New Ulm weekly review. [volume] (New Ulm, Minn.) 1878-1892, 1883-08-08
Tbs Rae CARPET.

with the threatened eruption OF the
e carpet rs Il kind of venerable sue
cessor to tie genuine Boston-made Turk
sh rug, there comes wall on the part
of the male portion of humanity and q
protest on the part Of all health-loving
humanity.
] rise at this moment as the self-ap-
pointed representative of poor, down
trodden and long-suffering man. Al
ready lady friends are looking with
avaricious and covetous eyes on my
spring suit and, in fancy, constructing
a stripe of navy blue, while some other
mans spring clothes are already spot
ted for the 'shit-or-miss'' stripe of this
time-honored humbug.
It does seem to me that there is enough
sorrowing toll going for nothing already,
enough Of back ache and delirium, with
out tearing the shirt off mans back to
sew into a big ball, and then waeve into
rag carpet made to breed death and
disease, with its prehistoric perspiration
and its modern drug store dyes.
The rug now commonly known as the
Turkish prayer rug has a sad, worn
look, but it does not come up to the rag
carpet of the dear old home. Around
it there clusters, perhaps, tradition
or an Oriental, falsehood, but the rag
carpet of the dear old home, and rich in
association, is an heirloom that passes
down from generation to generation,
like the horse blanket of forgotten years
or the rag bag Of the dear dead past.
Here is found the stripe of all-wool de-
laine that was worn by one who is now
in the golden hence, or, stricken with
the Dakota fever, living in tie squatter's
home, and there is the fragment of un-
derclothes prematurely jerked from the
back of the husband and father before
the silver of century had crept into
his hair. There is no question but the
dear old rag carpet, whose poisonous
greens and sickly yellows and brindle
browns and doubtful blacks is big
thing. It looks kind of modest and I'M
pretending, and yet speaks of the dead
past and smells of the antique and the
garnet.
1t represents the long months when
aching fingers first sewed the garments,
then the first dash of gravy on the front
breadth, the maddening cry, the wild
effort to etface it with benzine, the sor-
rowful defeat, the dusty grease spot
standing like a pork-gravy plaque upon
the face of the past, the glad relinquish-
ment Of the garment, the attack of the
ragg-carpet tiend upon it, the hurried
crash rs it was torn into shreds and
sewn together, then the mad plunge of
the dust-powdered mats into the reeking
bath of paris green or copperas, then
the weaver's gentle racket, and at last
the pale consumptive, freckled, sickly
panorama of outrageous coloring, Of
tending the eye, the nose, the thorax
and the larynx, to be trodden under feet
of men, and to yield up its precious
dose of destroying poisons from genera
ton even unto generation.
1t is not a thing of beauty for it looks
like the colorcd engraving of a mortified
lung. 1t is not economical, forthe same
slime devoted to knocking out the brains
Of frogs and collecting their hams for
the metropolitan market would yield
infinitely more, and it is not worth much
as an heirloom for within the same time
mortgage may be placed upon the old
homestea which will pass down from
father to son, even to nations yet un-
born, and attract more attention in
the courts than all the rag carpets that
it would require to span the broad,
spangle(l dome of heaven.
I often wonder that Oscar Wilde, the
pale patron of the good, the true and
the beautiful, did notrise in his highland
knock the essential warp and filling out
Of the rag carpet. Oscar did not do
right or he would have stood up in his
funny clothes and fought for reform at
so much per fight. While he made fun
of the Chicago water works, a grateful
public would have buried him in cut
flowers if instead, he had warped it to
the rag-carpet and the approaching
de.-BiU Nye.