p. 94 | The Wife's Mistake

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Mar 20, 1879

The Wife's Mistake.

Mrs. Hopgood prided herself on being the best of housekeepers. She was one of those rapid housewives who pursue an atom of dust as a hunter might pursue a stag. No bold natured fly ever dared to buzz within her dainty walls. No cat purred upon her hearthstone. Plants were tabooed because their leaflets would fall. Canary birds were ruthlessly excluded lest they should scatter seed. Sunshine was regarded as an arch enemy. "It brings flies and fades the carpets," said Mrs. Hopgood. As for Mr. Hopgood and the children they lived mostly in the kitchen.

"I can't have the boys' muddy boots trampling over the carpets, and the girls' sewing in the parlor," said Mrs. Hopgood. "As for Hopgood he don't care where he sits. One place is as good as another where he is concerned."

The Hopgood family also took their meals in the kitchen.

"I've got a dining-room as nice as anybody's," said Mrs. Hopgood, "with a real carved oak side-board with a marble top, and silver polished till its better than any looking-glass; but where's the use of turning things all upside down just for one's own family? Common crockery ware and good bone-handled knives are just as good for every-day use."

"Mamma," said Elsie Hopgood, a cherry-cheeked girl of sixteen, "I should like to sit in the parlor sometimes. Mrs. Montfort and her daughter use theirs every evening, and it looks so pretty and pleasant there."

"Stuff and nonsense!" said Mrs. Hopgood sharply. "I keep house myself after my own fashion, and I give others leave to do the same."

"But, mamma," pleaded Elsie, "I was thinking how I should like to invite all the girls here some evening, and have tea, and afterward some little games. I have been asked out so many times, without ever responding, and I am really ashamed to go."

"Then you had better stay at home," said Mrs. Hopgood, polishing vigorously away at the stem of her silver card receiver.

"I think I see myself with all the young folks in town capering on my Brussels carpet, and cake crumbs and melted cream daubed over everything."

Elsie made no answer, but her countenance quickly fell.

"I wish mamma was like one else," she said to herself, the tears obscuring her eyes. "I wish she was like Kate Prickett's mother, who lets her have company every Thursday evening. John Elton wants me to marry him. If I was married I could have a house of my own, and do just as I pleased."

"Mother," said Mr. Hopgood, a week or two afterward, with a troubled face, "is it true that our Elsie is out walking with John Elton evening after evening? He is a worthless, dissipated fellow, and no fit associate for any girl."

"Mercy upon us! I don't know," said Mrs. Hopgood with a perturbed face. "I supposed she was with Kate Prickett or Clara Montfort. I'm a great deal too busy with pickling and house cleaning to run at a giddy girl's heels the whole time. But I'm going to commence cleaning to-morrow, and then I'll warrant I'll give her enough to do to keep her out of mischief."

"Mother," said Isaac Hopgood, gravely, "sometimes I think that if we made home a little more attractive to our children—"

"Oh, nonsense!" quickly interrupted his wife. "I suppose you'd like us to have tableaux like Mrs. Montfort; or a magic lantern like the little Mickfords. Our children haven't been brought up in that way."

Mr. Hopgood said no more. Mrs. Hopgood was, to use her own expression, "in the thick of house cleaning," the next day, with the carpets rolled into heaps, the floors spattered with soapsuds, and her head tied up in a pocket handkerchief, when the door suddenly opened.

"Take care of my pan of soapsuds and soda!" cried she shrilly. "Oh, its you, is it, Ally?"

"Yes, mother, it's me," said Alexander, her eldest son, who had just gone into business as junior partner to his father. "I say, do leave off washing a minute and attend to me! Ryerson's in town—my old chum, you know—only for one day, and I have asked him to dinner."

"To dinner!" almost screamed Mrs. Hopgood, dropping her brush in her consternation: "Alexander Hopgood, are you crazy? Of course I can't have him to dinner. Just look at the confusion the house is in."

"Oh, he won't mind that, mother. Ryerson is a thoroughly good fellow. Just let him sit down to anything with the rest of us, any—"

"I shall do nothing of the sort, Alexander," said Mrs. Hopgood, severely compressing her lips. "You know I do not approve of your inviting company at any time, still less at such a period as this. If you have been fool enough to ask him, you may get out of the scrape the best way you can."

"But mother—"

"I don't want any more discussion on the subject," says Mrs. Hopgood, dabbling away with the brush.

Alexander went out slamming the door.

"Well!" quoth Alexander Hopgood to himself, "If I can't ask a friend to my home, there's at least the alternative of inviting him to the hotel. I never did such a thing before, but I don't see how else I can manage."

So Alexander Hopgood entertained Mr. Ryerson at the hotel, and gave an unlimited order for iced champagne and desert. And the upshot of it all was that Alexander Hopgood was brought in at eleven o'clock at night by two of the waiters, hopelessly intoxicated.

"Don't be 'f-fraid, mother," stuttered he, brandishing an empty bottle, as he became dimly conscious of her white, scared face bending over him. "Go on with your washing! It's a deal jollier at the hotel than it is at home. Freedom forever! Hoo-oo-ray!"

"Oh, what shall I do?" sobbed Mrs. Hopgood, when the waiters were once more out of the house and the roll of the cab wheels had died away. "To think—only to think that a son of mine should ever disgrace himself thus!"

"It's your own fault, mother," said Benny, the second son. "You wouldn't let Ally bring his friend here."

"Hold your tongue," sharply retorted Mrs. Hopgood, wincing beneath the prick of this home truth. "Call Elsie, I need her help."

"Oh, mother!" piped Fanny, the younger girl, running down stairs in frantic haste, "Elsie ain't here!"

"Not here?"

"No, mother, she hasn't been to bed at all—and there's a note on her table, directed to you."

"Open it, mother," said Isaac Hopgood, huskily.

"This is a sad night for our household. My God! has our home become so distasteful to our children that they fly from it like rats from a sinking vessel?"

Elsie's note was short enough. It read:— DEAR MOTHER: I am tired of living in the kitchen. I have run away with John Elton, and before you see me again I shall have entered upon a new future. ELSIE.

Mrs. Hopgood broke out into wild, hysterical sobbings. Mr. Hopgood read the hurriedly scrawled paper with a face cold and set like steel.

"Run away with John Elton?" he repeated slowly. "Poor Elsie! then God help her. For he is as great a villain and scoundrel as ever lived; and she has sealed her own doom. Mother! mother! this comes of your housekeeping."

"It wasn't my fault, Isaac," sobbed Mrs. Hopgood, rocking herself backward and forward on a chair into which she had dropped.

"It was your fault," retorted her husband almost savagely. "You made the very name of home a mockery to your children, and shut your soul inside of a scrubbing pail, and now you are reaping the bitter harvest."

Of course poor Alexander Hopgood was unable to lift his throbbing head from the pillow the next day, and his mother never left him until afternoon.

When at last she came down stairs, the parlor blinds were thrown wide open, a flood of sunshine streaming in, the table neatly set in the pretty dining-room, and flowers on the table, and new books, games and puzzles scattered around.

Mrs. Hopgood gazed around with a bewildered air. She hardly knew her own home.

"This is the way in which we must live, henceforth, mother," said her husband cheerily. "Let in the sunshine; teach Ben and Fanny that 'home' is something more than an and try in so far as we can to retrieve the errors of our past life."

Mrs. Hopgood mutely bowed her head. "I will try, husband," she answered.