he has to
push like a battering-ram to get out again. The pictures are arranged on
the floor, leaning against the walls in a way to catch the unwary boot-heel
and unthinking bed-post. There is a saucer of rusty tacks on the tete-a-tete,
and a besmeared bottle of balsam on the what-not, and an empty ink-bottle
in the card-basket; while the marble top centre-table contains an album,
a piece of dried soap, an elegant lithograph, one tack-hammer, a half-can
of potash, a beautiful scriptural motto on cardboard, and ninety-seven dead
flies. It is this general upsetedness, this
awful conglomeration, this dreadful
uncertainty; which gives the home-circle its glow of terror to a man. This
is what makes him move around as little as possible in the house, and causes
him every other moment to smite his head, and gives him the vacant expression
always inseparable with the face of a man whose wife is cleaning house. And
she—is she in pain? She has got on a torn dress, hitched up at one side
sufficiently to reveal an unbuttoned shoe; there are flakes of white-wash
in her hair and on her chin; her dress is wet; her fingers are parboiled,
and her thumb has been split with a hammer: but her eye is as clear and bright
as that of a major-general on field-day. She picks up a handful of skirts,
and skims through the apartments, seeing five hundred things which should
be done at once, and trying to do them; and every time she comes in reach
of the dresser she snatches a look into the glass, and shoves a fresh hair-pin
into her dilapidated coil. And thus planted in the
debris, like a
queen on her throne, she unblushingly asserts that "It's an awful job;" "Every
thing is in wretched shape;" "I'll be so glad when this is over!" "It does
seem as if my back will snap in two;" "I'm a good mind to say I'll never
clean house again as long as I live." and then her mind unconsciously soars
heavenward, and she wonders if there will be a house-cleaning season there,
and, if not, how a
heaven can be made of it. It is this speculation which
gives her that dreamy expression when she is cutting your bread with the
soap-knife.
JUST such weather as this instils new life and animation into a man, and
is apt to make him frolicsome. It stimulates him to racing, jumping up and
down, clapping his hands, and feeling good generally. It so stimulated one
of our merchants on Friday evening, and led him to invite his wife to catch
him before be got round to the back-stoop. He started on a smart run; and
she bore down after him at a creditable speed. He tore around the corner
very much in earnest, and, stepping on a piece of ice, swung from his foothold,
and went careening across ten feet of frozen ground, and brought up with
considerable force against a pear-tree,—a new variety, we believe. It was
a genial spectacle to see the fond wife pounce on him, and hear her gleeful
shouts of victory as he struggled madly to his feet, and besought her "not
to make a darn fool of herself."
[Description: Fighting the Wind. — Page 220.]
[Description: A Peculiar Torture. — Page 224.]