Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 April 1919 — PHILOSOPHY OF WALT MASON [ARTICLE]

PHILOSOPHY OF WALT MASON

I’m glad when washday’s gone «nd ended, for then the rules are all suspended, the house is upside down; I breathe a lot of hectic •curses, as I sit round composing ■verses, in my pink dressing gown. J see the womenfolk, embattled, all tired, distraught and badly rattled; uny aunt comes pawing round; ■“What luck! What luck! We’re out of bluing! Go, hump yourself, %e up and doing, and bring us half a pound!” I hear the loud domestic shrieking, “Oh, Caesar's ghost! The boiler’s leaking, the water’s all TUB out!*’ And I must do some punk repairing, and while I do it 1 am swearing, for I'm bunged up ■with gout. At noon I have to eat cold pottage, for no one round the cottage has time to cook a meal; there’s no hot coffee in the shanty—and it would take the pen of Dante to tell how tough I feel. All day I see the women sloshing around the soily weekly washing, up to their ears in suds; «11 day they toil around like dingers, and feed into the jaws of wringers the aromatic duds. And then at Bright they’re all so weary, I look in vain for glances cheery, I see no Cheerful grin; they’re taking headache pills and potions, and I re-

mark, with wild emotions, “Oh, washday is a sin!”