Oh, Walter, there is no “reproach” like that passionless upturned face; no words so crushing as the silence of those breathless lips; no misery like the thought that those we have injured are for ever blind to our gushing tears, and deaf to our sobs of repentance.
CURIOUS THINGS.
Curious: The exaggerated anxiety of wives to see the women who were formerly loved by their husbands.—Exchange.
Well, yes—rather curious; there are a great many curious things in this world. Curious, your husband always perceives that you are “sitting in a draft,” whenever one of your old lovers approaches you in a concert room; curious he insists upon knowing who gave you that pretty gold ring on your little finger; curious that you can never open a package of old letters, without having his married eyes peeping over your shoulder; curious he never allows you to ride on horseback, though everybody says you have just the figure for it; curious he always sends his partner on all the little business trips of the firm; curious such an ugly frown comes over his face when he sees certain cabalistic marks, in a masculine hand, in the margin of your favourite poet; curious that he will not let you name your youngest boy Harry, unless you tell him your confidential reasons; curious he is almost most gracious to the most uninteresting men who visit the house; and very curious, and decidedly disagreeable, that whenever you ask him for money, he is so busy reading the newspaper that he can’t hear you.
THE ADVANTAGES OF A HOUSE IN A FASHIONABLE SQUARE.
“Whom did you say wished to see me, Bridget?”
The broad-faced Irish girl handed her mistress a card.
“‘Mrs. John Hunter!’ Was there ever anything so unfortunate? Had she called on any other day in the week, I should have been prepared to receive her, but on a ‘washing day,’ when nothing but a calico wrapper stands Master George’s clawings and climbings; when the nursery maid is in the kitchen, and the baby on my hands for the day; when my ‘Honiton collar’ is in soak, the parlour-window curtains in the wash-tub, and the dimensions of the whole family, big and little, are flapping on the clothes line, displaying their rents and patches in full view of the parlour windows! Was there ever anything so unfortunate? What could induce Mrs. John Hunter to call on a washing day?”
But what was a “washing day” to Mrs. John Hunter, who lived in St. John’s Square, kept four servants, and patronized a laundry? What did she know of Monday’s picked up dinners and littered parlours, cluttered china closet, and untidied nurseries? Mrs. John Hunter, who came down to breakfast every morning in a fawn-coloured silk morning dress, trimmed with cherry, over an elaborately embroidered white skirt; in a cobweb lace cap, silk stockings, and the daintiest of Parisian toilette slippers; how could she see the necessity of going down into the cellar, after breakfast, to see if the pork was under brine, the pickle jar covered, and the preserves unfermented? What did she know about washing up breakfast-cups, polishing the silver sugar-bowl, filling the astral lamp, counting up the silver forks and spoons, or mending that little threadbare place in the carpet, that would soon widen into an ugly rent, if neglected? What did she know about washing children’s faces for school, or finding their missing mittens, or seeing that Webster’s spelling-book and a big apple were safely stowed away in their satchels? How did she (whose family broadcloth the tailor mended) know that Monday was always the day when husbands threw their coats into wives’ lap “for just one stitch,” which, translated, means new sleeve-linings, new facings for the flaps, a new set of buttons down the front, and a general resuscitation of dilapidated button-holes? How did she know that the baby always got up a fit of colic on washing days, and made it a point to dispense with its usual forenoon nap?—that all the collectors for benevolent societies, and bores in general, preferred it to any other day in the calendar?—that school teachers always selected it to ferule children for sneezing without permission—that milkmen never could spare you, on that day, your usual share of milk by two quarts—that the coal, potatoes, starch, soap, molasses, and vinegar always gave out on Monday—that “the minister” always selected it for his annual call, and country cousins for a “protracted meeting?” How should the patrician, Mrs. John Hunter, know all that?