PUTTING DOWN THE WINDOWS.

Evening Star, Issue 3919, 15 September 1875, Page 3

PUTTING DOWN THE WINDOWS.

This is the season of the year when a man may expect to be suddenly called at any moment in the night to get up arid put down the windows. On the advent of a thunder shower it is rarely that a man wakes first. If he should he keeps quiet, so as not to disturb his wife, and avails himtelf of the first lull to go to sleep again. How differently a woman acts—oh, so differently ! Just as soon as sbe wakes up and hears that it is raining Bhe seems to lose all judgment at once. She plants both of her feet into her husband's back, at the same time catching him by the hair and shaking his head, and hysterically screams—" Get up ! get up, quick! It's a pouring right down in torrents, and all the windows are up !" He cannot wake up under such circumstances with an immediately clear conception of the case ; in fact, it frequently happens that heis away out on the floor before his eyes are fairly open, having but one idea really at work, and that as to what he is doing out of bed. The first thing to do is to stnko a and while he is moving around for the matches, and swearing that some on« has broken into the house and moved them from wher-i he laid them on going to bod (which is always plausible enough), she hurls after him the following tonic* : " \)o hu ry ! Mercy, how that rain is cumin;; right into thoHo windows! We won't a carpet loft if you don't move faster. A'hat on oarth are you doing all this time? Can't find the mauhec.? Mercy s-.ke, you ain't going to stumble round here looking for matches, aro you, when the water is drowning us out? Co without a light. What a man you aro ; ; might have better got us, in the first pi tee. Weil ! (despairingly) tot Iho things l;o 'o ruin if you are a mind to. I:ve said ad I'm going to, an' I don't care if the whole house goes to smash. You always would your own way, an' 1 'spose you always will, and now you can do as you please; but don't you daro to open'your mouth to me about it whe>; the ruin's done. *'ve talked an' talked till I'm tired to death, and I shan't talk any more. We never could keep anything decent, and we never can ; an' so that's the end of it [A very brief pause.] John Henry, are you or are you not going to shut down those windows ?" Just then he finds the matches, and breaks the discourse by striking a light. lie was bound to have that help before he moved out of the room He h<s got the lamp lighted now. .No sooner does its glare fill the room than he immediately blows it out again for obvious reasons. He had forgotteu the windows were open and the brevity of his nightshirt It almost causes him to thiver wh«n ho thick* of his narrow He moves out into the odier ro m with celerity now. He knows pretty well the direction to go, &xA when a flash of

lightning comes it shows him en the verge of climbing over a stool or across the centretable. If there is a rocking-chair in the house he will strike it. A rocking-chair is much surer in its aim than a streak of lightning. It never misses, and it never hits a, man in but one spot and that is just at. the base of his shin. We have fallen against more than eight hundred rockers of all patterns and prices, aud always received the first blow in ths ono place. We have been with dying people, and have beard thorn affirm in the solemn hush of that last hour, that a rocking-chair always hits a man on the shin lirst. And when a man ,yets up in the dead »f night ; o shut down windows, he never mis>es the rocking eh.iir. ii, i- he rear end of ou.' of the rockers which him. If is .' dre diul But be ruroiy cries out. lie knows his audience too well A woman never falls over a rocking-clMi;-, and she never w'll understand why a maa does. But bhi: can tell whether he has, battle way he puts down the windows when he finally reachfcM them. t\ rocking-chair window (if we niay bo allowed the term) can be heard three times as far as any other.— Danbuiy .News.'