How A Man Hangs Out Clothes

Once in a while there is a man who loves, yes, loves, to help his wife ! We honor him when we see him. We wi.-h liim long lifc and frecdom froui rluumatism, chillblains, and touthache. We trust he wilt never be baldhoaded. And we hope his wife will love him and clieriah him as the apple of her eye, and never " pooh ! poohl" at him when he complains of not l'eeling well, or fancies he has got a spell ot' " that oíd livor trouble " coming on. But at the saiue time, we cannot help iaughing at him wlicii he hangs out the week' washing. It is always very i'old weather when a man hangs out the clothes. He does it to help his wife, or because the miow flutters under her dress and wets her aukles and gives her the neuralgia. It u "awful " good in him to do it; as we said in the beginning, we admire him for it, and we hope we shall be forgiven tbr laughing at his way of doing it. He takes the basket under oou arm, and tips it up at an angle of a little more than förty-five degrees, (everything, if you have noticed, is always tipped at an anjgle of just forty-five degrees when anybody tipeaks of it,) and he takes the clothes-pin basket in the other hand and trips dowo the back steps, whistling, to show how cheerfully he is helping his wife, and he swings the pin basket, and out hop thrce or four pias, and soatter in four different direetions. He makes a flying leap for them, and the" clottii's banket loses its balance, and away goes a nightcap and a "bosomed" shirt, and two towels into the mud ! 11 Ls wife, who is watching hiiu from the window, and women always watch a man on such occasions to keep him straight with their valuable advice - she yells out to him in freozy : "Charles Jenkins! what does posses you? You'll get them clothes all down in the mud ! That's just like a man ! " Nothing distracts a woman like having the washing get mudded. The burning down of a barn, or the death of the favorite cow, would be nothing to it. It is something no woman we have ever seen can bear with equanimity. The "helpful" man scrambles up the wet drygoods, and chucks them into the basket. A little dirt, more or less, isn't much to the thinking of a man, unless it happens to be on his cufis or shirt bosom. He reacties the line in triumph, and begins the business of hanging out with viuo. He wants his wife to see bow expert he ís ! He waut-s to show her that he oan do it ju,-t as neatly and expeditiously as she can. For there are very few men who do not privately entertain the opinión that they do any kind of woman's work a little better than the women themselves f they ouly have a mind to. He braces himself, for it is gencrally icy under a clothes-line, puts three pins in his mouth to have them bandy, and makea a diye into the basket. The tirst thing he brings out is a pillow-case. l Ie puts tbat on, a little crosswise, and pins it on both sides. Then he gets out a pair of drawers and holds them up, considering which way they ought to go. Waistband up, of conrse - that is the way they are worn, he argües, and he puts them on, and pins them, and survevs them with intense satisfaction. "Charles!" cries his watchful wife from the window, " Do pull them drawers' legs down even ! One of 'em is a loot shorter than the other, and do, dear, hang the pillow-cases next to each otber. Strangc ihat a man don't Itnow nnything!" He stands back, a night gown in one hand and a table cloth in the other, and wants to know what diffcrence it makes ! Won't they dry just as well if one leg is longer than the other ? And then he gives the shoncst log of the garment a vicious twitch, and it has frozen by thia time, and t tearsas eauily a.s paper, and off it comes just above the knee, and the man who is hanging out clothes feels like swearing, and casts a furtive glance at the house, and is glad to see that his wife has left her post of observation at the window for a moment, and is not aware of the catastrophe. He hastily fishes out a pillow case, and bangs it over the demoralized garment, and then he pins on the night gown, and then two aprons, and then a sheet, and theu a shirt, which he hangs by the sleeves, and thinks it looks well. Of course a man would hang on to anything with bis anus, and why not his shirt 't "Charles!" cries his wife, "you'vehuntc that f-hirt wrong end up I VVhoever saw a shirt hung up by the .' " " Who wants to stand a shirt on its head ?" he retorts. " Iet me alone, Mary Jaue ! I gue.ts I know how to hang out clothes 1" - Then be seizcd a bed-sprtad, but he had been so long doing his work that the clothes in the basket have frozen tast to it, and hc tuga and tuga ; and still the spread and the buket do not part company. He lays out his strength, and up comes the spread, but the sudden relaxation of resistauce on its part is tjo much for him, and he flops over backward, and his fcet land on tbc pile of clothes yet unhung, and his head strikes the pot, and the girls over to Brown's, who are watching him, set up a fuuiinine squeal of dlight and amu-euient, and he feels as thnugh he should like to tear somebody or something into inch pieoes! And he kicks the basket, and it hits the clothes-pin basket, and up sets that and he gets up and rubs the blood from his hand whcre he out it with the ice in falling, and his wife yells out in no amiable tone of voice : "Have you torn that spread, Charles Jeokins?" And be answers soniething which would not look wel] printed in a moral newspaper. and she gives liim a lítele ('hristian advice, and tells hiiu that she wouldn't risk her soul by swearing, and wishes she had liuntr out them clothes herself. Indeed ?he does! [Ie is sullen now, and lie does not heed suggCitions any ujore. He just gets the tliings on the line as he pleases, and when the job is done, that clotues-line isa spectaclo lor a woiuan's eyes, and every woman who passes down the back street that day will turo round and look at it, and laugh to hertelt', and know just as well as if she were told that a man hungout the clothes. And Charles' fingers will feel like sticks of'cordwood to him l.y the time heis done, and it will take him half a diy to thaw them out properly and get the tingle out of them. Hut he is satisfied in spirit, for he believes that he has proved to the wonien of the vicinity, and to Mary Jane in particular, that he can hang out clothes as well as any woman in the world. Yes, ¦¦ir ! And just as soon as dinner is out of the way, Mary Jane rigs on her leggings and rubbers, aod puts od her tuittens, and goes out and changes those shirts and things all over and picks up the pins out of the snow that he had scattered round, and fiuds out about the leg of the drawers and says to herself thatshe'll bang the clothes out hersill' hcreafter, if she goes over her head in snow ! I It is a little mysterious to us how the fellow could have dropped the clothes in the mud when the weatber was so cold thcy frore stiff before he had time to haDg them out, and the woman would had to have gone "over her head in the snow " tohave hung them out horself. But woman is a mystery, anyway, and her writings partake