p. 317 | A Brisk Woman by Elizabeth Cole

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · May 27, 1886

FromThe Signs of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 20

A Brisk Woman.

By Elizabeth Cole

I ONCE knew a brisk woman who used to loosen her carpets in the last of February, so that she might take advantage of the first warm day, and whisk them out before the gaze of an astonished world. There was a tradition in her family that all carpets should be up, and stoves down, by the middle of March, and unless positively frozen up and snowed under, she fought it out on that line. She and her family are long since dead, as might be expected, sacrificed not by cleanliness, but by a silly pride and an insane desire to be more “forehanded” than her neighbors.

I have noticed that these women who are so forehanded with their house-cleaning are apt to be forehanded in their deaths. They seem to fancy there is some merit in thus forcing the season, and they plunge into the good work with all the enthusiasm of the ancient martyrs, laying up coughs, and colds, instead of treasures in Heaven. So many women clean house according to tradition, instead of common sense. They learned in their youth that spring begins in March, and in March they will clean house if they kill themselves and their families in the attempt. They pay no attention to good advice, nor do they heed the roar of the awful avalanche of dust, and dirt, and carpets, and stoves, and soot that they bring down on their devoted heads; on they rush, and down from the cold, damp shades of their fireless, sunless parlors, comes the last faint echo of their cries.—Elizabeth Cole, in Good Housekeeping.