The Osceola times., 1883-06-30
THE RAG CARPET.
Bill Nye's Es,hctic and Sanitary Analysis
of the Nuisance.
Detroit Free Press.

of the Nuisance.
Detroit Free Press.
With the threatened eruption of the
rag carpet as kind of venerable success
sor to the genuine Boston-made Turkish
rug, there comes wall on the part OF
the male portion of humanity and pro-
test on the part Of all health-loying hui
manity.
| rise at the moment as the self.ap-
pointed representative of poor, down
trodden and long suffering man. Already
lady friends are looking with avaricious
and covetous eyes on my spring suit, and.
in fancy, constructing stripe Of navy
blue, while some other mans spring
clothes are already spotted for the "hit-
or-iniss" stripe of this time honored
humbuc.
1t does seem to me that there is enough
sorrowing toll going on for nothing al
ready, enough of backache and delirium,
without tearing the shirts off a mans
back to sew into big bill, and then
weave into a rag carpet made TO breed
death and disease, with its prehistoric
pcrspration and its modern drug store
dyes.
The rug now commonly known as ,he
Turkish prayer rug has n 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 Oricn-
tai faischood, out the rag carpet of the
dear old home and rich in association,
is an heir loom that passes down from
generation to generation, like the horse
blanket of forgotten years or the rag bag
of the dead past.
Here is found the stripe ofall-wool de-
laine that was worn by one who is now
in the golden hence, or, stricken with the
Dakota fever living in the squatters
home, and there is the fragment of un-
derclothes prematurely jerked from the
back of the husband and father before
the silver of a century had crept into
his hair There is no question but the
dear old rag carpet, with poisonous green's
and sickly yellows and brindle browns
and doubtful blacks is big thing. II
looks kind of modest and unpretending,
and yet speaks of the dead past and
smells Of the antique and the garret.
1t represents the long months when
aching fingers first sewed the garm, nts,
then the first dash of gravy on the front
breath, the maddening cry, the wild ef-
fort to eiIacc it with benzine, the SORROW
ful defeat, the dusty grease spot standing
like a pofk-gravy plaque upon the face
of the past, the glad accomplishment of
the garment, the attack of the rag
carpet tend upon it, the hurried
crash as it was torn into shreds and
sown together, then the mad plunge of
the dust powdered mass into the reeking
bath of paris green or copperas, then the
weaver's gentle racket, and at last the
pale consumptive. frecklcd, sickly piano.
rama of outrageous coloring, offending
the eve, the nose, the thorax and the
larynx to be trodden under feet of men,
and to yield mp its precious poisons from
generation even unto generation.
1t is not a thing of beauty for il looks
Ike the colored engraving of a mortified
lung II is not economical for the same
time devoted 10 knocking out the brains
of frogs and collecting their hams for the
metropolitan market would yield infn-
itcly more, and it is not worth as much
as an heirloom, for within the same time
a mortgage may be placed upon the old
homestead 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, span
glcd dome of heaven.
often wonder that Oscar Wilde, the
pale patron of the good the true and the
beautiful, did not rise in his might and
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 Chicago
water works, grateful public would
have buried him in cut flowers if, in
stead, he had warped it into the rag
carpet and the approaching dude.