The Bennington banner. [volume] (Bennington, Vt.) 1858-1894, 1892-04-15
ONE WOMAN's WAY.
1t Helps to Keep Her Husband-His
Smoking and LOunging Room.


Smoking and Longing Room.
There is little old woman up town
who was unfortunate enough to fall in
love with her own husband two or three
years ago, when she married him, and is
old-fashioned enough to keep up the
foolishness still. She has unique ideas
about mans rights and privileges
actually thinks he ought to be made
comfortable in his home, have few
hooks to hang his things on in the clos
ct, and place to keep his backing box
somewhere besides out in the back yard.
Her latest queer freak is to take the very
cosey little room that any woman OF
sense would want for sewing room and
fix it up for a smoking room. The walls
are paneled In smoke gray and crimson,
the frieze has a decoration of sleepy
loves floating in cloud of smoke, and
the pictures are dainty, bright little
French water-colOrs, etchings of fair
woman, and studies of the sea in all its
phases simply because he likes sea
views. In one corner is peculiar deco
ration of East Indian spears radiating
from a common center and fastened
against the wall
Over the CRATE, where the glowing
Goals are tended more faithfully than
ever vestal virgin guarded the sacred
fire. is a cabinet filled with pixies and
.daggers and all manner of troublesome
things that a man ought not to be al
lowed to collect and litter home with
for someone to dust. The floor is
covered with huge bearskin rug, and
on the door, draped with curious bit
of English stuff, is hung a either, with
pendant swaying balls, that ring out
sweetly when the door moves on its
hinges. All across one side of the room
is wonderful divan, covered with a
Cashmere rug. The divan is broad and
luxurious, not one of the stiff little box
like affairs seen in the modern drawing
room.
And at either end and all along the
sides are piled big dOwny pillows OF
every tint and hue. There are Turkish
pillows of gay striped silk, laced down
the center with tasseled cords; pillows
covered with yellow cigar ribbon; feath-
,er-stitched in crazy patterns; gay silk
kerchiefs that would make black NAM
my pale with envy fitted into covers for
the downies, and a whole family OF
miscellaneous cushions of plush and
silk, embroidered and plain; round pill
lows and square ones, everything except
rough scratchy appliques of metallic
threads or stiff materials. At the head
of this couch is gas jet that you light
and extinguish by touching a little
chain; beneath it revolving table lit
tered with the paraphernalia of smoking
on one shelf, and filed with late maya
zines, new book. and papers below. Be
side the couch on the floor is a. pile of
cushions in crimson plush, just high
enough to bring the face of the woman
who sits there on level with the eyes
of the man who lounges in the comfort
able retreat.
And the reward she gets? Just what
she might expect That stupid man
stays home from the club and forgets
all about the business that other men
always have to attend to in the evening,
and expects the foolish woman to waste
her time sitting on those cushions,
where he can see the glow of the fire.
light, or whatever it is that makes hel
eyes so bright and luminous, shining
over her face while she reads to him. 1t is
perfectly discoucaging to see her waste
her time. You can't drag her out to q
woman's club or interest her in the con
dition of the Kaffirs, and as for the
question of marriage being failure
and the management of husbands anC
the rest of the great and vital things
which women are discussing, she obsti
nately refuses to take any interest IL
them because she is too busy, and thinks
if every woman keeps her own marriage
from being failure, and manages he
own husband, she has too much on he
own hands to have time to run abou
talking it over with other women
NeW York Sun.