Mineral Point tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1869-1938, 1875-03-11
Hanging Out Clothes.

/
If you are good husband of course
you have helped your wife TO hang out
clothes, and you know how it is yourself.
1t always blows furiously when any
body is a washing. 1t is an old saying
that washing raises the wind" and
there is truth in it. And in the winter
washing day is always fearfully cold.
Your wife is tired-women always ere
on washing days-and she SAYS how she
does dread hanging out those clothes, and
remembering that at the altar you SOL
EMMY promised to love, cherish and pro-
tect her you generously offer to help her
hang them out
Thermometer at zero, and wind bio W
ing at the rate Of ninety miles an hour
The clothes.line Is always stretched on
the north side of the house, with especial
reference, we suppose, to just such an
occasion as this.
Your wife takes one handle of the
basket and you take the other Some
designing pers on has emptied some water
on the doorstep, which has frozen, and
you are not so cautious as you should be
to see to 1T that you stand firm, and the
first thing you know you are down on
the ice, and away goes the clothes-basket
down over the hill, with your wife hang
ing to it like the tail Of a kite
You recover yourself and start after
the fugitives and bring them back. You
think you will begin with hanging out
sheet A sheet will be plain work. You
take one up gingerly by the corner and
drag it to the line, with the other corners
trailing.
"Oh, joint" cries your wife, in a tone
of dismay, "do be more careful! See
what dreadful smuch you have got on
the sheet" You seize the other corner
and flap it over the line, and it freezes
stiff as a board the instant it touches
there, and is unmanageable as a sheet of
zinc. You give it savage pull and a
twist to get it out straight, and the line
is loose and springs before you, and then
when you let go it springs back again
and takes your hat amidships, and away
it goes, and the wind pounces on it and
whirls it away to a fence corner, where
you possess yourself of it, well filed
with snow and in good condition to obey
well-known medical prescription:
Keep the head cool"
You return to the charge, blowing
your fingers, and your pantaloon legs
full of snow, and your wife tells you
you should have put on mittens. Nit
tens be COMPOUNDED! you tell her in an
emphatic voice. You fly at the sheet
again anG your wife tells you to let that
sheet alone and hang out something you
can manage. She recommends you to
try shirt
So you try shirt, and you hang it
over the line with the neck part up just
as it is worn, but your wife tells you to
hang that shirt as it ought to be. The
other extremity belongs up. She takes
an inverted view of things. You try to
obey, but the thing has frozen fast to
the line; and in attempting to break the
unfortunate attachment you tear OFF the
collar band, and split two clothes pins,
and knock piece of skin off the back
of your hand.
Oh, the unutterable contempt which is
expressed on the countenance of your
wife She calmly reminds you of the
fact, which women are SO fond of enun-
ciating, that men are nuisance, and re-
quests you to go into the house about
your business.
But you persist in your benevolent
efforts, and seize upon Il miscellaneous
pile of ruff1ed things which are worn
only by the gentler sex and you bear
them in wrinkled wad to the line and
fling them on.
The wind whirls half of them away in
petrifed condition, and you cling 10
the others in such way that the line
cannot bear the pressure and it snaps in
two and down comes the whole concern
into the snow and dirt of that back yard
and freezes there in less than minute.
Ii will take gallons of boiliop wafer tn
thaw those clothes up from the ground,
and they must go back to the rinse again
and your fingers feel like icicles, and
your wife is-excited and we draw a
curtain over the scene.
But we want to say that the man who,
under such circumstances, can keep his
temper and not lapse into profanity is
ready for the Millennium, and may expect
to be translated any day, after the man
ner of Enoch-Kate Ttora, in N. T.
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