Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 May 1896 — CLEANING THE HOUSE. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

CLEANING THE HOUSE.

FORM OF ACUTE MANIA WHICH PREVAILS IN SPRING. It* B;mptoma and Progress—An Occnpation that Breeds Dissension Among All Who Engage In It—Sufferings of Those Who Clean House. Its Victims Are Many. About the time the blue bird begins to warble its dulcet notes in the forest and the schoolboy feels the first symptoms of his annual attack of spring

fever, a dreadful malady makes its appearance among housewives. It Is Judged by experts to be a species of emotional insanity, is believed Incurable, always manifests Itself by certain definite and well-understood symptoms, and when it has once set in, Is bound to run its course in spite of all the remedial measures that the ingenuity of husbauds and other interested persons can devise. It is known aa the spring cleaning mania, and is probably ns old as the first habitation And the earliest married couple. There

If no record in the Scriptures or elsewhere, of Eve turning her family out of doors in order to get the house clean In springtime, but no doubt can be felt ♦hat with the first warm days of every season she began to remind Adam that the house was just too filthy to live in any longer, that everything would have to come up, and she dreaded it so for she was certain to get sick as soon as It was over. It is also likely that Cain and Abel, as soon as they saw the preliminary symptoms, the scrubbing brushes and mops and buckets of whitewash on the back porch, hid their caps under their jackets, if they had any caps or jackets, and absconded directly after breakfast, spending the day on the banks of the nearest pond and returned home after nightfall, to be soundly trounced by the father of all mankind at the suggestion of mankind’s mother, and sent to bed without their supper. Some things may be taken for granted, and among them is the fact that women have always been attacked by the spring-cleaning madness. Pliny mentions the fact that in his day the Roman wives turned their houses upside down for a week or two under pretense of getting things clean, and It is quite probable that the famous picture in the catacombs of Bgypt, representing a lot of house-

hold furniture in front of an Egyptian residence, is a record to the same et ■ ect Archaeologists have dubbed It • The spoils of war,” and have learnedly argued that the enemy had taken i he household.goods out for the purpose of carrying them away, but It is more than likely that some disgusted artist who had been turned out by his wife during her attack, took this method of perpetuating fils indignation at the* outrage on his domestic comfort and* ♦hat the picture merely represents a spring-cleaning COOO years ago. The antiquity the malady is thus beyond doubt, and it is equally certain that the disease now raging among the housewives of this and every other city of the Northern Hemisphere is the same that has afflicted womankind from the earliest ages. It must be noted, as one of its symptoms, that It appears and runs its course epidemically throughout a neighborhood or city without the slightest reference to the previous condition of the premises. The house may be swept from top to bottom every day in the year so thoroughly that not even one of Pasteur’s microscopes could find a speck of dirt, but this fact cuts no figure whatever, and the suggestion from her lord and Servant; made with a deference becoming his subordination in the establishment, that the house Tloes not need cleaning is scouted as coming from one speaks without the'spallest atom CPlnfonSSlddn on the subject. “A man 4jver knows anything about a house njayhow,” “Just look at that carpet Apt sde that wail," and as he gazes, jnbtestlng his inability to see anything out of the usual, his wife enlarges on the Inability of a man to realize the

presence of dirt when he sees It "Besides, Mrs. Smith, across the street began her cleaning a week ago, and Mrs. Brown, on one side, and Mrs. Jones, on the other, began yesterday, and it would be simply dreadful to let things go on as they are, for the house is worse than a pigstye now.” And so the torrent of feminine eloquence flows on and the wise man will not only let It flow, but also get out of its way, for If there Is one thing that a woman knows better than anything else, it is that a house always gets shockingly dirty during the winter and always needs to be cleaned In the spring. She does not clean up from choice. Oh, deer, no. She dreads it worse than

