Year: 1878

The man who has not experienced some
of the miseries of that day of torment known
Us ''wash day may be in existence, but he
is as invisible to the ordinary observer as If
he were the planet Neptune or the political
wisdom of California's own Kearney. The
hurried and underdone breakfast the din
ner of Sundays scraps, or, worse, OF cold
corned beef and cabbage, the alkaline odor
which meanders through the house as in
formally yet as deliberately as if it were
Governor Dorsheimer entering the "hotel
of Citizen Schwab, the absent mindedness
of the best housekeepers in the world
and the ways PECULIAR to some house
keepers, concerning whom the victims wish
not only that their minds be absent, but
that their bodies too had gone, and for
long trip-these and the thousands Of other
and special griefs which wash day has been
bringing to the human race ever since
Adam put his first soiled suit of fig leaves
into the dirty clothes basket would seem
any one day of the week


But now there comes another--a nearer
one yet, and lin some respects) dearer one.
In some parts Of this city the water supply
on wash day is limited to the family wash
tubs. Why every housewife and domestic
should consider Monday the only proper
day of the week in which to cleanse the
family linen is question that can be
answered only by Herbert Spencer or some
leading German metaphysician. 1t may be
that the united brewers of New York have
placed corruption fund where it willdo
the most good in the direction Of driving
men to the beverage which comes out Of
kegs instead of pipes and has ''head"
which is independent OF aqueducts; per-
haps the advocates of new reservoir are
distributing bribes, expecting to take them
out of the. city treasury in the course Of
business after the contracts are obtained;
perhaps Satan himself, frightened at
the moral washing up which is done
on Sunday, is in haste to have
things his own way again as soon as posi-
BILE. But these are mere suggestions the
dry fact remains that every Monday morn
ing in New York city there is a general
opening of faucets that hang over wash
tubs, and the special flow Of water which then
begins is enough to cleanse even the average
Louisiana witness. did not his renovation
depend upon an element which is the exact
opposite to water. Bathroom pipes emit
series of hollow gurgles which sometimes
are musical, but to bathe, even in floods of
music, is impracticable except to sentimen-
tai young Indies. Basins look up to faucets


4 ~
jerks, and with as little final satisfaction,
and all because every family must have its
washing done on this particular day of the
week!


1t is time that this hollow mockery of
household water pipes should cease To
there are other fluids than water is not q
.sufficient answer, for the average New
Yorker takes most Of his water externally;
to substitute whiskey for it is impossible to
any but the wealthy, for no important
elections, with enough free liquor to swim
in, are pending at present, and even the
most Communistic Of beer venders would
hardly respond kindly to request for a
pailful of his stock in trade to be used for
lavatory purposes. But let Bridget and
Gretchen, and all who are in authority
over them, apply to wash day the great
principle of rotation, and the normal flow
of water will abate the abnormal flow Of
profanity which is so lamentably frequent
in the neighborhood of irresponsible water
taps every Monday morning.