The daily morning journal and courier., 1894-08-22
Bower-Bird If usbands.

Bower-Bird Husbands.
 Els your husband a bower-blrd?" That was a question addressed to young wife by social statist anxious to get his friends well classified under their proper generic appellations. As matter of fact, all husbands. if they only knew 1t, are either bower-birds or not bower-birds; but We admit that the phrase is at first sight a little start ling and requires elucidation. It will be remembered that the male bower- bird is endowed by nature with the desire to decorate its home with every conceivable form of ornament. It is a natural aesthete, and strives to do for its nest what Messrs. Maple or Shoolbred do for the villa residence in
 Wimbledon or Hampstead. Nothing comes amiss to it. With a few feath- CTS shell or two, and some fragments of broken looking-glass or sparkling mica, it will rig up a highly ornate bower for the alleged delight of its mate. It is as if the birds were pos
 sessed by the genius of those good wo- men who write in the ladies' papers un- der the heading of "The Home Beau- tiful' or Fair Settings for Fair Faces" and give tips to correspond ents on the art of turning a seaside lodging into "a dream of lovelness' by 10 nf. .a I
 erty handkerchiefs, some Japanese pa per fans, and a few photographs of your lady friends in the evening or court dress; if the gentlemen are in uni form the effect will be very much i'm proved"
 We cannot discuss here why ii is that the bower-bird takes so much trouble to produce what at the best is only sort of arbor in tea garden in miniature-the kind of thing which makes one hot with shame and misc ry, incoherent in language, and sick at heart for the falsehoods which the tongue must utter when it is exhibited for our admiration by some amiable rural laborer or retired market-garden- CT. The fact remains that he does so, and that certain number of men, not the, majority, but still respectable minority, take after him, and display a feverish desire to ornament their homes. Such men when at home hard
 ly ever have hammer out of their hands, and are usually inarticulate Ebecause their mouths are filled with the tin-tacks which they are deter mined to get in somewhere into the draWing-room wall. In the abstract ladies like the notion of the bower bird man, and they may be heard to de- Lclare that "it is so convenient to have a man in the house who will drive a nail in exactly where and when you want it" Alas this is only another instance of woman's pathetic habit of concealing her troubles under a brave exterior She hides the horrors of her home under smile-nay, is even known to make domestic capital out of her woes, and to turn them so artis- tically that they can be used to keep
 her maiden sisters in their proper place. Of course it would be immense lily convenient to have a man always ready to drive in a nail exactly when and where you want it. Unfortunate ly, however, this is precisely what you do not get in the bower-bird man. He does not want to put in nails on such prosaic principles. He is bent, as all true housewives know in their hearts, though wild horses will not drag it from them, upon what can only be described as 8 crusade of de- structive ornamentation.
 Many are the expedients employed by desperate wives to save their walls One of the best and most successful is to turn the energies of the bower- bird from works of ornamentation to works of utility-to convert the in- stinct towards decoration into the in- stinct of mending. Fortunately, the transition is not difficult, and by lit tie management the bower-bird hus- band may be changed into that most destructive of Gods creatures, the wife who contrives this transforma- tion jumps out of the frying-pan into the fire; but what true woman would not readily sacrifice the rest of the house to keep the drawing room neat and pretty? The process of conversion is to persuade the bower-bird husband l that his real vocation in life is carpen | tering, and that he is saving pounds and pounds by mending chairs and ta- bles, by rehanging doors, by taking 1 windows out of their frames, and by cutting away portions of the fabric of | the house so essential that, as the builder subsequently, remarks, "it was | fair miracle that you didn't have the whole place about your ears, with that there stay weakened as it was. Why, it looks as if some wild beast had been | a-tearing at it; that it do."
 l When once the devil of amateur car pentry has been awakened in a man there is nothing that he will not do in the way of making himself really use- full. He ranges through the house with saw carried under his arm, after the | manner in which conscientious Noncon- formists are believed to carry their umbrellas, and with a chisel in one | hand and light tool-chest in the oth- | CT. No place is sacred from his rav- | ages. Even the kitchen gives him prey. As the cook will confess with tears, masters been mending the stove | again, till he's broke it; and, please, | shall we send for Lion and Higler or | Handsome and Piliadge7' The par lor-maid dreads the question, "Is sthere any little job that I can do for you, Mary?" If she saws s'No /" thero 1,,;11 ta