And oh, the country washerwoman! Can anybody tell why she, having tried her fists only on red flannel, calico, and sheets, should announce herself as a professional laundress, and up to the mysteries of bluing, rinsing, clear-starching, and ironing? Trustingly you place your linen in her hands, and she departs to some spot where sun, fresh air, clover-blossoms, and plenty of water are all in her favor. In process of time she returns your clothes. The next morning your husband reproachfully requests you to examine that shirt-bosom, with its streaks of bluing, its little globules of starch, and its scorched spots, presenting a zebra front rivalled only in a menagerie. Now, perhaps shirt-bosoms are the only part of your husband's apparel in which he takes any interest; your educatory efforts in behalf of his gloves, boots, &c., having failed utterly; for that reason you weep, that this single germ of neatness, thus untimely nipped in the bud, should cause him to backslide into that normal slovenliness from which woman alone delivers him.
Well—he struggles into that shirt-bosom, and, with a man's inability to face disagreeable things, goes off without consulting his looking-glass; and you sit on the side of the bed, with your hair in your eyes, contemplating a pair of "clean" stockings just taken from your drawer.
That streak of dirt, carefully preserved, was got last week down on the rocks, from contact with seaweed; and that in the meadows, where you went for ferns and wild flowers; and that, when you slipped one leg down a deep and treacherous dirt-hole, trying to get a big blackberry. You can identify every one. You go to your closet for a gingham dress. When you put it in the wash it was gray, now it is a sickly green. You get a "clean" collar and cuffs—they are both saffron color. You are rather particular about the mixing of tints, and so have to give up the idea of a bow at your neck that will "go" with this rainbow apparel, and fall back, instead, on a safe jet pin, as emblematic also of your feelings.
I don't mention in this connection a little habit the country washerwoman has of returning Mrs. Smith's husband's flannel drawers, instead of the conjugal pair which generally delight my eyes, well mended and with buttons on the waistband, (hem!) while Smith's are in a state of non-repair, disgusting even to "a literary woman." I don't speak of my cambric under-waist, irretrievably torn down the back, or Smith's night-gown, about half the length of mine, which last is probably at that moment quietly reposing beside Mrs. Smith; but I pause to ask you to survey—yes, survey, for that is the proper word—this great table-cloth of a pocket-handkerchief of Smith's instead of my own dear little hem-stitched one, with a tiny fern-leaf in the corner. As to Smith's socks, they make it their home in my room, without any permit from the priest. I'm getting sick of Smith.
Again, my sisters, can you tell me why the country washerwoman invariably appears with her bundle of "clean" clothes just as you are starting for a ride, or going down to breakfast? Can one enjoy lovely scenery, or relish one's coffee and eggs, while this intermarriage of strange stockings and nightgowns is going on in one's room, and the fruitless hunt for ten cents to make "even change" is looming up in the horizon? I am constrained to say that in what light soever I view the country washerwoman, she is ——. Yes, ma'am!
P.S.—A Cape Ann editor gave me a box on the ear the other day for some remark I made on country washing. Now be it known that I am so accustomed to a boxed ear in a good cause, that I have learned to stiffen up to it, and I can endure it now without even winking.
But to business. This Cape Ann editor inquires, "why, if I do not like the Cape Ann washing, I do not get out the wash-tub, and wash my clothes myself." I smile serenely, while I answer, that while Mr. Bonner pays me enough for my articles to buy out this editor's printing-office, I prefer to do precisely what he would do, were he in my place—turn my back on the wash-tub and face the inkstand. Is he answered? I am sorry also to inform him that all womanhood seems to be "marching on" to the same or similar results, and that by and by men will have to choose their words in addressing "women folks;" not, I hope, for fear of being "knocked down," but because woman, be she married or single, being able to earn her own living independent of marriage,—that often hardest and most non-paying and most thankless road to it,—she will no longer have to face the alternative of serfdom or starvation, but will marry, when she does marry, for love and companionship, and for co-operation in all high and noble aims and purposes, not for bread and meat and clothes; and the men who sneer at this picture are always sure to be men with souls narrow as a railroad track, who never look or desire to look beyond the curve and out into the wide world of progress.
Then, if a woman's husband dies, she will not stay to hear his or her relatives disputing over his dead body which shall contribute least to her support. No: she will rub the tears out of her eyes, and taking her children by the hand, pocket the well-earned wages of a book-keeper; or she will be an architect; or she will write books, or open a store; or she may even rise to the dignity of editor of a "Cape Ann" paper—who knows?—or through any one of the open doors through which the light of woman's millennium is shining, she will pass serenely to collect her dividends. No more hysterics, sirs! no more fainting! no more trudging miles to match a ribbon! no more eating her heart out, trying to bear rough usage! She wont have rough usage! She will be in a position to receive good treatment, from motives of policy, from those natures which are incapable of better and higher. She will, in short, stand on her own blessed independent feet, so far as "getting a living" is concerned, as I do to-day, and able to make mouths even at Cape Ann, which—blessed be its rocks and "cunner"!—has not yet found the philosopher's stone, or made, even out of its vile bread, a "dyspeptic" of me, as its editor asserts.
Me "a dyspeptic"?—me! who could eat a block of its granite for dinner, and ask for another for dessert?—me! who, at fifty-eight, can tramp ten miles, every day, over its horrid rocky roads, and come back red as a peony and fresh as a lark!—me a dyspeptic? I am sorry to inform "Cape Ann" that I am as "live" as one of its whales, and none of its harpoons will ever finish me. And that my mission, wheresoever I sojourn in summer, is to preach down bad country washing, and bad bread, and country dyspepsia; and Cape Ann might as well, first as last, burn down its churches, for sal-eratus and sal-vation will never wed; for the victims of the former will walk this bright earth, so full of sparkle and sunshine and fragrance and bloom, with bowed heads, contracted chests, and pallid faces, nursing the dyspeptic's cherished vision of an "angry God"! That's where bad bread lands them!
As to "washing," bless you! there was a time when I did all my own washing, and did it well too. That's the way I came to know how to speak with authority on the starch and flat-iron question; and besides, as I said before, if Mr. Bonner will insist on paying my washing bills, whose business is it, save his and mine? He is quite welcome.