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Updated: May 25, 2025
It amounts almost to a religion among the inhabitants, who pass the greater part of their time rubbing and scrubbing, and painting and varnishing; each housewife vies with her neighbor in her devotion to the scrubbing-brush, as zealous Catholics do in their devotion to the cross; and it is said a notable housewife of the place in days of yore is held in pious remembrance, and almost canonized as a saint, for having died of pure exhaustion and chagrin in an ineffectual attempt to scour a black man white.
As for Tanrade's maid-of-all-work, like the noiseless butler of the marquis and the femme de chambre of Alice de Bréville, they are all from Paris; and yet I'll wager that no larder in the village is better stocked than Monsieur le Curé's, for every housewife vies with her neighbour in ready-cooked donations since the young man from Bonville was accepted. But these good people do not forget.
The lesson we might take from this is that simplicity in dress has more beauty and effect than elaborate "creations." All the world loves to play. In childhood, it is the very language of life. In youth, it vies with the sterner business of young manhood or womanhood.
Is there not an element of the picturesque in the struggles of the Western farmer? Can anything be finer in its way than a night view of Pittsburg that "Hell with its lid off," where the cold gleam of electricity vies with the lurid glare of the furnaces and smelting works?
One is quite astonished to see so rich a gem load its basket with ordure. It is the jewel on the dung-hill. The corselet of the male is grooved with a wide hollow and he sports a pair of sharp-edged pinions on his shoulders; on his forehead he plants a horn which vies with that of the Spanish Copris.
I know of at least two rooms in which a little tea-kettle of genuine burnished copper, vies with the cat in winking at the fire; and one old lady has a tea-urn set forth in state on the top of her chest of drawers, which urn is used as her library, and contains four duodecimo volumes, and a black-bordered newspaper giving an account of the funeral of Her Royal Highness the Princess Charlotte.
Here the wisdom of Solomon is open for the instruction of those who have gathered from all parts of the world; here his treasure house is thrown open to eager students. Here to stimulate so great a concourse of students there is so great a throng of clerks that it vies with the numerous multitude of the laity.
In this place I have a very curious circumstance to notice, which I am happy to have occasion to mention, as it tends to expose certain regulations of polished society, of which the absurdity vies with the odiousness.
It is the occurrence of such names that makes Moreri speak of the Bollandist selection as rather loose, since it contains "vies des saintes bonnes, médiocres, mauvaises, vrayes, douteuses, et fausses." The saint's festival-day is generally the anniversary of his death, or "deposition," as it is technically termed; but this is by no means an absolute rule.
Much of the picturesque is lost, but well lost, since it brings us clean streets, improved dwellings, and all the accompaniments of progress; but, notwithstanding its now greater likeness to modern cities, it is not with these Rome vies. Her empire is not of to-day, but over the mighty past she alone holds undisputed sway, and the spirit of ages gone still infuses itself into everything in Rome.
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