I read in a paper, the other day, of an ancient institution called "smoking-tongs," constructed to hold a live coal so securely, as to admit of its being passed round the room; _women_, at that time, as an act of hospitality, used to approach their male guests with the same, and light their pipes for them. I should have liked to have had that office; but I _don't_ think I should have applied the live coal to the _pipes_!
I think that between country housewives and their city boarders there is a sort of antagonism, in the very nature of things, intensified, of course, when there is unreasonableness on both sides.
The country housewife rises betimes, and betaking herself to a hot kitchen, either prepares or oversees the preparing of the expected breakfast; and this not only for the boarders, but the "help," men and women, belonging to the establishment. Perhaps her husband, regarding her only in the light of a "farm hand," never speaks to her except on topics relating to the business of the household, and objects to the baby crying, which her diverted attention necessitates, as a "nuisance," while he swallows his breakfast.
Heated and worried, she sees her city boarders come down to breakfast in cool dresses and fresh ribbons, to enjoy the result of her toil, perhaps to find fault with it. She sees them after breakfast driving out to enjoy the delicious morning air, while she must iron clothes, or wash dishes, or prepare their dinner. Now don't you see in the differing positions of the two parties material for an explosion? It is no use to reply, if they had each attained a proper and high degree of civilization there would be no need of this. Remember you have to take human nature as you _find_ it, and not as you _wish_ to find it. _Incessant_ toil coarsens and roughens, especially woman nature. It chokes the graces in the bud, and leaves only thorns and prickers. From my heart I pity such women, with not a flower in their desert lives. Still, you know city boarders had not the ordering of it; and should not, as they often are, be disliked merely for being able to lead a life of comparative ease. Ease does not always involve happiness; remember this, discouraged country housewife. _Somebody_ has had to work hard for that ease, and it may be the very woman you envy and dislike for it. She has her Gethsemane with it, of which you know nothing, though she wear a smiling face. The landscape upon which she gazes may bring tears to her eyes instead of joy to her heart, as she drives away from your door, where you stand thinking of her only as a heartless idler for whom you are to toil.