Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 August 1876 — A WEEK-DAY "SUNDAY SICKNESS.” [ARTICLE]

A WEEK-DAY "SUNDAY SICKNESS.”

One day Willie was attacked by a most curious kind of headache, which seemed worse just before school-time, decreased rapidly toward noon, and appeared again about two o’clock. He had been much subject to like attacks before, and his mother desired to prevent them in the future, as they were growing upon him, and were quite a hindrance to his education. He was sitting in the big arm-chair, looking very disconsolate, when his mother entered the room. < .‘‘ Come, Willie, said she, “ you’ll be very late to school if you don’t hurry.” “O, mother, I’ve got an awful headache, and feel almost sick.” “Indeed! I’m sorry; I’ll go right up and get my castor oil, and then put you to Id.” “ O, I guess I ain’t sick enough to take edicine or go to bed,” said Willie, looking a little brighter, but not entirely recovered. “ Well, then, I’ll wrap you up in my big shawl and let you sit by the fire. You can study your lessons and recite to me.” “ Don’t you think it would do me good to run up and see Johnny a little while, mother? I need fresh air.”’ He looked longingly out of the open door, where the old aog was dozing in the warm sunshine; over the green fields, where cows and glossy colt were moving about. The birds were singing, and everything seemed happy. But these were not for him. He was an invalid, confined to a warm kitchen and wrapped in a heavy shawl. How he did wish he had gone to school. He had not thought his mother would take his plea of sickness in such a serious manner. “ I can’t study,” he said, at last, looking up; “all my books are at school; I didn’t know I was going to be at home.” “ You needn’t worry, if that’s all,” said his mother. “ I remember seeing an old speller in the attic, only a few days ago.” “I’m afraid it’ll be too old. Just as likely as not half the words will be spelt wrong, and I shall have to learn them all over again.” “ I don’t believe its very different from the one you use; and I will go and look for it.”

“ Can’t I go?” cried Willie eagerly, forgetting his headache. “ No, my dear, you might get cold. Sit. still and I will get it for you.” So he settled back in his big chair where he was ensconsed, looking very much indeed like an invalid, enveloped in the great shawl, and with a pillow at his back. While he was alone he could hear the voices of the children at play in their recess, coming faintly from the distance. Everything seemed to show that summer was at hand. How he longed to be out in the fields at play. When his mother came back with the speller, his headache returned; so he passed his morning twisting about iu his chair, and wishing for dinner-time to come. At noon one of his little friends came to see why he had been absent. “ It’s real nice to be a little sick; I wish I the child, gazing wistfully at him, reclining at ease. “No, it’s perfectly horrid. I will never, never be sick again.” “But when are you coming back to school?” “This afternoon,” cried Willie; decidedly;- “ I mean to go to school all my life, till I get to be an old man.” “I should be very unwilling to have you go to school this afternoon. You will have to wait till you are perfectly well,” said his mother, determined to make a sure cure. ■ -- “Oh mother, can’t I please go? I don’t feel at all sick now.” The little friend, not understanding the situation, looked on in amazement at seeing Willie openly avowing good health, and pleading for permission to go to school, denied that privilege. He wished his mother would act in the sameway.— Willie had but a dreary afternoon of it, and was glad when night came. In the morning he was up bright and early, and when his mother appeared he cried out: “I can go to school to-day, can’t I, mother?” “I’m afr ” began his mother, when Willie broke in: “Now, mother, I just must. I should go crazy to stay at home another day.” “Well, then, you must wear your thick overcoat, and remember to keep it buttoned up close, and don’t run any, but walk quietly; you musn’t get sick again.” Whenever, afterward, Willie showed the slightest desire to stay away from school, his mother would say: “Willie, don’t you feel well? You can stay at home with me to-day and rest if you like;” but the invitation has never been accepted. So far Willie has carried out his infenlion of “always going to school.” —Watchman. How Girls Can Learn to Be House* keepers. * Begin with your own things and your own place. That is what your mother will tell you if you rush to her, enthusiastic with great intentions, and offer to relieve her of half her housekeeping. Don’t draw that little bucket of cold water to have it poured back upon your early zeal.

Reform your upper bureau-drawer; relieve your closet-pegs of their accumulation of garments out of use a month or two ago. Institute a clear and cheerful order, in the midst of which you can daily move ; and learn to keep it. ’Use yourself to tlie beautiful—which is the right—disposing of things as you handle them; so that it will be a part of your toilet to dress your room and its arrangements while you drcss yourself ; leaving the draperies you take off as lightly and artistically nung, or as delicately folded and placed, as the skirts you loop carefully to wear, or the ribbon and lace 1 you put with a soft neatness about your throat. Cherish your instincts of taste and fitness in every little thing that you have about .you. grow impossible to you to put down so much as a pin-box where it will disturb the orderly and pleasant grouping upon yonr dressing-table; or to stick your pins tn your cushion, even, at all sorts of tipsy and uncomfortable inclinations. This will not make you “fussy”—it is the other thing that does that; the not knowing, except by fidgety experiment,What is harmonj’ and the intangible graceof relation. Once get your knowledge beyond study, and turn ff into tart— which IS literally having it at tour fingers’ ends, as I told you—and order will breatfie about you, and grace evolve from commonest things, and uses and belongings, wherever you may be; and “putting things Io rights” will* not be separate task-kork and trouble, any more than it is in the working of the solar system. It will go on all the time, and with a continual pleasure. Take upon yourself gradually—for tlie sake of getting them in hand in like hianner, if for no other need— all tlie cues that belong to your own small territory of home. Get together tilings for’ use in these cares. Have your little wash-cioths and your sponges for bits of cleaning; your furniture-brush and your feather duster, and your light little broom, wad your whisk and pan; your bottle of sweet oil and spirits of turpentine, aid.piece of flannel, to preserve the polish, or restore the gloss, where dark wood grows dito or gets spotted. Find Out, by following your surely-growing sense of thoroughness and niceness, the best and readiest way 4 of keeping all fresh about you. Invent your owm processes; they will come to you. I shall not lay dawn rtiles or a system for you. When you have made yourself wholly mistress of what you can learn and do in your own apartment, so that it is easier and more natural for you to dp it than to let it alone —so that you don’t count the time it takes any more than that which you have to give to your own bathing and hair-dressing—then you have learned enough to keep a whole house, so far as its cleanly ordering is concerned.— Mrs. A. D. I’. Whitney, in St. Nicholas.