an epileptic does his dally fit For weeks ahead she will talk about it and its terrors. She remembers that the last time she cleaned house she was in bed for a week and had a pain In her back the rest of the summer. But she knows it must be done, and so she goes ahead and makes a martyr of herself and everybody else, In order that the Lares and Penates may be free from dust. But If any one supposes that the sacrifice Is cheerfully made, he is greatly mistaken, for somehow or other, house-cleaning, like chorus singing, or tableaux, or croquet, seems to breed quarrels as It goes forward and to make everybody concerned 111-na-tured, and he is a wise and fortunate husband who, when he sees the preliminary signs, reconciles his mind to the inevitable and goes fishing until the mania lias speqt its force and things about the house have resumed their normal appearance and condition. In that ease, he Incurs only the reproach of deserting his helpmeet during her period of greatest tribulation, but saves himself for a week from the humiliation of feeling that he is of little less consequence than the scrub-woman and a little more in the way than a sore thumb. Although aware that the preliminary symptoms have appeared, the husband generally learns of the outbreak of the acute stage by looking out of the window one morning as he is dressing and seeing a couple of American citizens of African descent sitting on the front steps. An Inquiry as to the purpose of their presence at once arouses the lively interest of his wife, who promptly goes into a state of mind because she told

them to come to-morrow, instead of today, and, nothing is ready for them. “But, as they are here, they may as well go to work,” and so they do, and breakfast is eaten in trembling haste and with occasional puffs of dust through the door leading into the par-

lor, where the Senegambians are taking up the carpet The meal over, the husband flees, and the trouble begins In good earnest The house Is invaded by a motly throng of scrubbers, male and female, carpet-beaters, who tear up the carpets and carry them away in Wagon-loads, painters, paper-hangers,

carpenters, whitewashes, plumbers to repair the water pipes, tinners to mend the gutters, all of whom bring their bosses along to do the heavy standing round, and tell how much better things were dene when they were learning the trade. The mistress of the house is in her glory. It is her occasion. She gets her husband's last year’s duster on her back, and his last summer’s straw hat on her head, over a good-sized towel ,to keep her hair clean, and a splotch of smut on her nose, and thus arrayed, she marches through the halls with the tread of a conquering hero, and climbs the stairs ten times an hour and gets in everybody’s way and tells everybody what tp do, says rhe feels like her back would break and declares her head is splitting, and knows she is going to have a spell as soon as this is over. “It’s simply awful, but ft’s got to be done, for If we didn’t clean, what would the neighbors think,” an argument simply unanswerable. So she scolds her way from cellar to garret, and bemoans her fate and tells the servants she does not really t(now what they are good for anyhow. She even works her way into the yard where the spading and planting and sodding and whitewashing are going forward under the auspices of a choice corps of men and brethren, and gives them to understand that what they are doing must be done In a different way from the way they are doing it The fact that she knows nothing at aU about how It ought to be dohe cuts no figure, and they may feel morally sure that to follow her directions would spoil the Job, but they are quite accustomed to this sort of thing, so they show their Ivories In broad and pleasant smiles, respond with a mechanical "Yessum,” and go ahead with the work exactly as they were doing it before, In confident assurance that she will never know the difference. But, however pleasantly they may smile, their hearts are full of wrath, for house-cleaning is provocative of more rage and profanity than any other occupation on the earth. Everybody engaged In it, from the scrub woman who uses so much water that It spoils the ceiling beneath, to the master of the house, who eats his breakfast on * table covered with the flotsam and jetsam of the household furniture and cornea home at noon to find that he Is compelled to sit in the yard. Everybody quarrels with his nearest neighbor, and tie idea of the unity and harmony of labor Is shivered Into fragments by the experience of a spring cleaning. The Congoese who Is doing the spading Is always ready to pull his razor on the Zulu who is whitewashing

the side fence, the difficulty commonly arising from the earth being scattered on the newly spread whitewash, this defacement of his Job being keenly resented by the knight of the brush. The tinner and the painter invariably fall out, for the latter always wants to work on that side of the house which the former has chosen for the scene of his labors; the two ladders come in conflict, and much language unfit for publication Is shed. Sometimes the shed-

