I heard a man say the other day of another:
“He is a royally good fellow, and, I take it, is happily married. He begged me to dine with him when I called at his office, and without giving his wife notice. A fellow doesn’t take such liberties with his wife unless he is pretty sure of her and her housekeeping. I couldn’t accept the invitation, but the impression left upon my mind was most agreeable.”
It is worth Mary’s while to score a point in her favor with her husband’s friends and to strengthen her hold upon him by meeting the unexpected guest with frank cordiality, and in every other way making the best of the situation.
She keeps the house, and has the work and worry that go with the keeping. John pays for the material part of the home. How much it signifies to him the best of wives does not always know. It is his stimulus, his hope, his sheet anchor, when all the waves and billows of business trouble go over his soul—his haven of refuge—the nearest approach to Heaven he can find on this side of the dark river. He has a lien—in legal phrase—upon all the benefits accruing therefrom.
The exercise of spontaneous hospitality is not the least of these.
I am so unhappy as to know a woman who has her whole house, including attic and cellar, swept every week and dusted thoroughly daily. Every picture is taken down on Saturday morning that the backs and cords may be wiped off with a damp cloth wet with a disinfectant. She changes servants from twelve to twenty-four times a year. She will tell you with an air of calm sad conviction, that “there is not one tolerably efficient maid in America.” Her daughters have been her slaves since they could wield broom and duster. They are pale and thin; their eyes have a hunted look and are hollowed by fixed dark crescents beneath them. One of them was married two years ago, and sank into confirmed invalidism after the birth of a pitiful scrap of a baby that wailed feebly for an hour and died.
I met the single sister not long ago on a ferry-boat, and she confided to me that she is to submit to a crucial operation in a few days.
“The doctors say it is too much housework,” she said bitterly, “I can not recollect when I was not tired, tired, TIRED! My mother keeps the cleanest house in town. She says ‘dirt is disease.’ Maybe so! I know that life is not worth living when one has to pay such a price for cleanliness. My mother has bones of steel and nerves of whalebone, and can not comprehend ‘how it happens that she should be afflicted with delicate children.’
“As to company—it is a curse—nothing less! To have a friend in to a meal involves so much extra work beforehand, so much readjusting afterward, that the thought is frightful.
“This is not living. It is slavery!”