Norwich bulletin., 1916-02-17
DOMESTIC WORRIES

'The postman brought large cat
alogue to my house his morning"
gloomily remarked the man who board
ed the train at Hyde Park.
Did he2" politely commented the
man who had got on at Woodlawn.
well, then, had you rather go swim
ming?"
HUH" said the Hyde Park man.
You wouldn't try to be funny if your
life was wrecked by catalogues as
mine is! If your wife-say my wife
has the catalogue habit so bad that
if there was a cure for it that I could
a thousand dollars! That's the way
feel about it.!
That woman would rather spend an
afternoon with a catalogue than have a
pox of candy and go to the matinee!
When she gets hold of a large general
pussy cat handed a bunch of catnip!
She begins with axle grease and
prowls right straight through coffee,
inoleum, patent washers, chicken feed
and oil stoves to the garden imple-
ments on the back pages-and she
relisheS them ALL
'Imogene,' I said to her once, as
sat filled with wonder and amaze
watching her do it: why waste timei
Never in your life will you want axle
grease, and our present kitchen limo
leum will last another hundred years!
Meanwhile my hosiery needs darning
and the baby is crying down the hall"
She looked at me in dignified pity
and said that it was just like man.
Then she went on to explain patient
ly and kindly that while she had no
need for axle grease-seeing I had par
ticularly mentioned it-now she would
be entirely prepared to know a bargain
in axle grease when she saw it if the
time ever came when axle grease was
necessary in our menage. She said
she thought it woman's duty to be
prepared for any household emergency
and, goodness knows, it was thank
less task! If 1 had some wives who
didn't care what they paid for a thing
I'd find out!
Why" proceeded the Hyde Park
man, warming up to his task while
the spring catalogue season is in pro-
gress life is not worth living at my
house! 1 may be deep in a book on
Rants philosophy and just reaching
the point where 1 get a faint glimme r
of what he is talking about and then
1mogene swoops down on me.
joint she cries. Just listen.
Here's new variety of tulips!
Wouldn't a large oval bed of them be
perfectly beautiful? We could put
alyssum around the edge-here it is,
and awfully cheap-and wouldn't an
irregular corner bed of these roses be
fine? You can get two year old plants
for so cents each--and, john
''All this despite the fact that we re-
side in an apartment without an inch
Of black dirt to our name, and can't
succeed even in growing a fernery in
the sun parlor Imogene makes des-
perately long lists of all the plants
she'd like to buy out of each catalogue
and she knows what to spray for
brown blight and how to attack a
caterpillar. Never in her life, if she
sticks to me, will she have a chance to
meet a rosebush caterpillar face to
face, but she reads about 'em just the
same.
The time that she discovered that
with a SO grocery order you could
buy a thousand pounds of sugar, more
or less, for an additional dollar, I
really thought I had lost her, for the
fever rose very high and acute. 1
found lists of canned goods of my
checkbook and details in regard to
possible purchases of tea, soap and
California prunes on my typewriter
memoranda of deal which I spread
out before the president of our con-
Germ, to my intense embarrassment.
The president asked in a cold tone
what prunes had to do with malleable
iron, and it's hard to talk to a man.
you know, who takes that attitude.
when 1 send home a new box of
collars, Ihogene wrings her hands and
says We'll end in the poorhouse and
why did l do it when she had just
read to me out of her new catalogue
that collars could be bought at 50
cents less box than I had paid? No,
a different brand from that which
customarily buy, but, as for her. a
mans collar was nothing more nor