VI.  HOUSE CLEANING. (73)

Francis Hopkinson, 1737-1791.  He was the son of an Englishman; born in Philadelphia, and was educated at the college of that city, now the University of Pennsylvania.  He represented New Jersey in the Congress of 1776, and was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.  He was one of the most sensible and elegant writers of his time, and distinguished himself both in prose and verse.  His lighter writings abound in humor and keen satire; his more solid writings are marked by clearness and good sense.  His pen did much to forward the cause of American independence.  His “Essay on Whitewashing,” from which the following extract is taken, was mistaken for the composition of Dr. Franklin, and published among his writings, It was originally in the form of “A Letter from a Gentleman in America to his Friend in Europe, on Whitewashing.” ###

There is no season of the year in which the lady may not, if she pleases, claim her privilege; but the latter end of May is generally fixed upon for the purpose.  The attentive husband may judge, by certain prognostics, when the storm is at hand.  If the lady grows uncommonly fretful, finds fault with the servants, is discontented with the children, and complains much of the nastiness of everything about her, these are symptoms which ought not to be neglected, yet they sometimes go off without any further effect.

But if, when the husband rises in the morning, he should observe in the yard a wheelbarrow with a quantity of lime in it, or should see certain buckets filled with a solution of lime in water, there is no time for hesitation.  He immediately locks up the apartment or closet where his papers and private property are kept, and, putting the key into his pocket, betakes himself to flight.  A husband, however beloved, becomes a perfect nuisance during this season of female rage.  His authority is superseded, his commission suspended, and the very scullion who cleans the brasses in the kitchen becomes of more importance than he.  He has nothing for it but to abdicate for a time, and run from an evil which he can neither prevent nor mollify.

The husband gone, the ceremony begins.  The walls are stripped of their furniture—­paintings, prints, and looking-glasses lie huddled in heaps about the floors; the curtains are torn from their testers, the beds crammed into windows, chairs and tables, bedsteads and cradles, crowd the yard, and the garden fence bends beneath the weight of carpets, blankets, cloth cloaks, old coats, under petticoats, and ragged breeches.  Here may be seen the lumber of the kitchen, forming a dark and confused mass for the foreground of the picture; gridirons and frying pans, rusty shovels and broken tongs, joint stools, and the fractured remains of rush-bottomed chairs.  There a closet has disgorged its bowels—­riveted plates and dishes, halves of china bowls, cracked tumblers, broken wineglasses, phials of forgotten physic, papers of unknown powders, seeds and dried herbs, tops of teapots, and stoppers of departed decanters—­from the rag hole in the garret, to the rat hole in the cellar, no place escapes unrummaged.  It would seem as if the day of general doom had come, and the utensils of the house were dragged forth to judgment.