The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1882-01-19
The Man Who helps His Wife.

Generally he is little man.
He IS fussy, and he wants finger IN
every pie. j,
He orders everything, from the spring.
house cleaning to the setting of q new
hoop o. the washtnb. mi
I He gets up first in the morning, and
helps to dress the children, and gets.
Tom into Bessie pinafores, and Minnie
into Sammy's knee-pants before his wife
discovers the mistake, and then he says
it is just as well. Let 'em 90 so that
day. He makes the fire and scatters
shavings from the woodshed to the
kitchen, and spatters water over the
polished surface of the stove, and looks
black as thunder when his wife scolds
and tells him to be careful; and he says
he guesses she'd miss him if he was
gone; and he guesses she'd find it was a
poor stake in the fence, ETC.; and he
guesses if she had all the work to do
herself she'd sing another song; and he
should think that man who was al
ways helping his wife ought to be treat
ed with some show of decency.
And he puts on lachrymose express
sion, and if he were woman would
break into weeping, and the fat would
be in the fire generally.
The man who helps his wife feels
called upon to plan the dinner and adj
wise about the breakfast and supper. =
If he was a housekeeper, he says, he'd
have different goings on! He'd see if
the butcher would give him ten pounds
of roast, when he asked for five-as if
anybody wanted to live on roast beef a
lifetime! Variety, he tells his wife. is
what is needed on family table. If he
could only be at home to plan, he'd
show her how he would manage things!
No need of having anything wasted.
What if the weather is hot! That is no
reason why things should sour. His
mother used to bake pies over when
they were in danger of molding. But
then there are not many housekeepers
like his mother.
He helps make the beds, and puts all
the sheets on upside down, and wrong
side up, for it is utterly impossible for
any man living, be he peasant, saint, or
philosopher, to tell which way sheets
belong on bed! 1t is one of those oc-
cult mysteries which the mind of the
male sex can never be made to compre-
bend.
Just watch him clean up the room.
He puts his boots in the closet on top of
his wife's corsets, which have fallen
down, and he losses his dirty stockings
into the drawer with her laces, and piles
the ribbons, and bracelets, and newspa-
pers, and cigar-stumps, and play-bills,
and burnt matches, and wisps of hair
from the comb, all together in a box,
and when his wife dresses for afternoon
it will take her an hour to find the very
ribbon bow she wants to wear, and then
it will smell as if it had been hung up in
a bar-room ever since it was manufact-
ured.
He brags to his friends about how he
can do housework. We have heard him
Nts of times. He can cook a meal as
well as any woman! Yes, sir! And as
for running a house, if he only had the
time to spare, he would astonish crea-
ton by his method of doing it!
And his wife listens, and says nothing,
but she thinks of the grease he has
spilled on the carpet, and the stove
backing he has spattered on the wall
paper, and the new sheet he tore in two
getting it off the clothes-line, and the
glass dishes he has broken by putting
them in hot water, the soap he has left
to melt in the bath-tub, the kettles he
has ruined by burning his cookery to a
cinder, the thousand and one vexations
which his ignorance has brought upon
her, and she wishes within herself that
man whose mission it is to help his
wife had never been invented.
But, after all, we respect him, for if
his efforts are not crowned always with
success, his motive is a good one, and
all the women of the neighborhood will
recognize it, and wish Heaven had made
them such man!--Kate Thorn, in N. Y.
Weekly.