Wives rant of their “Woman’s Rights,” in public; Husbands eat bad dinners and tend crying babies, at home.
Mothers toil in kitchens; Daughters lounge in parlors.
Fathers drive the plough; Sons drive tandem.
BOARDING HOUSE EXPERIENCE.
Mr. Ralph Renoux lived by his wits: i. e., he kept a boarding-house; taking in any number of ladies and gentlemen, who, in the philanthropic language of his advertisement, “pined for the comforts and elegancies of a home.”
Mr. Renoux’s house was at the court-end of the city; his drawing-room was unexceptionably furnished, and himself, when “made up,” after ten o’clock in the morning, quite comme il faut. Mrs. Renoux never appeared; being, in the pathetic words of Mr. Renoux, “in a drooping, invalid state:” nevertheless, she might be seen, by the initiated, haunting the back stairs and entries, and with flying cap-strings, superintending kitchen-cabinet affairs.
Mrs. Renoux was the unhappy mother of three unmarried daughters, with red hair, and tempers to match; who languished over Byron, in elegant negligées, of a morning, till after the last masculine had departed; then, in curl-papers and calico long-shorts, performed, for the absentees, the duty of chambermaids; peeping into valises, trunks, bureaus, cigar boxes and coat pockets, and replenishing their perfumed bottles, from the gentlemen’s toilet stands, with the most perfect nonchalance. At dinner, they emerged from their chrysalis state, into the most butterfly gorgeousness, and exchanged the cracked treble, with which they had been ordering round the over-tasked maid-of-all-work, as they affectionately addressed “Papa.”