Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 February 1881 — Making Things Pleasant [ARTICLE]

Making Things Pleasant

A great many bright and even witty things are said annually by husbands, throughout the United States, in regard to the nearly universal practice « f wives and' mothers of changiug the arrangements of the furniture and the established order of things in the household. The genial tender of the fire in “Back-log Studies ” remarks upon the face that the only reason the mistress could give for hanging a picture in what seemed the most inappropriate place was that It had never been there before, It is a positive delight to most women simply to move things around with a view of bettering the appearance of their rooms, and they lose interest at once in a house which is so constructed that certain articles must remain in certain places. There is, however, a philosophy in this'effort of the housewife to give freshness and variety to her surroundings which is at length becoming recognised. A distinguished physician has lately said that “it is wise and wholesome to break the uniformityof decoration from time to time, for a pleasurable diver-

sion of mind, however simple it may be, is wholesome not less to the body than to the mind.” A woman passes ‘so much for her time in the nouse that she needs the harmless stimulus derived from these slight changes. There is a relief to her mind from the moiiotony of her daily round. What conscientious woman will say that she has never felt an insane desire to open the window and throw away her dishes after having washed the same cups and plates three times a day for a few years? We rejoice in the impetus which decorative art has received, and which makes itself felt in the most modest household, if in nothing more than the variety and beauty of dishes. It is suggestive and pleasing to put a Cinte butterplato in the shape of a green leaf or a pansy at each place, and to put cheese and pickles on the pretty majolica plates made especially for them, and to adorn the table with the flower-dec-orated dishes whicli are dainty enough for a king and cheap enough for almost anybody. It is a fact easily verified, that it does not tire one half so much to wash,., wipe, and Sut away a whole China tea-set as it ees to treat in the" same way half the number of common “every-day dishes.” Victor Hugo somewhere says that “Mind uplifts body, and is the only bird which sustains its cage.” This being true, everything which gives pleasure to a woman in her work helps her.— N. Y Evening Pont,