Year: 1874




We always begin cleaning house on the
1st of May. We have Just commenced
now, and l write these few lines on the
bread-bOard with a bureau drawer for a
seat, while Long Primer is playing horse
in the parloT with bust of Andrew Jack.
son and Small Plea is dipping lace cur
tains into pail of whitewash.


We don't clean one Dom at time, but
go at 1t in wholesale way and rake the
old house from floor to roof. Three
mornings ago when / started down town
my wife said in her innocent, deceiving
way that she guessed she'd do little
house cleaning and that we'd have a
picked-up dinner. When | returned
home the bedsteads were circling around
the backyard, the kitchen stove was
buried under the straw beds, the curtains
were down, windows out, carpets up, and
four Africans were mildly drawing their
whitewash brushes over the ceilings and
having an animated discussion about
cremation. My wife said she'd have IL so
clean that q fly would break its neck
slipping down, and she was so enthusias-
tic about it that l cheerfully ate dinner
off the mantelpiece and made no remarks
when l found the cork of the cam
phor bottle and the front door key stuffed
into the spout of the coffee pot. When l
lett the house Small Plea was hanging to
the pegs of the hall.tree and singing
Mollie Darling" and Long Primer was
trying to wipe the whitewash out of his
left eye with a chrome of the Yosemite
Valley, but my wife said l needn't stay
on their account.


l came up a. night believing that every
thing would be regulated, but the bed
steads in the backyard had increased in
number, chromos were hanging to the
clothes-line, the clock was being dissected
in the alley by youth of great inventive
genius, and carpets, chairs, stairrods,
looking glasses, crockery, brackets and
rolling-pins were so piled in together
that my head swan.


I'm hurrying it up" said my wife in
a joyful tone as she waved her hand at
the painters, a scrub woman and q car
penter who had been added to the force.


/ sat down on the teakettle and had
supper served on the north end of a spring
mattress, and when l broke tooth on a
glass agate concealed in biscuit, and
didn't say word, Mrs. Quad threw her
arms around me and said she might have
married man with a lightning temper.


/ felt flattered and went in to encour-
age the whitewashers and painters. They
said If didn't rain, or wasn't too cold,
or too hot, and they kept in good health,
and other jobs didn't distract their atten-
ton, they'd finish up within week or
two, and one of them smashed vase and
another punched out q three-dollai pane
of glass by way of emphasis. had blue
paint on my cOattails, white on my ell
bows and straw-color on my knees when
got out, and bad boy yelled out:


" Here comes another of them variegat-
ed sunhowers"


We didn't sleep much that night. Some
how or other, no matter how honest a man
is, he can't rest very well on a straw bed
on the floor, with stove covers gliding
around under his back, and teaspoons.
potato -mashers and pint basins feeling of
his toes. | dreamed that l was panel
bedstead on casters, and had bet of
five dollars with the parlor stove that
could lick the front bedroom bureau in
just two minutes, but before the mill"
came off the spice can rolled down into
my ear and woke me up.


Next morning Small Plea, who was in
bounding spirits, essayed lunch off of
half pound of putty which the painters
had left sticking to bronze bust of De-
mosthenes, and Long Primer sat down on
the butcher knife and got up bowling;
but my wife said that this was world of
trlnlng incident and told me to go off
feeling happy. Before got down town
l found the sugar spoon in my vest pocket
and towel hitched to my coat-tail, but
went on. At noon there was an extra
painter on hand, another scrubbing
woman for the stairs, and an orphan boy
about thirty-si years old had been hired
to empty the straw beds on the front steps
and tear out the pantry shelves. We
haven't got through yet-in fact, this is
chapter l. There are eleven more chapters
to come, and tonight l am going to sleep
on the table, Small Plea in a six-gallon
jar and the rest of them on the window
stills, as the kitchen floor has just been
painted and the paper-hangers don't want
the other rooms mussed up until the paste
dries and the paint sets.


LATER-MlDNIGHT.- fell asleep and
dreamed that was a silver-plated, six
bottle, revolving caster, and that the soup
tureen called me liar. / went to go for
him and awoke on the floor, with my
elbow in pan of flour and the meat
broiler wildly clutching me by the throat.
What the morrow will bring forth l don't
know M Ou11 an Detroit H1.ee D1eee