Title:  The Angel Over the Right Shoulder The Beginning of a New Year

Author:  Elizabeth Wooster Stuart Phelps

Release Date:  February 11, 2004 [EBook #11033]

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

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[Illustration:]

The Angel over the Right Shoulder

[Illustration:]

The Angel over the Right Shoulder

or the

Beginning of A new year.

BY

The author of “Sunny side.”

1852.

The Angel over the Right Shoulder

* * * * *

“There! a woman’s work is never done,” said Mrs. James; “I thought, for once, I was through; but just look at that lamp, now! it will not burn, and I must go and spend half an hour over it.”

“Don’t you wish you had never been married?” said Mr. James, with a good-natured laugh.

“Yes”—­rose to her lips, but was checked by a glance at the group upon the floor, where her husband was stretched out, and two little urchins with sparkling eyes and glowing cheeks, were climbing and tumbling over him, as if they found in this play the very essence of fun.

She did say, “I should like the good, without the evil, if I could have it.”

“You have no evils to endure,” replied her husband.

“That is just all you gentlemen know about it.  What would you think, if you could not get an uninterrupted half hour to yourself, from morning till night?  I believe you would give up trying to do anything.”

“There is no need of that; all you want, is system.  If you arranged your work systematically, you would find that you could command your time.”

“Well,” was the reply, “all I wish is, that you could just follow me around for one day, and see what I have to do.  If you could reduce it all to system, I think you would show yourself a genius.”

When the lamp was trimmed, the conversation was resumed.  Mr. James had employed the “half hour,” in meditating on this subject.

“Wife,” said he, as she came in, “I have a plan to propose to you, and I wish you to promise me beforehand, that you will accede to it.  It is to be an experiment, I acknowledge, but I wish it to have a fair trial.  Now to please me, will you promise?”

Mrs. James hesitated.  She felt almost sure that his plan would be quite impracticable, for what does a man know of a woman’s work? yet she promised.