Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1874-02-19
One of the Pleasures of Family Man.

WHAT frightful sensation that is when
you have just got home of a 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 a 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 a 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 a 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 &C
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 off, but
it doesn't come Then he yanks it up
wards and then downwards and then
sideways; and when it comes off it main
to5p tho cIaroa II hoe haar1 oil fLa affa
noon working into, which permits it just
as readily to enter the basket as to be
showed through the key-hole of a valise.
The first articles he doubles up with his
hands, and there is 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 a 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
iab 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
II. 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-
eft, darts back to the refractory member,
and taking hold of it, fercely tugs at it,
while he fairly jumps up and down in the
extremity Of his anger and cold. Then it
comes unexpected, and with it part of
the next article, and ne goes over again
this time 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.-DQn5ury Meas.