Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 169, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 August 1917 — Doing Things Wrong. [ARTICLE]

Doing Things Wrong.

In bachelor days Mark Twain had heartily expressed the antipathy of bachelordom for all chambermaids because of their hostile ideas of tidiness. “They always put the pillow on the opposite end of the bed from the gasburner,” he wrote, “so that white you read and smoke before sleeping, as is the ancient and honorable custom of bachelors, you have to hold your book aloft, in an uncomfortable position, to keep the light from dazzling your eyes. If they cannot get the light in an inconvenient position any other way, they move the bed. They always put your books into inaccessible places. They always put the matchbox in some other spot. They hunt up a new place for it every day and put up a bottle or other perishable glass thing where the box stood before. This is to cause you to break that glass thing. They always save up all the old scraps of printed rubbish you have thrown on the floor and stand them carefully on the table and start the fire with your valuable MSS.”