Year: 1873

Domestic Bliss i'm shaking the Carpet.
From the Utica N. Y, Herald


The annual ceremony of taking up, whip
ping and putting down carpets is almost upon
us. 1t is one of the ills which flesh is heir
to, and cannot be avoided. You 60 home
some pleasant spring day, at peace with the
world, and find the baby with clean face
and get your favorite pudding for dinner.
Then your wife tells you how much younger
you are looking, and says she really hopes
she can turn that walking dress she wore last
fall, and save the expense of a new suit, and
then she asks you if you can just help her
about taking up the carpet. 1t you arc
fool and you generally are by that time, yoa
tell her of course you can, just as well as not
Then she gets a saucer for the tacks, and
stands and holds it, and then you get the
claw and go down on your knees and begin
to help her. You feel quite economical about
the first three tacks, and take them out care
fully and put them in the saucer. Your wife
is good about holding the saucer, and beguils
you with an interesting story about how
your neighbor's little boy is not expected to
live till morning. Then you come to the
tack with a crooked head, and you get the
claw under it and the head comes off, and
the leather comes off, and the carpet comes
off, and as it wont do to leave the tack in the
floor, because it will tear the carpet when it
is put down again, you go to work and skin
your nuckles, and get u silver under your
thumb nail, and tell your wife to shut up
about that everlasting boy, and make up your
mind that it does not make any difference
about that tack, and so you begin on the cor
ner, where the carpet is doubled three or
four times, and has been nailed down with !
shingle nail.


You don't care continental about saving
the nail, because you find that it is not a good
time for the practice of economy, but you
do feel little hurt when both claws break
off from the claw and the nail does not bulge
Il peg. Then your manhood asserts itself,
| and YOU raise in your mig ght and throw the
carpet claw at the dog, and get hold OF the
carpet with both hands, and the air is full OF
dust and flying tacks, and there is fringe OF
carpet yarn all around the mop board, and
the baby cries, and the cat goes anywhere,
anywhere out of the world, and your wife
says you ought to be ashamed of yourself to
talk so-but that carpet comes up. Then
you lift one side of the stove, and your wife
tries to get the carpet from it, but can't
because you are standing on it. So you try
new hold, and just after your back breaks
the carpet is clear. You are not through yet.
XOuI Wllc uOu yOu duy HolC 14ltIC
stories, but gets your old coat and hangs it
on YOU. and opens the back door and shoves
you out, and intimates that the carpet needs
whipping. When you hang the tormenting
thing across the clothes-line the wrong way,
and get it righted, and have it slide off into
the mud, and hang it up again, and get half
pint of dust and three broken tacks snap
ped out of the northwest corner into your
mouth by the wind, you make some observa-
tons which you neglected to mention while
in the house. Then you hunt up stick and
20 for that carpet. -.
The first blow hides the sun and all the fair
face of Nature behind cloud of dust, and
right in the center of that cloud, with the
wind square in your face, no matter how you
stand, you WELD that cudgel until both'hands
are blistered, and the milk of human kindness
curdles in your bosom. You can whip the
carpet longer or shorter period, according
to the size of your mad it don't make any
difference to the capet, it is just as dusty and
fuzzy and disagreeable after you have whip
ped it two hours, as it was when you COM
menced. Then you bundle it up, with one
corner dragging, and stumble into the house,
and have more trouble with the stove, and
fail to find any way of using the carpet
stretcher while you stand on the carpet, and
then you get on your knees again, while your
wife holds the saucer, and with blind conf
dence hands you broken tacks, crooked tacks,
tacks, with no points, tacks with no heads,
tacks with NO feathers, tacks with the biggest
ends at the points. Finally, the carpet is
down, and the baby comes back, and the cat
GENES back, and the dog comes back, and
your wife smiles sweetly, and says she is glad
that job is off her mind. AS it is too late to
do anything elese, you sit by the fire and
smoke with the inner confidence that she is
the meancst man in America. The next day
you hear your wife tell friend that you are
so tired; she took up and put down that great