Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 November 1880 — The Clothes-Line Nuisance. [ARTICLE]

The Clothes-Line Nuisance.

Come, now, what infernal barbarity is this—leaving a clothes-line out after dark! A great deal of fanny comment lias been made upon the custom by thoughtless people, but it is a most serious matter, ana it Is high time the tomfoolery was abolished. We are just as ready as anybody to see the fanny side of a thing, but we luive ceased to observe anything amusing in being unexpectedly sawed across the face by a vlotbes-line. It is time there was a legislative enactment to either hang clotbesdines sixty feet above the earth, or make the leaving them ut over nightfall a state-prison offense. It is a most incomprehensible fact a clothesline is always hung across the garden path. If tbe yard was ten miles square and a path two feet wide crept along close to the fence, and tbe woman baa but eight feet of line, she would manage to cover the path. Whether this is because she is perverse, or cannot help it, we do not know. We only know that it is so, and that it is an appalling evil. No home circle is safe where the custom prevails. It matters not how good natured a man is, it matters not how carefully lie has been educated, it matters not how lofty and noble are his aspirations —the moment a clothes-line catches him under the chin, especially if he has a pan of ashes under his arms, that moment he sinks with awfnl velocity to the level of a brute, and proceeds to act out the conditions thereof at once.. In its proper place a clothes-line is a valuable companion, but across a path after dark it is simplv a brutalising force