Year: 1876

Inc sentlmental poets sing OF "spring time
and gentle Annie'' and fine writer's tell
US of bursting buds, babbling brooks and
smiling spring as if there were no clouds or
sullen days or disagreeable things in these
months. The poets and writer's must be chill
dren in the country who have come to regard
early spring as synonym for sap-boilings,
flap jacks and maple syrup. three times a day.
If not they have bad memories, since older
people in country and town remember the
woes OF spring time. In the household it is
the season of unrest, of revolutions-when
all the skeletons in all the closets rattle and
mutter. What observing person is there who
does not meet scores of men every day this
season of the year in whose faces are depicted
the woes that come from home in the
throes of revolution or what is equivalent,
spring renovations. For weeks the husband
and father has felt that the fatal hour is draw
ing near. The tenderness which he used to
see in his wife's face be imagines is giving
place 10 that intense expression which he
sees in the countenances of the men in the
street who make things move. At the break
fast table she turns his fragrant coffee to a
mere decoction OF chicory by painfully direct
questions about the price of wallpaper,
paint, whtewash and even frescoes. He has
been daily Mortified with direct illusions
about carpet beating. He remembers his
last experience as dust god, and his heart
sinks within him. Every sunny day the ease


loving man is urged to escort the coal stove
up three flights of stairs to its summer vaca-
ton. No wonder that the man grows more
pensive every day--that he feels life and cour-
age and hope departing from him-that he
forsets to go to the bankers and grows round
shouldered - that he sinks away from his
once happy home like a thirty days pris-
oner from the work-house, with wretched
d6 on his weak lips about having an appoint-
ment to see the name lost Smith or the
ubiquitous Jones. He returns to his once
pleasant home rarely and then elides in doors
as noselessly as il he were a sneak thief


AWe-stricken at the terrors which portend


he does not growl about the quality of his
dinners at this season of the year. The plot
thickens. One day he goes home. As he
opens the door strong oaor of cheap soap
smites bis nostrils. On the landing he meets
a female of Amazonian mould and Hiberni-
an accent, armed with long handled mop
and sundry minor house scrubbng and paint
running implements. They regard each 9th
er as natural Toes and the fallen lord obsequi-
ously tip-toes the other way. In the once
cozy sitting room. the work of destruction is
far along The curtains are down; the car
pets are torn up; the furniture is over turned


In the midst of the apparent ruin stands the
woman whom in other days he apostrophized
as The idol of his Heart" Capital 1 and H. J
Now she appears not goddess but one of the
Furies. She is clad in dress simple enough
but not of that simplicity which won his
heart. Her head is covered with turban.
She has tack-haumer In her hand, while
behind one ear is screw driver. Her once
beautiful cheek is mottled with spots OF
white-wash and bIotches of thick dust. How
mistaken when he thought her clinging
vine that he sturdy oak was to hold up
through life! She is now a self-asserting
power, born to command. She does COM
mand; the poor unnerved wretch clutches
up the carpet and from that day forward un-
til the gentle time of spring cleaning is over,
he beats carpets, harmonizes bits of stove
tunnel made to unite in defiance of the idea
of the fitness of things or the doctrine of fore
ordination, demonstrates the equality of hu-
manity as theory and the practical inequal-
ty of muscle between himself and the Hi
bernian woman by performing as her uiso-
cis in multitudnous transpositions of the
stoves and furniture-in short becomes the
meekest menial Of the party. He eats his
crust Of bread and drinks his cup of
water in the coal shed in humility. He
wishes he had gone to the war and fallen
for his country. He thinks of one Job who
has held the champion belt some forty or
fifty centuries as the most patient man, and
silently declares him fraud. That vener-
able and renowned man had not lived amidst
the blessings of 10th century civilization with
Its spring cleanings, its dust-laden carpets,
Its ponderous iron stoves with sharp edges.
He can no longer resist. The house is given
over to the spirit of revolution. Men come
with paint pots and buckets of whitewash !;
the harsh saw of the carpenter jars upon his
ear; the paper-hanger thrusts his bill into
his face-but he resents them not. He only
feels sad when Bridget wears his Christmas
smoking cap, gives his dressing gown to
Moike and his ten dollar silk hat to the baby
as plaything. But the wife? 1t is Won
dertul how she goes through those days of
wrath. No clinging, no cringtng. no shirk-
ing, no taking orders Except from Bridget
aioresaid). She is master of the situation.
She has mission to sulfill-a career to run.
Such are the woes of the season. Cheer
up, men. brighter days will come; for with
the spring the spring cleaning will end.