Sir,
though I am now an anchorite I have lived in your bustling world,
and seen--ay, quite as much as anyone of its manifold wickedness.
Well, the man--the buttonless man--at first calmly remonstrates
with his laundress. He pathetically wrings his wrists at her, and
shows his condition. The woman turns upon him her wainscot face and
promises amendment. The thing shall never happen again. Think you
the next shirt has its just and lawful number of buttons? Devil a
bit!'"
In "The Bright Poker," he seems to pay a compliment under a guise of
sarcasm:--
"And here my dear child, let me advise you to avoid by all means
what is called a clean wife. You will be made to endure the extreme
of misery under the base, the inviduous pretext of being rendered
comfortable. Your house will be an ark tossed by continual floods.
You will never know what it is to properly accommodate your
shoulders to a shirt, so brief will be its visit to your back ere
it again go to the washtub. And then for spiders, fleas, and other
household insects, sent especially into our homesteads to awaken
the enquiring spirit of man, to at once humble his individual pride
by the contemplation of their sagacity, and to elevate him by the
frequent evidence of the marvels of animal life--all these calls
upon our higher faculties will be wanting, and lacking them your
immortal part will be dizzied, stunned by the monotony of the
scrubbing-brush, and poisoned past the remedy of perfume by yellow
soap.
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