ding extendd also to the paint, for after affairs have reached a climax, and the blackguarding has arrived at a point where the painter has been outdone, he catches up a brush from a pot of red paint and throws it at the tinner. Of course it hits him just under the ear and spatters all over his neck, and, equally of course, he grabs a red-hot iron from his furnace and tak<£ after the painter, who flees while the tinner pursues, giving the Impression of a man with his throat cut seeking vengeance on the murderer. Away they go down the street, and the other house-cleaners rush out, look after them, and three or four blocks away see a crowd with a policeman’s helmet bobbing about in the middle of it, and know that the offenders are In the grasp of an ever-vigilant minion of the law. But they do not stay there, for, In all probability, they come back to their work the next morning smoking their pipes In the best of humors having explained to the sergeant that they were housecleaning, and that official being prepared, from experience, to understand both the provocation and the situation. The natural enemy ofgthe paperhanger is the carpenter. No matter where the paper-hanger goes to hang paper, thither also goes tb*» carpenter, for In every room where paper is to be hung, by some singular fatality, there is either a door to be repaired, or a window out of Joint, or a washboard that need* to come up and be put down

tg&ln. And the paperhanger always wants the door shut just at the time the carpenter wants It open, or the carpenter always wants to work at the washboard Just after the paper man has moved his bench to that side of the room, or the man of rolls and paste desires to paste and spread above the window that the carpenter Is Just about to take out, so the mistress of the establishment Is kept in a constant panic lest one should brain the other, which would be Just terrible, you know, besides mussing the door. Side issues are constantly arising. The man who Is doing the plastering always walks over the floor that has Just been scrubbed; of course he could not walk anywhere else; he would go half a block out of his way to leave the tracks of his limy brogans on that newly cleansed surface, and when he is scolded for his carelessness, revenges himself by swearing at the man who la putting In a new gas pipe, who, In turn, curses the plumber for laying a water pipe so as to compel an extra turn In the gas conduit. The women who scrub grumble at the cook who does not heat the water hot enough for their use, and so It goes on, the whole house being filled with cursing and bitterness until the calamity is overpast.

The only participants who really enjoy their Job are the carpet beaters, this exception arising from the fact that after the carpets are taken up, they must be transported out of the neighborhood to be beaten. Carpet beaters, like detectives, always work in couples, and why one should always be short and stout and the other tall and thin Is one of the mysteries of nature and housecleaning. By removing their Impedimenta from the Immediate vicinity of the engagement, the carpet beaters escape contact with the othfif combatants and are enabled to beat thfc carpets Into holes In comparative peace. This is an advantage which they appreciate; that Is, If an Idea of their appreciation of the Job may be gained from the noise they make at it, for a couple of carpet cleaners, In good health and with a carpet that can stand the blows, are able to give a very successful imitation of a bombardment Their trouble comes when the carpets are brought back and the housewife gazes on the fissures that gape along every seam, but the experienced beater Is never worried by such a trifle as the feeliqgs of a carpet owner; If he did, he would not be fit for his business, so he listens with patience, sews up the rips as well as he can, and relays the carpet In calm confidence that next spring he will be again called on to beat the same carpet into the same fragments and listen to the same language about It. It is not of record that the experts on mental disease have as yet given any special attention to the housecleaning mania as a form of insanity, but husbands and other interested persons may hope that in time it may receive some measure of professional notice and that measures may be adopted for Its alleviation ff It be finally found incurable. Perhaps, when the millennium comes carpets will not need beating and floors will remain forever free from dust, and even If this hope should prove futile, the “House with Many Mansions” will need no repairs and there Is no mention made of carpets In any of its numerous apartments. There the housewife will cease from troubling about the cleaning and the carpet beater will be at rest.

AND SOUNDS OF THUNDER PROCLAIM THE CONFLICT WELL BEGUN.

EACH FOEMAN DREW HIS BLADE.

AMONG HIS LARES AND PENATES.

AND CURSES FILL THE AIR.

THE MEAT WE SNATCH IS SWEETEST OF ALL.