in. "Our dessert
consists of apple sauce, gingerbread, and coffee." He rapidly cleared
the empty dishes from the table and brought on the second course.

"I have been noticing the warning over the sideboard," said Gilbert.
"I hope you will let me help you this evening?" He pointed to a card
hanging near the kitchen door. It read:

ALWAYS WASH DISHES
IMMEDIATELY AFTER MEALS
IT SAVES TROUBLE

"I'm afraid I don't always obey that precept," said the bookseller as
he poured the coffee. "Mrs. Mifflin hangs it there whenever she goes
away, to remind me. But, as our friend Samuel Butler says, he that is
stupid in little will also be stupid in much. I have a different
theory about dish-washing, and I please myself by indulging it.

"I used to regard dish-washing merely as an ignoble chore, a kind of
hateful discipline which had to be undergone with knitted brow and
brazen fortitude. When my wife went away the first time, I erected a
reading stand and an electric light over the sink, and used to read
while my hands went automatically through base gestures of
purification. I made the great spirits of literature partners of my
sorrow, and learned by heart a good deal of Paradise Lost and of Walt
Mason, while I soused and wallowed among pots and pans. I used to
comfort myself with two lines of Keats:

'The moving waters at their priest-like task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores----'

Then a new conception of the matter struck me. It is intolerable for a
human being to go on doing any task as a penance, under duress. No
matter what the work is, one must spiritualize it in some way, shatter
the old idea of it into bits and rebuild it nearer to the heart's
desire. How was I to do this with dish-washing?

"I broke a good many plates while I was pondering over the matter.
Then it occurred to me that here was just the relaxation I needed. I
had been worrying over the mental strain of being surrounded all day
long by vociferous books, crying out at me their conflicting views as
to the glories and agonies of life. Why not make dish-washing my balm
and poultice?

"When one views a stubborn fact from a new angle, it is amazing how all
its contours and edges change shape! Immediately my dishpan began to
glow with a kind of philosophic halo! The warm, soapy water became a
sovereign medicine to retract hot blood from the head; the homely act
of washing and drying cups and sau