a mass-meeting of brooms, buckets, brushes, paint-pots,
white-wash pails, chairs overturned, tubs, coal-skuttles, dust-pans,
char-women, and all other possible disagreeables, all at once
summoned, and each as much as possible in others' way. In this there
is some satisfaction. It looks like _business_. It seems as if you
were doing something. It raises the value of the operation, and
demonstrates its usefulness and necessity; for if there is little
difference apparent between the house before cleaning and after,
there is a world of odds between a house-_cleaning_ and a house
_cleaned_. There is a perfect delight in seeing what order _can_ be
brought out of chaos, even though you are obliged to make the chaos
first, to produce the effect.

I had inflicted several of these impressive lessons upon Mr. Smith.
He had become so much horrified at their confusion, that I do
believe he had fully reconciled himself to dust and dirt, as the
better alternative. They were, to be sure, at some little cost of
comfort to myself, and reflectively produced discomfort for him; for
he traced, with a correctness which I could easier frown at
than deny, many a week's indisposition to my house-cleaning phrenzy.
And when a man's wife is sick, if, he is a man of feeling, he is
unhappy. And if he is a man of selfishness, he is wretched, too; for
what becomes of husband's little comforts, when wife is not able to
procure or direct them? So Mr. Smith,--for the better reason, I
believe--pure compassion--declared, long ago, against wholesale
house-cleaning. And he has so often interfered in my proceedings
with his provoking prophecy, "Now, you know, my dear, it will make
you sick," that I have striven many a time to hide pain under a
forced smile, when it seemed as if "my head was like to rend."

Now, a woman _can_ carry her point in the house by stubborn daring,
but "the better part of valor is discretion," and I have learned
quietly to take my way, and steal a march upon him;--open the
flood-gate--set the chimneys smoking--up with the carpets--throw the
beds out of the windows--pack the best china in the middle of the
floor distributing pokers and fire-shovels among it--unhang the
pictures--set all the doors ajar--roll the children in dust--cover
my head with a soiled night-cap--put on slip-shod shoes--and streak
my ancles with dust and dirty water. Then, if he pops in
opportunely, I can say, with Shakspeare--amended:

I am in _slops_,
S