In the same way at the other end of the social scale, moving is equally a matter calling for little thought and less trouble. The mover puts his tooth-brush and his comb in his vest-pocket; he throws his other pair of trousers into his bag along with his other shirt and the pair of shoes he had half-soled; and then he slips quietly away while his landlady is not looking. It is not that he is running away exactly, but that he is sensitive and shy, and dreads the emotional strain of bidding farewell. Parting is such sweet sorrow that she might not let him go without keeping his grip as a souvenir—just to remind her of that "ten" he promised to give her at the end of the week.
Gentlemen who make these periodical migrations do not worry much about it. Even if they did pay their bills, they would still grow tired of staying in the same place. So they pack up and move, suddenly and with light-hearted unconcern. They don't call it "moving." They refer to it as "making a getaway."
It is not our intention, however, to treat of either the wealthy or the "stony broke" in this serious consideration of the crises in the affairs of house-holders known as "moving-days." The wealthy don't move often enough, the "busted" move too often, and both move too easily to make the operation an important factor in their lives. But the fellow on a one-cylinder salary who uses a fifty-dollar-a-month house for purposes of domicile—he is the man to whom moving is all that General Sherman declared war to be. It is a revolution, a cataclysm. He dates important events as occurring in "the year we moved" from this house to that other. Moving-days mark off periods of existence the way the Olympian games served for the ancient Greeks.
Why then do people do it? Sometimes because they can't help it. Landlords have a way of handing over their property to syndicates to build apartment-houses on the site. At other times landlords, whose actions no man can foretell, decide to raise the rent. Or they may object to the playful ways of the tenant's children—perhaps the little dears have dug a cave or two in the wall of the living-room, or have in childish glee filled the plumbing with half-bricks and gunny-sacks.
Then there are landlords who have acquired the please-remit habit to such an extent that a trifling delay of a couple of months with the rent leads to intense unpleasantness. They won't even take it in kind—except Scotch, perhaps. And that, of course, is too good for landlords. In fact, there are a thousand and one things which may cause friction between the man who lives in the house and the man who merely owns it. As the landlord generally refuses to leave, the tenant has to.
This explains a good many movings, but not all, nor even the greater number of them. Most people, as a matter of fact, move for the simple reason that hope springs eternal, and man never is but always to be. Every house has its faults and drawbacks. Even the palaces which cost eighty-five dollars a month serve to remind their occupants that there are beauties and comforts which even their comparative affluence cannot command. And naturally the lower one drops in the financial scale the truer this truism—the truth of truisms is our chief objection to them.
Man wants but little here below—just a nice, twelve-room house, hot-water heating, lawn all around, commodious shed where he can stow the lawn-mower and the spade during the period of hibernation, enamel bath, electric lighting, and such other necessities of the simple life as improved by Edison. But he wants that little a long time before he gets it—for fifty dollars a month. Therefore he moves.
Probably the house he already lives in has a hot-air furnace that goes into a state of coma on cold nights, the kind of plumbing that has to be operated on every few days by a surgeon in over-alls, and a roof that permits every thunderstorm to come right down and jump into bed with him. Probably the girl next door plays "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" till midnight every night of the week, except Sunday when she plays hymn-tunes. But he has hopes. He feels that the next house is going to possess all the beauty and comfort of Aladdin's fairy palace, and that the landlord will be one of those dear old boys with white whiskers, who will answer every complaint with, "Just have the work done and send the bill to me." There is no such landlord, but the tenant keeps on looking for him. He moves. And lo, in another little while he moves again. He keeps right on moving, poor chap, till that final move when they put plumes on the moving-van.
Your old experienced mover starts in early. He makes a real occasion of it. After he and his wife and the baby-carriage have strolled around town for about six weeks, they finally select a prospective residence. It is just about the same as the old house—they are lucky, in fact, if it isn't worse. But they see the new one through pink spectacles. Everything looks like a sunset-scene in a musical comedy.
"Oh, how happy we're all going to be!"