The Leavenworth weekly times. [volume] (Leavenworth, Kan.) 1870-1880, 1876-04-20
0Meektp Times
THURS AY, APRIL 20, 1876.
Pillow SkalE

----SH
-iDpraga's Journal has the following:
the subioined from a contributor dwells
accurately as well as amusingly upon GER
tain "Domestic Shams" with which the
re Ter, no doubt, is acquainted
Don't lie down on those pillow-shams %
aDon't put your feet on the Counterpart "
Hpon't lean your head against that white
knit-tidy"
hat is the way darling wife talks to
her precious husband, when he come home
at night tired out with the public shams,
and seeking for domestic realities while
she. poor thing, tired out with the domestic
realities, seeks 10 begile her mind with 80
cial and conventional shams.
PILLOW Shams." Do you know what
they are? Did you ever try to lie down
on them? They are hard, starchy things,
with beautiful monograms embroidered all
over them? They won't fold up, but rustic
and slip off the bed on to the floor; they
are always ready for launch out into some
place where they ought not to he. Back
of them, as they are pinned on the pillows.
you can see the Sing-Sing stripe of the vul-
gar ticking in which the imaginary goose
feathers are inclosed.
Then. too. there is broad, white, hard
piece Of embroidered linen, which goes
across the bed, with stiff large monogram
on il. This is also SHAM" and is al
WAYS put on when strangers are coming in
TO The room. 1t looks like 4 piece Of fancy
piecrust, and the people who sleep in these
beds are supposed to be like the tour-and
twenty black birds OF nursery history, who
were baked IN a pie that is, they were not
in the pie because OF any natural fitness,
but simply because of the conventional de-
cree of the king before whom this pretty
dish was placed.
Oh, how a man hates these shams; how
he filings them away when he is alone in
the house and tells the chambermaid never
to Gring them out while the wife and fam
lily are away!
How he remembers the days when he was
at college, and piled up the pillows under
him, and put his feet, at all times and at
all places, on every cubic inch OF the bed he
called his own, and moved the bed under
the light, and read himself TO sleep over
Henry Esmond land "Poor Pendennis :"
But now the "Hight-ldmp" for the baby,
and the pillows by night for fortifcation
around his precious legs; and the pillow
shams" by day Tor the sake of admiring
feminine critics, take the luxurious aroma
Of life away from the once idealized dom
esticities and the man submits, wondering
why on earth the Creator put such queer
WAYS into woman's nature, and then made
man so miserable without her that, by con-
trast with this negative misery, he puts up
with quantities of misery which is positive
Domestic shams, That is what these
,r-rafgbal 10 sh1pE
about.
Then there are the tides. They are al
ways coming off on your head and shout
ders. "Pick up the tidy, dear :" This is al
ways the last word from madam as you
leave the room.
"Don't put your head on the tidy :"
This is the booming minutegun of domestic
danger when the cigar is lighted, and the
newspaper is opened, and the home circle
for the evening is begun,
Then there are the white dresses for the
children. OF course they will play on
their hands and knees, and will get soiled
and marred with nursery warfare; Of course
the servants will complain of the big wash,
md the quantity OF starched clothes requir-
81 for the demands of the family wardrobe.
why not dress the children in colored
oio hes? why not put wooden articles on
he = such as Mrs. As children wear?"
how queer YOU men talk Don't you
know that Mrs. A doesn't live on
rect, and doesn't go with our set at all
How mortified should feel if Mrs. B
should call and see the children dressed in
a litierent way from her own"
mis- is the way the talk goes on between
the public realities of bills and the domes-
tic shams OF embroidered dresses.
at is worse than wicked, my dear" said
P,mch the other day, representing mother
spea ing to her little daughter. 1T is
wore than wicked-it is guLqdr.'
six dresses form another department of
domestic shams. PlGids and csshmeres,
wooiens and serges, may charm with look,
and texture, and price, never SO wisely-but
they are like chaff before the wind, as they
pa before the attractions of the cheap silk
dc .rtment.
"a, how these women-buyers and their
consulting cabinet of advisers feel and rus
tie the silk, and hold it up to the light, and
compare Its thickness with that which is
twenty-five cents more a yard How they
rattle over the favorite names Of the dif-
ierert French manufacturers: how the
and obsequious men-clerks
90 over their same stock of remarks thou
sands and thousands of times How the
candidate for this article of clothing COM
pares silk with silk and searches down
among the roots of things to find out Just
which adviser she can most rely on! And
then the black-silk dress is bought
''for black-silk dress is always dressy you
know, dear; one always looks well in a
black silk dress, doesn't one, Mary ?'
Always" says Mary, and out goes the
money from the husbands pocket-b book, and
married lie is $50 sweet" for the rest Of
that day.
Now what, as 4 man, maintain about
this phase OF domestic shams issimply this:
The ''black-silk dress idea" which is the
normal type of American womans dressing
is simply an attempt TO be always in a sup
erlative condition OF dress-which is too com
monty the average American ambition.
English women dress in woolens French
women draw their wardrobes from variety
OF textures-but our American women, with
this peryading pillow-sham idea running
through their lives, cannot be happy unless
they are continually, in mud and rain, in
horse-cars and in trains, at thei, social best |
they are arrayed in thin and
shiny silks cheap they may be, but at least
they are SILKS.
Bot won't croak any more to-day, for
fear of becoming hoarse and unpleasant. l
might go into the domestic shsms OF solid
safe and paid for in the bank,
while We use the plated-ware in our cottage |
homes. i might 60 into some of the social
shams Of the present age, after the fashion |
of that little book which is so old and SO |
funny, thinks to Myself" but let me
forbear. No doubt there is true social in |
stinct down at the root of things in our
wives, and mothers, and daughters an in
stinct TO preserve the ideal and cherish that |
which is best and most truly refined.
Miss Susan B. Anthopy's Lecture.