Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 May 1879 — Beting a Carpet. [ARTICLE]

Beting a Carpet.

* ” ’ . fM-Ui.ovTj- MW. . The season of the year is at hand when the good housewife’s instinct for raising the dust is active; and no womairSvKb is mistress of '* house is happy unless jkodntsher head done up in a sweeping cap,.and wields a broom in her

Everywhere, indoori, the atmosphere teems with dust, and, tho woodpiles, and fences, and dwarf trees, and clotheslines are hung with carpets. Carpets of all pattornfr, and in every stage of dilapidation! Carpets old, and new, and darned, and patched, and stained, and generally demoralized! Carpets of living rooms, where every thread is worn so thin that it is a wonder and a mercy that the fabric will hold, together while it is put on tho line; and carpets, of spare rooms and parlors where thp blinds have been always kept shut, and the gorgeous roses ana lilies bloom in all their brilliant 'magnificence still. Tho woman of the house seems rather to enjoy the terriblo confusion which tearing up carpets creates; but not so the man of the house. No, indeed! He knows ho shall be called upon to boat those carpets; and übout that time ho will wish that he had never been fool enough to get married. Ho will look at old bachelor Jones over the way, reading his magazine, and smoking serenely, while nis fat landlady boats the carpet of his room, and blows like a grampus in the effort; and our Benedict will envy that lonesome old bachelor his sweet serenity of spirit. But a pair of blue eyes made a fool of him, ana now the owner of the blue eyes, with her dress turned up, and her hair covered with an old red handkerchief, and her elbows grimy with the dust she has been raising, has the right to call on him to beat the carpet, and if he refuses, then he does not fulfil the marriage covenant according to the theory of all the women ho knows of. He goes at it like a sheep to the slaughter. He does not want to do it. Awfully does not want to. He hates the dust in his nose and eyes, and the lint in his mouth, and on his clothes, and the pounding makes his arms ache, and the carpet has a trick of coming off the line, or else the line breaks just as he gets a good chance at it. Ana all the women in the neighboring houses, as he knows, will be looking out to see how he does it, and they will laugh at every accident he has, and enjoy it hugely every time he gets his stick hung up in the line, and has to swear to get it out. And while he is firing away, Brown will pass by with his cane under his arm, and ips hat well set back, and he will hail him, and want to know how he likes it, and inform him that he had bettor “pull down his vest,” and then he will saunter on languidly, and express his opinion that a man is foolish to beat a carpet when he can hire a fellow to do it for a dollar.

The blue-eyed wife will just here put her head out of the window, and call sharply: “John, don’t for Heaven’s sake pound that thin place all to pieces! Strange that a man don’t know anything!” And then she 1 !! come down into the yard, and show him just how it ought to be done. And if anything will make a married man mad clear through, it is to have his wife show him how to do what ho has done a thousand times before, satisfactory to himself if to no one else. But our advice to you, good married men friends, is to take the carpet-beat-ing as one of the ills of life. Do it cheerfully, bear it bravely and resignedly, and don’t let your 'feelings be much hurt if your wife tells you, after you have done your best, that she wishes to goodness she had beat that carpet herself! She could have done it twice as well! — Kate Thorn, in N. Y. Weekly.