THE PARLOUR CARPET.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 962, 26 July 1877, Page 3

THE PARLOUR CARPET.

(Detroit Free Press ) A. citizen wearing a sickly smile turned in a> a gate on Randolph street yeste-day. and fifteen minutes later he appeared in the back yard with his o d clothes on. He backed out of the woodshed, pulling and hauling tnd tugging at x big roll of carpeting, and ihe vtlice of his wife was heard calling out: 'Do you want to tear that carpet all to pieces !' He didn't answer her until he had dragged it under the clothesdiue. Then he run a tack into Ins hand, and jumping over the roll he shouted : ' Yes I do! and I'll do it, too !' He didn't though. The pain subsided after a few minutes, and the man almost whistled as he began spreading out the carpet. His wife came out and suggested that it wouldn't do it any good to draw it over the wool-pile and through the heap of old ashes, and he chuckled with satisfaction when she stuck a big tack into her foot and limped into the house. Then he was ready to elevate the carpet and get it over the olothes lines, and he set to work. One end went up very easy, but when it slipped down very easy the man tried to put the centre up first He boosted it over the line, looking red in the face, heM it there for a minute, and then yelled out: 'Mary—somebody hello—help!' No one appeared, and after a struggle of half a minute more he let go and got out of the way of all but fifteen tacks. He sat down and growled, stood up and muttered, and then slanted a board over the line and tried to draw the carpet up the incline. ' Genius triumphant!' he chuckled, as the plan seemed to prove successful, but the weight snapped the line and the long end of the board struck the panting man on top of the head and mashed him flat. When he got out from under the carpet and could spit out the dust, he kicked the mass of carpet seven or eight times as hard as he could, and swore several of the biggest kind of oaths in rapid succession. He sat down on an old barrel and 1 joked sorrowfully around, and it was ten minutes before he rose up and slowly secured the broken line.

' I'll maul the life right out of this carpet when I get 'er up !' he growled as he walked around it, and after a furious tug he got nearly half of it over the line. ' What on earth is the matter ?' asked his wife from the back door ' I'll master this blamed carpet in about two minutes,' was his muttered exclamation. She went out there to pull what she could, and as he was crawling under the raised portion to reach the other corner she heaved away, lost her hold, and he was onveloped in the folds. Such yells and hoots and howls as that man uttered were never heard on that street before. Every time he kicked he felt tacks raking his legs, and as he tried to rise up they jabbed his back till he couldn't rest. The wife finally released him after a long hunt for the right corner, and he leaned against a cherry tree and gasped out: 1 H-haven't you any common sense!' 'As much as you have, sir ! You ought to have known better than to crawl under there !' ' I h-had, eh I Don't go to talking back to me!' • I shall talk all I want to !' ' Then t-talk to your c-confounded old c-carpet!' he shouted, aud he made for the house, jumped into his other suit, and perhaps left home for ever. __^ Partridges in England are killed in considerable numbers by flying against the telegraph wires along railways. In one season (says the " Live Stock Journal and Fanciers' Gazette ") 361 partridges were destroyed by the wires of the South-Western Railway alone.