SHIFTING.

Observer, Volume XXXII, Issue 52, 7 September 1912, Page 23

SHIFTING.

[For the Observer.] (By 149.) A MAN, who moves one not very large picture from an Art Gallery at dead of night, is looking for trouble, but the man who moves several pictures, a piano, a mangle, chairs, and the family stock of jam, together with the other necessities of existence (not excepting the clothesprop), is the least fortunate of the two. Moving house is one of the large sombre curses of civilisation. Standing in Queen-street yesterday, one might have noticed the agonising procession of carts piled with furniture. Every chair, every roll of linoleum represented to some poor wan mother, or some infuriated father a heavier cross than private bars do to the Rev. Mr Garland. * * * In the Old World one lives in the house of one's fathers. One's fathers also lived in the house of their fathers. The chair that was resting affectionately against the wall in the dining room in 1314 and 1671, is the chair that still rests affectionately against the same wall in 1912. People certainly do move house at Home, but the agony is not so pronounced. Away goes the pantechnicon, and the house father hasn't soiled his hands or raised a perspiration. If the mover desires to move from Bogville on the Grass to Bunipton on the Pebbles, the pant, etc., simply pushes itself holus bolus aboard a train and even then father doesn't worry. Imagine asking an Auckland expressman to permit liis sacred vehicle to be loaded on a train at Auckland and unloaded at Napier. He would assuredly become blasphemous. In the first place, when desiring to remove froni Ponsonby Alley to Freeman's Retreat, be very careful how you approach the expressman. He is so busy as a general thing camping on the stand that he takes a long time making up his mind to decide whether he will work for you or not. He probably won't work for you anyhow, unless you are respectful. Having bribed him to "shift you," he will begin breaking the photo of grandfather to-morrow morning at 8 o'clock. If you select your expressman carefully, he will come into your house, look contemptuously on the valued roll of linoleum that has been so admired by Mrs Nexdoor, expectorate on the floor, and retire to have a smoke. Subsequently, when he knocks a large area of paper off the wall, with the corner of a sofa, you say nothing. It is not your wall, and you dare not complain of his treatment, of the sofa, because complaints take time, and you have hired the expressman by the hour. You wonder how the ex-racehorse, which is standing in the express examining the road-metal with pathetic interest, is going to stagger along with the furniture of a five-roomed house, not to speak of yourself, carefully holding the marble clock. Inside the house, the expressman and his mate are howling for boxes. Expressmen always make a base of boxes. If you

haven't any boxes, the expressman looks angry, and you feel that you are treating him very badly indeed. There never was a person in the world, who having seen his household goods piled upon an express, who was not utterly ashamed of them. The carpet that looked fairly decent laid down in the dining room screams with shabbiness on a cart. There is something fearfully plebian about the appearance of well-used pots and pans that stick out of the family washing-tub at the back of the cart. Even the family dining table.seems but respectable firewood to the jaundiced eye of the suffering shifter, and the linoleums look shocking.

Staggering round with one end of a piano (hire purchase system) is a demoralising business, especially if your daily work consists of making black marks in a white book. But if, when in such a position the butcher happens along, and with an anxious hand presents his bill, the situation becomes acute. There is a famous picture of the comic order showing a furniture remover with his back under a large chest of drawers and his big knotted hands closed round the edges of it. In the foreground stands an unsober loafer, who is saying ," 'Yavn't gotter lucifer about yer, 'aye yer, matey ?" The father of a father feels just like that furniture eradicator for several days during the house-flitting. If you are moving next week, don't do it. There is a deliberation about the race of furniture demolishers that makes a man search among the pile of mattresses in the front bedroom for his trusty gun.

When you are moving beware of women. When you are perched on two chairs piled on top of the dressing table, unhitching the curtains, take heed of the wifely query, " Where did you put the baby's best hat ?" Fall off your perch, rush to the vehicle (but'don't wake the driver !) and search through all the draAvers of the chest. Then get back into the house in time to hear her say, " Oh, here it is hanging on a nail in the bath-room !" Do not blaspheme. It is a bad example to expressmen. If you suffer from heart disease, do not ask the expressman for his bill. Let him send it to your. wife. She has put up with you for years, and a little thing like that can be borne with equanimity. When the expressmen have placed all the kitchen utensils in the best bedroom of the new house, and the sideboard is reposing against the fence in the back garden, you will arrive, and be instructed by the wife to light the gas stove to make a cup of tea !"

There is no gas, of course, for the Gas Company always cut off the supply five seconds after the tenant has left, in case it should lose threepence and be obliging to anybody.

Of course, the linoleums and carpets don't fit, and you can't find the hammer or the pepper tin with the screws in, or the rings for the curtain poles— and, of course, the blind brackets and nails were left in the sink at the last house. Probably the expressman has taken the castors of the best bed away in his nosebag in error, and you haven't the faintest notion where the candles are. All the children want " pieces," and how one is to get at the loaf, which one is sure is at the bottom of the big tin trunk, one doesn t know. The angelic neighbour, who appears just here with a large tray carrying needed refreshments is the only oasis in the house shifting Sahara. As the scornful laughter of the expressmen dies away in the distance, you have only two words to say — '" Never again I"