, 1875-07-21


-sGGSe~
The coolest morning Of the season generally
occurs on washing day. Your wife tells you,
over night, that you must get up early and
start the FIRE.
Sometime in the middle ofthe night you are
awakened by q sharp dig of her coniugal elbow,
and in q reproachfuI voice she asks you if it isn't
about time for you to get up ? and you creep cut
of bed, shivering, and gooso-teshy all over, and
strike q match. The match has no notion Of
proving loyal, and it splits and s%putters, and sends
its sulphurous fumes down TO the bottom OF your
lungs, and expires in q blue wayer, and you try
another, which flames up forcelY and scorches
the end of your thumb, and goes out suddenly,
and leaves you in darkness, and o frame IF mind
anything but placid. You snatch up what YOU
think are your pontaloons, and make frantic efforts
to get into them. but the match your wife has
meantime lighted and applied to the gas, shows
you that you have made a mistake and are strug-
CLING with q mass Of feminine garments, the work
ing order Of which you do not exactly understand.
You drop them h@urIjodly. and lock at your
watch, which indicates q quarter past twelve
You tell your wife, q little tartly, that it IS only
midnight, and she anably requests you to go
down stairs TO the sitting-room and look at the
clock, for she feels sure that the hands of your
watch have caught, as you know they often do,
dear -
After you'Eayo d%utifuIly consulted the clock,
and found TINT it corresponds with your watch,
you feel disposed, as you knock your great toe
against the stair-rod, to speak harshly TO the wife
of your boso!sl. but you remember that you prom
Used to cherish her, and you forboar.
You creep back into bed again, and feeling like
On icicle of large growth you want to be thawed,
and YOU get o little nearer your wifethon is agreoa-
bic 10 her, and she sharply tells you to keep your
frozen feet to yourself, if you don't want TO drive
her into fits Of course yor don't want to, be-
cause doctors are expensive almost as much so
as first class funerals, and you draw your chilly
e~xtremities up unit your knees and chin are on a
level, and after half an hours shiyering you fall
asleep.
Another sharp dig Of your wifo's elbow rouscs
you.
Itwould seem as if married women sleep with
one eye open, for who ever caught one of them
mapping when they wanted you to get up on q
cold morning?
Your wife tells you that the clock has just
struck five, and she says that you ought to hayo
been up an hour ago
So you spring out Of bed, and strike on the
stl;p Of oilcloth by the light stand, which is colder
than Fresh Pond ice, and you get into your clothes
in q hurry, and your wife goes on telling you how
to manage after you get down into the kitchen.
You must make the fire, and STAKE down the
ashes, and bring the washing waterfront the els
tern in the cellar, and put on the boiler, and mind
that the tCa-kettIe amt frozen up, and be careful
and not leave the stove cover off, fer that stoyo
does smoke so with the cover off and let the cat
20 down cellar, and take down her slippers to
warm by the sittIpg-room fire, and cont forget to
go out to the butchers and bring the steak for
breakfast, and be certain to havoi it cut the right
way of the grain and no %gristlc, and mind that tie
boiler has water in it when it is put over the fire,
Bnd &ke care Of that stove coyer-and you lose tho
rest Of it going down stairs, and are called back
by an impatient voice TO be told that you must be
sure and look out for that tea-kettle.
On cold mornings it is always work Of time tc
kindle a fire, and if ever a man needs the sustaining
power of religion it is then. The wood viii be
either too big or too little, ard the charcoal will
have forgotten it was ever intended to be ranked
among combustibles, and the shayings and the
matches have entered into a conspiracy against you,
and as for the Anthracite, it is stonier than the hearts
of the coal dealers themselves when you ask fora
months credit for a couple of tons.
You blow and blow, and empty the shaving basket,
and resort to kerosene, and knock the skin off your
knuckles shaking down the ashes, for Enuckles
are very sensitive on cold mornings. The kindIing
wood goes into intense mourning, and the smoke
Chokes the fire, and fills your eyes along with the dust
and ashes, and you dig your fists into your visual organs
angrily, and say something that had better have been
left unsaid, and are at last recalled to yourselfby the
sharp voice Of your wife calling from the chamber
above, to know If you calculate to be all day making
. fire 2 and who you are talking to? and what on
earth Won think a-filling the house full of smoke?
The fire at last sputters hopelessly, and you get out
the boiler and start after the water. The cistern
is skinned over, but a vigorous blow from an ak
breaks the embargo, and the water flies up and
spatters' you from head to foot, and congeals on your
clothing almost as soon as it touches. You stumble
up the steep stairs-celar stairs are always steep