by Eugene Field
XVII
OUR DEVICES FOR ECONOMIZING
Unless you want to render yourself liable to an attack of nervousprostration you should never watch a skilful workman nailing on lath.It is the most bewildering spectacle you can conceive of. I watched itfor twenty minutes one day--it was when they were lathing the big frontroom downstairs, the library, and my brain began to reel as if I wereintoxicated. I actually believe that if Uncle Si had not led me awayand set me down under one of the willow-trees in the front yard Ishould have had a spell of sickness, and may be even now had beenconfined in the incurable ward of a lunatic asylum. I can't understandhow they do it so accurately and so fast and with such apparent ease.The whole proceeding is so fascinating that I really believe that, nextto proficiency in the science of astronomy, I should like to be anexpert at nailing lath. In every line of mechanics my education hasbeen grievously neglected.
Alice says that I am not practical enough to make a successfulcarpenter; she gets this unfair opinion of me from an incident in ourearly wedded life which she delights in recalling in the presence ofpeople upon whom I am particularly desirous of making a favorableimpression. It seems that when Galileo and Herschel were little tots Iundertook to construct a playhouse for them in the back yard. This wasat a time when I was exceptionally busied with my professional studies;Mars was rapidly approaching perihelion, and I had been commissioned bythe Blue Island Society of the Arts and Sciences to prepare a chart ofthe bottle-neck seas. It would have been surprising indeed had I notbeen preoccupied--too absorbed in intellectual pursuits to copesuccessfully with any such worldly and prosaic thing as a playhouse inthe back yard. Yet Alice insists that it is most amusing that I shouldhave neglected to provide that structure with windows and a door, andthat, as a natural consequence, I should have nailed myself up securelyin that affair.
On another occasion I painted myself gradually into a corner whileattempting to paint the floor of the spare chamber. Alice reproachedme bitterly for this; she said she supposed everybody knew that a floorshould always be painted toward, and not away from the door. Aliceseems never to consider that few other people are gifted with suchintuitions as she has, but are compelled to drag along through lifelearning by experience.
I do not wish to be understood as complaining or railing against fatebecause I am not skilled in mechanics; I recognize as a distinct boonthe fact that I am awkward in the use of tools, and the further factthat I have no ambition in the direction of mechanical endeavor hasdoubtless saved me many a bruised thumb and a vast amount of hardlabor. When I see my neighbors tinkering away at their storm windowsand garbage boxes and grape vine trellises and dog kennels and windowscreens and front gates, I do not neglect to thank heaven that Alicehas the best of reasons for not asking me to engage in similar odd jobsabout our house.
Still, I am sure that, if I ever do engage in any avocation, it will bethat of nailing lath, an employment requiring an exercise of patience,of intelligence, and of skill to the highest degree.
Until we bought the new place I had no idea that the expense ofconducting an establishment of one's own was so large. It seems,however, that when one has once become a property-owner there is no endto the things one must have and cannot get along without. It isimpossible to say how or where the venders of patent arrangements findout about you, but no sooner do you buy a place of your own than youare run to death by people who actually prove to you that you _must_have what they have to sell.
Alice and I are very happy in the confidence that we have secured asimple device which is going to reduce our coal bill by at least fiftyper cent.; it is a fuel-saving machine which is to be attached to ournew steam-heating apparatus, and if it accomplishes anything like whatthe agent said it would, why, it is worth five dollars ten times over!And we are expecting wonders, too, of the gas-saving apparatus forwhich we have paid three dollars and which is to be attached to themeter with such pleasing results that we shall have five times morelight at a saving of at least sixty per cent in cost.
I find upon consulting my expense account for May that during thatmonth alone Alice and I purchased no fewer than thirty devices of aneconomical character. We have three different kinds ofsmoke-consumers, an automatic carpet-sweeper, a bottle of lightningpolish for plate-glass, a dish-washing machine, a knife-scourer, apotato-parer, two automatic lawn-hose reels, a sewer-gas consumer, apatent ashes-sifter, etc., etc. It has required a considerable outlayof money to get stocked up with these things, but we regard them as avery wise investment. It is wholly consistent with our policy ofeconomy to provide ourselves with the means of making a markedreduction in our expenses. We flatter ourselves that before we havebeen in our house six months we shall have demonstrated that we are notupon earth for the purpose of enriching gas companies and othersoulless corporations.
