The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1886-07-17
ROcking-Chairs.

ROcking-Chairs.
The Philadelphia Press is responsible
for the following libel on household
necessity:
1 believe that the alarming increase
Of divorce in this country during the
past two or three years is due in a great
measure to the rocking chair habit.
Men may well rise up in alarm and
look about them for means to stihe the
terrible evil, for the rocking chair habit
has insidiously fastened its fangs upon
the women of our country. A few years
ago they were content with one plain,
unpretentious rocking chair, but now,
alas, the indulgent husband looks aghast
upon his first annual expenditure for
rocking chairs, and then goes and makes
an assignment.
l knew a lovely bride who was en-
dowed with many graces of mind and
person and all the charms of tender,
confding womanhood she was the
idol of fond husband, the pride of
tender parents, and the charm of wide
circle of tried and true friends. She
and her husband were not rich, save in
love, but they had a pretty home and
were happy.
She began with just one rocking chair.
Even the second caused no alarm. Per-
haps the fond and indulgent husband
may have encouraged her habit thus far,
and thus unconsciously helped the one
dearest to him on earth to that course
which could have but one ending. From
the second rocking-chair the way is easy
to the third, the fourth, the fifth, and
even to the sixth. And yet when this
woman possessed six rocking-chairs her
friends did not seem to realize her dam
ger. They may have been blinded by
affection.
When this fair young wife had doz-
Ell rocking chairs, and still claved for
more, her husband began gently to re-
monstrate with her, but he was too late.
The habit had become too firmly fixed.
After one or two feeble efforts to reform
she gave up in despair and rushed on
in her mad career of buying rocking
chairs. All day long she hung about
the furniture stores. She bought little
and big rocking chairs, new-fashioned
and old-fashioned rocking-chairs, up
holstered and -bottomed rocking
chairs, camp and wicker rocking chairs
thus she went on until the furniture
in that once happy little home seemed
to the tortured husband one vast collec-
tion of rocking-chairs of every size,
style, shape and condition.
When the sorrow-stricken but patient
man would come home from the lodge
at the still hour of midnight large
able-bodied rockingham would meet
him almost at his door and knock him
to the floor and fall over upon him.
Then, as he would rise to his feet an
other rocking chair would lay him low
and bring down upon his head shower
of brio -a-brac. And thus he would 60
from rocking-chair to rocking chair un-
til he would reach his own chamber,
where thirteen rocking-chairs would
meet him in rapid succession and have
a very large amount of fun with him.
Each one as he would meet it would
knock fresh piece of bark from one or
the other of his shins or break toe that
had escaped earlier in the battle, and
would then throw him violently to the
floor. And his wife, whose reason was
tottering on its throne from the effects
of her terrible habit, would get up and
strike light and try to persuade him
that there was only one rocking chair
in the room-just one plain, ordinary
chamber rocking -chair-which he in his
wanderings around in the dark had fall
en- over thirteen times.
Poor, deluded woman With his shins
barked in thirteen places and some
twenty other wounds and contusions on
various parts of his person, the husband
would be too much vexed to humor the
delusions of his wife's disordered brain,
and, holding himself erect by placing
an arm around the bedpost and using
the most emphatic language, he would
point to the thirteen rocking-chairs sit
ting about him in circle. True, they
were all of the same pattern, but that
was nothing. The time was when he
had seen twenty rocking chairs of the
same general style all in one room.
Such scenes could lead to but one
ending. Love could not continue to
abide amid such occurrences. At first
there were mere utterings, then came
more emphatic language, and finally
separation and divorce.
There is nothing that will disrupt a
home so quickly as tall, able-bodied
rocking-chair, standing fair in mans
way when he is hunting for his bed or
something in the dark; and the tall,
able-bodied rocking chair never stands
elsewhere than in mans way when he
is hunting for anything in the dark. 1t
meets him with extreme suddenness. 1t
throws out no warning that it is there
and about to strike, and the defenseless
victim goes down in heap, confused
and demoralized wreck and humanity,
while the rocking chair, in its own pc
culiar demoniacal way, jumps and dances
upon his own PROSTATE form.
Sweet woman, beware of the rocking
chair habit, and, man, oh man, heark-
en- ye unto the words that l utter: Give
the tall, able bodied rocking chair elbow
room at midnight's holy hour !
Nearly everybody has it in him to
be better than he is. improvement is