A VAIN LONGING.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume III, Issue 896, 23 December 1916, Page 7

A VAIN LONGING.

I'd love to be a housewife! 1 would love to spend my day In a cosy little kitchen while the moments sped away! With the nicey, spicy odours, homey, and yet sharp and strange, And the genial warmth proceeding from the cunning little range; With the mysteries ol" cooking, and the knowledge ol' the power To turn out a fresh creation of one's genius every hour; Oh, the drudgery of rhyming is a tame am] thankless thing— I should love to he a housewife, that my very soul might sing! I'd love to be a housewife! Making beds and sweeping Moors— Washing windows, i!' I chanced to need some exercise outdoors; Ne'er a thought of earning wages to disturb the careless brain, Ne'er a Tear ol' boss or foreman with its constant prodding pain; .lust, the simple round of duly, with the mind at perfect rest, Thinking (houghls of love and beauty—free, and giving forth its best; Oil, the world with all its worries is a falsehood and a snare And 1 lain would he a housewife, free from every earthly care! Would that 1 had been a housewife! Naught annoys her, year by year, But the tinner and the plumber when the bathroom's out of gear, And the grocer and the garbage and the babies and the rugs, And the garden and the copper, and the roaches and the bugs. And the neighbours with their gossip and tiie dustman with his dirt. And a slouchy, grouchy husband with the buttons off his shirt— Oh, it's flue to be a housewife, sheltered from the madding mob. (But a man that digs a sewer has a sweeter, easier job.) - Ted Robinson, in Cleveland "Plain Dealer."