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But in our little house in Z , with the dark kitchen, and with Barbara and Ruth going to school, and the washing-days, when we had to hire, it always cost more than it came to, besides making what Barb called a "heave-offering of life." "They used to have houses built accordingly," Rosamond said, speaking of the "old times."
But how these passages take you back to the homely life of those days! 'Do read some. 'Well, listen to this, "And then to bed without prayers, to-morrow being washing-day." Fancy such a detail coming down to us through two centuries. 'Why no prayers? 'I don't know. I suppose they had to get up early on washing-days, and so they wanted to go to sleep soon.
Fancy living in a land where all the servants are skilled and civil, if not all trustworthy and honest; where washing-days and ironing-days and baking-days are unknown; where there are no staircases to sweep down and no front-door steps to scour; where rents and eating and all other household expenses may be gauged in accordance with one's purse.
A set should be used but a week, and must be washed and rinsed each day if you would not have the flavor of dried-in dish-water left on your dishes. Dry them, if possible, in the open air: if not, have a rack, and stand them near the fire. On washing-days, let those that have been used a week have a thorough boiling.
Why, the very smell and steam of the wet flannels coming from the kitchens of small houses where I have happened to be on washing-days, has made me uncomfortable for hours. I know I am not heroic, but I am afraid I was not intended for a heroine. I know myself and all my faults thoroughly.
Their courtesy led them to help those whose labors were hard, to aid the women in the laundry at their tasks, and to assist them in hanging out the clothes on washing-days. In the evening the clothes-pins which had been thrust into a pocket found their way to the floor of the dancing-room. One of the members of the community has written that the brothers "looked like young Greek gods.
"Do just as you please, however," he continued, as he observed a brown gather on the brow of his wife; "for my part I should be glad if washing-days were blotted entirely from the calendar." At this moment the washerwoman passed the window with her stiffened skirts and almost frozen hands and arms.
Others, more keen-sighted, winked at the too frequent presentation on washing-days, and at impromptu suppers, of superior spiced-beef, which flattered their palates more than the cold remnants they had formerly been contented with.
August grew fat, and lazy, and dirty, and less reliable on washing-days, or when there was anything special to do in the house. "The savage blood is strong," thought the teacher, "and she is beginning to long for her own people and free unconventional life."
The sad thoughts with which this incident naturally left me were at length and suddenly dispersed, as sad thoughts not infrequently are, by a petticoat. When I say petticoat, I use the word in its literal sense, not colloquially as a metaphor for its usual wearer, meaning thereby a dainty feminine undergarment seen only by men on rainy days, and one might add washing-days.
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