Year: 1873

The most exquisite article of domes- tic torture, says the Danbury Neeos, is the modern window curtain fixture. The curtain is uniformly of cloth, with flat stick at the bottom, and a round stick at the top, and ,compli- cated lot of brass cogs and ratchets at the ends. It isn't much trouble to fit in the fiat sticks, because they can be measured the right length on the floor, but it is getting the proper length of the round sticks, or rollers, that plays the mischief with mans temper. We are not quite certain but that it could be done without much buster were a mans wife to go off tS the other end of the town and stay there until the opera tion is over. She doesn't, however. She keeps right close to him, and en- livens the performance with such ob- servations as her judgment and expert ences teach her are best calculated to turn his head. The window curtain is generally put up in the evening. This is partly because the man has then more time, and partly attributable to his de- sire to put off the evil job until the last moment. The first thing to be done is to separate the parcels and borrow a

 

 driver (point broken) and hammer (handle loose). You instinctively saw the flat piece first, because that is the easiest, and afterward fit the rollers, which is more difficult, Then the cur tain is tackled to the rollers, which keeps turning over and breaking the tacks, and catching your fingers under the hammer. This done, you are ready to plant your feet on the best cane-bottom chair in the house, and put up the fix lures. Here your wife says: "Well, if I ever saw anything quite so idiotic as---''7 You then get right down, while she starts for @ wooden article, and by way of showing that you have no feeling in the matter, you kick the cane seat into the middle of the room. Once mounted on thewooden chair, the brackets are put up. To do this re- quires that you extend yours arms the full length, and while in this condition, with couple of screws and the screw driver in your mouth, the hammer in one hand, the other hanging to the fix lures, and the curtain with, the un- wieldly roller across your shoulder, you make the siekening discovery that you have got nothing with which to punch the hole for the screw. , ~e,a,:

 Then you get down to the floor again to remedy the defect, and find there is nothing for that purpose but the advice of your wife to drive the screw till it sets. You mount again. She holds the lamp so she can see if the woman has cleaned the corners of the glass, and as you have your mouth too full of hardware to articulate with any free dom, you find yourself obliged to kick her elbow to indicate that you actually demand some of the flame to set the screw. The artifce is lost upon her, however, for likely as not, she will set down the lamp to rub her arm, and ask you what you mean. No one has yet set a bracket to 8 curtain fixture with out either dropping some of the 1mple- ments, or 8 remark well calculated to engross the attention of the party hold ing the lamp. The awful strain on the arms, the wonderful vacillating humors of the screws, the 1ncomprehensible imbecilty of the screw driver, the ,ob- stinacy of the roller, and the astonish- ing perverseness of your wife, who will persist in moving the light at the wrong time, make putting up modern cur tain fixture the most subtitle of domes- tic grievances. And when the curtain is finally up, and secured so it won't fall on your head when you touch the string, and you take hold to draw it up, the feeling you experience as 1t waltzes off to one side, and tries to stand on its drunken head, and failing iii that, settles right where it is, and obstinately refuses to budge either way, has never been truly analysed. Weeks after, when you are leaning. back in your chair, engrossed in memories of the dead past, that curtain will sudden ly come laundering down upon you, causing you to spring out into the air, and lifting your very hair almost free from the scalp. .-s 20. ... ,..