But I think the wisest investment we have made is the insurance policywhich we have taken out on Alice's life. The incident came about socuriously that I feel inclined to tell it in detail. I was one eveningsitting out in front of our house--the rented one, I mean--watching thestars gradually making their appearance in the cerulean vault, and Iwas marvelling at the endless wonders of the heavenly expanse, when Ibecame aware that somebody was approaching. I saw that this somebodywas my Sheridan Road friend and neighbor, Treese Smith. He waswhistling softly to himself an air which I did not recognize, but whichmy daughter Fanny (who is a music connoisseur) identified as "My PearlIs a Bowery Girl." Presuming that he was coming to pay me a neighborlycall, I arose to meet him. Fancy my amazement when upon beholding meMr. Smith burst into tears. I do not remember ever to have been moreastounded than by this sudden transition from gayety to grief. I couldhardly find words to ask my friend what trouble had befallen him.
"I was hoping to meet no one," he sobbed, "for I am in no condition ofmind to associate with my fellow-beings."
"It is evident," I interposed, "that some great sorrow has come uponyou; surely you would not hesitate to come to me for sympathy."
"You are right," said Mr. Smith, making a heroic effort to gatherhimself together. "It would be selfish of me not to give so dear aneighbor as you a chance to share my misery. Read this."
He handed me a bit of printed stuff which he had evidently cut from anewspaper. I stood under the street lamp and read it in this wise:
KANSAS CITY, May 23.--During the thunder-storm to-day Mrs. BolivarBowers, wife of the well-known scientist, was struck and destroyed bylightning. Deceased leaves a husband and five children; no insurance.
"Ah, I see," said I in my gentlest tone; "she was a dearfriend--perhaps a relative of yours."
"No, not that," said Mr. Smith, still sobbing; "you misinterpret mygrief. This party was in no way akin to me except under that commondescent from the old Adam which makes all humanity brothers andsisters. I did not know deceased, nor did I ever see her."
"Then why," I asked, in some astonishment, "why are you so moved by thenews of her death?"
"To one of my nature," exclaimed Mr. Smith, "the circumstances detailedin this item are most painful to contemplate. We find here recordedthe sudden demise of the sole support of a husband and five children--awife and mother snatched away by death, leaving a helpless familywithout any visible means of support."
"But why without any means of support?" I asked.
"It says so," answered Mr. Smith. "The husband is a scientist and istherefore by nature and by occupation disqualified for earning alivelihood."
"Surely enough," said I, "that is quite true."
"Can you picture a more distressing scene," continued Mr. Smith, stillin tears, "than that of this helpless father and his five little onesstanding above that lifeless lady and wondering where their food andraiment will come from now? It is sad, it is agonizing, it is awful!And yet it all might have been averted--all this solicitude about thefuture. Had Mrs. Bolivar Bowers taken out a policy in my company, theInternational Mutual Tontine Life Insurance Company of Paw Paw,Indiana, the aspect to
-day would have been different, and BolivarBowers and his callow brood of little Bowerses would have reason tobless the rod that smote them. Ah, friend Baker, the InternationalMutual Tontine has done a glorious work toward mitigating the wrath ofthe grim destroyer; under the grace of its soothing balm bereavementbecomes an actual pleasure, death loses its sting, and the grave itsvictory."
From this small, casual beginning followed that train of explanationand argument upon Mr. Smith's part which led to Alice's taking out alife policy in the Indiana company. Mr. Smith is a man of broad anddeep human sympathies. Had he not happened upon that newspaper item,had his heart not gone out in passionate sympathy toward the bereavedBolivar Bowers and his little ones, had he not wandered in anirresponsible paroxysm of grief in the direction of my house thatevening, and had he not confided his sorrow to me--why, then we shouldnot have known of the greatest of human benefactors, and Alice wouldnot now be safe (so to speak) in the bosom of the International MutualTontine Life Insurance Company of Paw Paw.
I do not regard these things as accidental; they are specialprovidences.