The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1899-07-15

- 49, y 49,
nor the Robinsons, nor the StuyvesAnts.
and I am more troubled than ever.
The decadence of the spare chamber
strikes deer. 1T is the concrete difference
between past and present.
The spare chamber meant a room in
the house set apart from common life,
dedicated to the higher nature. The
family might have only three cham
bers; one of these was sacred. The
feather bed rose plump and i~mpregnable
in its recesses. The green paper shades
shut out all but a chink of light. the cane
seat chairs stood stiff against the wall,
and clean straw rustled under the taut
"store carpet, You tip-toed in. Mothers
best bonnet lay on the middle of the bed.
Sometimes a huge loaf of fruit cake sat
elegantly in one of the chairs.
There was always something reserved
in the lays of the spare chamber-fruit
rake and bonnets. People had best clothes.
They wore them on spare days Sunday
was a spare day. You know that it was
Sunday. Grandfather shaved. when
grandfathers shave every day, what is
left for ~theeseventhD
There was a hush about the house. AS
the day wore on it ~deepened; the whole
farm lay under its warm. sleepy spell
ali but the irrepressib1e hen. The cheerful
cackle fingers still, the most irreverent
thing in memory. She worked seven days
in TIE week, and talked about It.
Amid trolley cars and bicycle bells and
children playing and the Salvation Army
drum. the cackle dies away into a harm
less whisper.
There was spare time then. People made
visitsAnot anxious, crowded, hurried calls.
but old-fashioned visits. The carryall was
washed and oiled. Old Flora was carefully
combed and brushed by grandfather, and
then grandfather was brushed and combed
by grandmother. Aunt Clara packed
luncheon in a big basket. There was all
ways a spare basket. There was always
a spare cricket to fit in front for small
folk, with a good view of Flora's
launches going uphill and a wide sweep
of country going down.
The journey was leisurely. but full OF
wild exeitements. There were the dam
gcrolIs railroad crossings, where grand
father always got out, rods ahead, and
walked cautiously across, looking two
ways at once. The rest Of us rode boldly
over with a fine feeling of risk.
There were the covered bridges, too.
Old Fsora's hoofs echoed in them ana re-
peated the trampling of armies. The
loose boards rafting underneath held the
child on the cricket GREATNESS.
Times have changed.
we had a spare m at first. When
the baby came we turned it into q nur-
sery. We cleared out a store-roon for the
nurse. and used the little back room for
a drying-room.
Grandmother, when her first bapy came
took it into her own bed When another
baby came to crowd it out there was the
trundle bed that stood under the big shed
all Gay, and rolled out at night with a
sleepy rumble.
And when more babes sun cahhe 70
crowd the trundle bed, the hrst papy' q
big boy Of six years old now, had a bed
made for him at the head of the back
stairs, or up garnet. under the sloping
caves. The rain lulled him to sleep, and
the snow drifted IN sometimes.
In the spare chamber the big bed doomed
untouched. It lowered in his dreams, a
presence not to be put by. The snow, the
rain. the stars and the spare chamber
made a poet<of him. We have no poets
now.
go
With all this talent devoted 70 her pc
gowning, says Self Culture. woman
ought to be (and probably thinks she ~
a very work of art,-yes, a masterpiece;
and 1t would seem to be rank, foolnardy
temerfty even to hint that in her dress
she is not only not a masterpiece, nut
generally very inartlstlc' even i iot oi.en