Sunbury American. [volume] (Sunbury, Pa.) 1848-1879, 1874-08-07
MiseeIIamfoms.
Gathering in the Washing.

What frightful sensation that is when
you have just got home of cold Monday
night, and pulled your boots off, to be told
| that the weeks washing is out on the line
and must be brought in.
Now to do this of a dewy eve in the sum-
mer, with the delicate perfume of flowers
filling the air, and brass band on the next
street, is not exactly hardship; but to do
it in the dead of winter, with a chilling
breeze blowing, and the clothes as stiff
as rolIing-pin, is something no man
can contemplate without quakiDg. We
don't quite understand how it is that q man
invariably gets his boots off before the
dread summons comes, but the rest of it is
plain enough. There is sort Of rebellious
| feeling in his heart which prompts him to
try to entangle his wife in an argument, and
failing in this he snatches up the basket,
and goes out in the yard with it, rapping
| it against the chairs and knocking it.,
against the sides of the door with as much
vigor as if it was not purely accidental. If
the fond wife is anyway attentive she can
hear his well known voice consigning vari-
Gus objects to eternal suffering, long after
he has disappeared.
There is not the least levity in line of
frozen clothes. Every article is as frigid
as the Cardiff giant, and the man who
wrenches the pin off and then holds the
basket in expectation of seeing the piece
drop off the line of its own accord, is too
pure and simple for this world. But our
man isn't that nature.
He catches hold Of the garment with his
chilled hands, and seeks to pull it off, but
it doesn't come. Then he yanks it up
wards and then sideways; and when it
comes off it maintains the shape it has been
all the afternoon working into, which per-
mits it just as readily to enter the basket as
to be showed through he key hole of va
| lise. The first articles he doubles up with
| his hands, and there is faint resemblance
of carefulness in packing them away but
after that he smashes them into the basket
without any ceremony, and crowds them
down with his foot. He uses the same care
in taking down fine cambria handkerchief
that he does in capturing sheet, and makes
two handkerchiefs of every one. When he
gets far from the baske. he allows the arti-
cles to multiply to his arms, so as to save
steps and when he gets his arms full of the
awkward and miserable things, whose
sharp, icy corners jab him in the neck and
face, he comes to an article that refuse to
give way on the end.
He pulls and shakes desperately at it.,
bowling and screaming in his rage, until
he inadvertently steps on the dragging end
of q sheet, and then he comes down fiat on
the frozen snow. But he bounds up again,
grating his teeth, and hastily depositing
the bundle in the basket, darts back to the
refractory member, and taking hold of it,
fiercely tugs at it, while he fairly jumps up
and down in the extremity Of his anger and
cold.
Then it comes unexpectedly, and with it
a part of the next article, and he goes over
again-tEis time on his back and with vio-
lence. With the clothes gathered, he takes
the basket up in his livid hands, thus bring
ing the top articles against bis already
frozen chin, and thus tortured, propeis his
Gfeless limbs into the house. She stands
ready to tell him to close the door, and is
thoughtful enough to ask him if it's cold
work. But if he is wise man he will make
no answer. If he is wise man he will
silently plant himself in front of the stove,
and framing his frozen features into an i'm
2acable frown will preserve that exterior
without the faintest modification until bed
time.-Ddnbury Ne11S.