Those Carpets.

Cromwell Argus, Volume IV, Issue 208, 4 November 1873, Page 7

Those Carpets.

The annual ceremony of taking up and i whipping, Paul putting down carpets is upon i its. Tt is one of the ills which flesh is heir i to,, and cannot be avoided. You go koine some pleasant spring day, at peace with the ! world, and find the baby with a clean face, | and get your favourite pudding for dinner, j Then your wife tells yon how ncuch younger ! yon are looking, and says she really hopes i she can turn that walking dress she wore last j fall, and save the expense of a new suit, and then asks yon if yon can't just help her about taking up the carpet. If you are a fool, ;xm\ you generally are by that time, you tell her, of course you can, just as well as not. Then j she gets a saucer for the tacks, and stands ; and holds it; and you get the claw, and get down on your knees and begin to help her, I You feel quite economical about the first three tacks, and then take them out carefnlly and put them hi the saucer. Your wife is good about holding the saucer, and beguiles you with an interesting story about i how your neighbour's little boy is not expected to live till morning. Then yon come j to a tack with a crooked head, and you get \ the claw under it and the head comes x)ff, and the leather conies off, and the carpet comes \ off; and as it won't do to leave the tack in the floor, because it will tear the carpet when it is put dawn again, you go to work and skin your knuckles, and get a sliver under your thumb-nail, and tell your wife to shut up about that everlasting boy, and make up your mind that it does not make any difference about that tack, and so you begin at the corner where the carpet is doubled two or three times, and has been nailed down with a shingle-nail. You don't care a continental about saving the nail, because you find that it is not a good time to practice economy ; but you do feel a little hurt when both claws break off from the claws, and the nail does not budge a peg. Then your manhood asserts itself, and you rise in your might, and throw the carpet claw at the dog, and get hold of the carpet with both hands, and the air is full of dust and flying tacks, and there is a fringe of carpet yarn all along the mop-board, and the baby cries, and the cat goes anywhere, anywhere out of the road, and your wife says you ought to be ashamed of yourself to talk so—but that carpet comes up. Then you lift up one side of the stove, and your wife tries to get the carpet from under it, but can't because you are standing on it. So you try a new hold, and just after your back breaks the carpet is clear. You are not through yet. Your wife don't tell you any more little stories, but she gets your old coat and hangs it on you, and smothers you with the carpet, and opens the back door and shoves you out, and intimates that the carpet needs whipping. When you hang the tormenting thing across the clothes-line the wrong way, and get it righted, and have it slide off into the mud, and hang it up again, and get half a pint of dust and three broken tacks snapped out of the north-west corner into your mouth by the wind, you make some observations which you neglected to mention while in the house. Then you hunt up a stick and go for that carpet. The first blow hides the sun and all the fair face , of nature behind a cloud of dust; and right

in the centre of that cloud, with the wind square in your face, no matter how you stand, you wield that cudgel until both hands are blistered, and the milk of human kindness curdles in your bosom. You can whip the carpet for a longer or shorter period, according to the size of your mad : it don't make any difference to the carpet— it's just as dustyand fusty and generally disagreeable after you have whipped it two hours as it was when you commenced. Then you bundle it up, with one corner dragging, and stumble into the house, and have move trouble with the stove, and fail to find any way of using the carpet-stretcher while you stand on the carpet, and fail to find any place to stand off from the carpet; and you get on your kneen again, while your wife holds the saucer, and with blind confidence hands you broken tacks, crooked tacks, tacks with no points, tacks with no heads, tacks with no leathers, leathers with no tacks, and tacks with the biggest end at the point. Finally the carpet is down, and the baby comes back, and the cat comes back, and the dog comes back, and your wife smiles sweetly, and says she is glad that job is off her mind. As it is too late to do anything else, you sit. by the fire and smoke, with the inner consciousness that you are the meanest man in America. The next day you hear your wife tell a friend that she is so tired ; she took up and put down that great heavy carpet yesterday.— Danbury Neivs.