Such is moving, in the country,--not an
act, but a process,--not a volition, but a fermentation.
We will say that the first of September is the time appointed for the
transit. The day approaches. It is the twenty-ninth of August. I
prepare to take hold of the matter in earnest. I am nipped in the bud
by learning that the woman who was to help about the carpets cannot
come, because her baby is taken with the croup. I have not a doubt of
it. I never knew a baby yet that did not go and have the croup, or the
colic, or the cholera infantum, just when it was imperatively necessary
that it should not have them. But there is no help for it. I shudder
and bravely gird myself for the work. I tug at the heavy, bulky,
unwieldy carpets, and am covered with dust and abomination. I think
carpets are the most untidy, unwholesome nuisances in the whole world.
It is impossible to be clean with them under your feet. You may sweep
your carpet twenty times and raise a dust on the twenty-first. I am
sure I heard long ago of some new fashion that was to be
introduced,--some Italian style, tiles, or mosaic-work, or something of
the sort. I should welcome anything that would dispense with these vile
rags. I sigh over the good old sanded floors that our grandmothers
rejoiced in,--and so, apotheosizing the past and anathematizing the
present, I pull away, and the tacks tear my fingers, and the hammer
slips and lets me back with a jerk, and the dust fills my hair and nose
and eyes and mouth and lungs, and my hands grow red and coarse and
ragged and sore and begrimed, and I pull and choke and cough and
strangle and pull.
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