Iowa voter. [volume] (Knoxville, Iowa) 1867-1874, 1874-02-19
One of the Pleasures Of Family Man.

WHAT a 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 on the line and
must be brought in. Now to do this of a
dewy eve in the summer, with the delicate
perfume of flowers filling the air, and a
brass band on the next street, is not ex-
actly hardship; but to do it in the dead
of winter, with chilling breeze blowing,
and the clothes as stiff as a rolling-pin, is
something no man can contemplate with
out quaking We don't quite understand
how it is that man invariably gets his
boots off before the dread summons
comes, but the rest of it is plain enough.
There is a 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
various objects to eternal suffering long
after he has disappeared. There is no
| 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 ac-
cord is too pure and simple for this
world. But our man isn't of that nature.
| He catches hold of the garment with his
chilled hands, and seeks to pull it of, but
| il doesn't come. Then he yanks it up
wards and then downwards and then
| sideways; and when it comes off it main
| tains the shape it has been all the after
noon working into, which permits it just
as readily to enter the basket as to be
| showed through the key-hole of valise.
The first articles he doubles up with his
hands, and there is a faint semblance 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 hand
kerchief that he does in capturing sheet,
and makes two handkerchiefs of every
one. When he gets far from the basket
| he allows the articles to multiply in his
arms, so as to save steps, and when he
| gets his arms full of the awkward and
miserable things, whose sharp icy corners
| lab him in the neck and face, he comes to
an article that refuses to give way on one
end. He pulls and shakes desperately at
it, bowling and screaming in his
rage, until he inadvertently steps on the
dragging end of 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 bask.
ct, 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 il
comes unexpected, and with it part OF
the next article, and he goes over again
this,timc on his back and with violence
With the clothes gathered, he takes the
basket up in his livid hands, thus bring
ing the top articles against his already
frozen chin, and thus tortured, propels his
| lifeless 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 silently plant himself in front of the
stove, and, framing his frozen features in
to an implacable frown, will preserve that
exterior without the faintest modification
until bedtime. Danbury Neps.