PUTTING TO EIGHTS.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2116, 15 October 1875, Page 4

PUTTING TO EIGHTS.

It is not the moving so much as the "putting to rights," which is so exhaustive to the nervous forces of the entire family. This is due in a great measure, to the carelessness in moving, ■ "When a man has a great deal to do, and little time to do it in, he takes no thought for the future. He throws half-dozen screws into a barrel "with an idea that they will turn up when he wants them. The main object is to get them in some place now. So when he comes to put up the certain fixtures in the new house, and finds the ingredients in a mass of confusion itis simply because he took them down that way,, and cares'only for the present case, without any regard to future convenience. In putting up the pictures, the nails are found in the bottom of a i bureau drawer, under a pile; of towels, j and the hammer is at the bottom of a barrel of stovepipe in the cellar. .Sometimes an hour is consumed in searching for a single - stove leg. The bread is iound rolled up in a carpet in an upper bed room, the coffee pot tied up in the bedding, the sugar in a barrel of carpet "rags, the tea, cannister: in the scuttle under the flat-iron, the-spoons in with a basket of empty.medicine bottles, and the table-cloth tied up with a half bushel of tinware. The man does about all the work. The woman goes round with a broom and sweeps up the soot, and feels the mouldings to see if they have been; damaged, and . examines the paint to see if it has been marred. She has been up the day before with a hired woman and has cleaned the house, and she: is very particular about its condition. It she sees a lump of dirt in the hall from the heel of the carman, she carefully hoists.it up on the dust pan, and says that all she,is fit for is : to slave her life: outcleaning, without.doing a."Bit of good, and then goes halfway .'down the garden to throw the debris away. "She is. ten minutes doing it, and ; a man would give it one kick and send it out of doors in.an instant. When; she ain't tumbling over the wrong articles, or misplacing the right ones, she is close at his heels giving advice, and asking him if he thinks a woman is made of cast 1 iron. When.he puts down the carpet she stands on the breadth he is trying to stretch, arid tells him she believes she will drop dead in her tracks if she don't get a chance to sit down pretty soon. Sometimes she is gone from sight fpr half an hour, and the distant sounds of a hammer are heard. When she returns she has another finger in a rag, and smells stronger than ever of arnica. Then, when the bureau drawer is being moved, arid her husband is struggling under his share, till every muscle in his body is as stiff as steel, and his face like a beet, and his eyes, protruding, and the ends of his fingers aching most acutely, she is round again. They are going jover the best carpet, and she hastens to the back of him because his boots are muddy, and with a -'•' show of dexterity,; tries to' get a length of old rag^ carpet over the new in the way he -is backing, and his feet catch in it, arid he yells j and then he stumbles and yells again, and catches himself only to stumble onec more, and come down with the bureau oh top of him, and the carman on top pf the bureau. Then lie jumps up and makes the most extraordinary statement at the top df his voice, and the carman limps around with his countenance full of reproach, and she says she has always.lived in a hog-pen and always expects ti»; and then goes i nto 'the next house to havo a good crying spell and a cup of tea.—'Daubury "Rwn.