_ CHAPTER XVII. OUR DEVICES FOR ECONOMIZING
Unless you want to render yourself liable to an attack of nervous prostration you should never watch a skilful workman nailing on lath. It is the most bewildering spectacle you can conceive of. I watched it for twenty minutes one day--it was when they were lathing the big front room downstairs, the library, and my brain began to reel as if I were intoxicated. I actually believe that if Uncle Si had not led me away and set me down under one of the willow-trees in the front yard I should have had a spell of sickness, and may be even now had been confined in the incurable ward of a lunatic asylum. I can't understand how they do it so accurately and so fast and with such apparent ease. The whole proceeding is so fascinating that I really believe that, next to proficiency in the science of astronomy, I should like to be an expert at nailing lath. In every line of mechanics my education has been grievously neglected.
Alice says that I am not practical enough to make a successful carpenter; she gets this unfair opinion of me from an incident in our early wedded life which she delights in recalling in the presence of people upon whom I am particularly desirous of making a favorable impression. It seems that when Galileo and Herschel were little tots I undertook to construct a playhouse for them in the back yard. This was at a time when I was exceptionally busied with my professional studies; Mars was rapidly approaching perihelion, and I had been commissioned by the Blue Island Society of the Arts and Sciences to prepare a chart of the bottle-neck seas. It would have been surprising indeed had I not been preoccupied--too absorbed in intellectual pursuits to cope successfully with any such worldly and prosaic thing as a playhouse in the back yard. Yet Alice insists that it is most amusing that I should have neglected to provide that structure with windows and a door, and that, as a natural consequence, I should have nailed myself up securely in that affair.
On another occasion I painted myself gradually into a corner while attempting to paint the floor of the spare chamber. Alice reproached me bitterly for this; she said she supposed everybody knew that a floor should always be painted toward, and not away from the door. Alice seems never to consider that few other people are gifted with such intuitions as she has, but are compelled to drag along through life learning by experience.
I do not wish to be understood as complaining or railing against fate because I am not skilled in mechanics; I recognize as a distinct boon the fact that I am awkward in the use of tools, and the further fact that I have no ambition in the direction of mechanical endeavor has doubtless saved me many a bruised thumb and a vast amount of hard labor. When I see my neighbors tinkering away at their storm windows and garbage boxes and grape vine trellises and dog kennels and window screens and front gates, I do not neglect to thank heaven that Alice has the best of reasons for not asking me to engage in similar odd jobs about our house.
Still, I am sure that, if I ever do engage in any avocation, it will be that 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 of conducting an establishment of one's own was so large. It seems, however, that when one has once become a property-owner there is no end to the things one must have and cannot get along without. It is impossible to say how or where the venders of patent arrangements find out about you, but no sooner do you buy a place of your own than you are 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 a simple device which is going to reduce our coal bill by at least fifty per cent.; it is a fuel-saving machine which is to be attached to our new steam-heating apparatus, and if it accomplishes anything like what the agent said it would, why, it is worth five dollars ten times over! And we are expecting wonders, too, of the gas-saving apparatus for which we have paid three dollars and which is to be attached to the meter with such pleasing results that we shall have five times more light at a saving of at least sixty per cent in cost.
I find upon consulting my expense account for May that during that month alone Alice and I purchased no fewer than thirty devices of an economical character. We have three different kinds of smoke-consumers, an automatic carpet-sweeper, a bottle of lightning polish for plate-glass, a dish-washing machine, a knife-scourer, a potato-parer, two automatic lawn-hose reels, a sewer-gas consumer, a patent ashes-sifter, etc., etc. It has required a considerable outlay of money to get stocked up with these things, but we regard them as a very wise investment. It is wholly consistent with our policy of economy to provide ourselves with the means of making a marked reduction in our expenses. We flatter ourselves that before we have been in our house six months we shall have demonstrated that we are not upon earth for the purpose of enriching gas companies and other soulless corporations.
But I think the wisest investment we have made is the insurance policy which we have taken out on Alice's life. The incident came about so curiously that I feel inclined to tell it in detail. I was one evening sitting out in front of our house--the rented one, I mean--watching the stars gradually making their appearance in the cerulean vault, and I was marvelling at the endless wonders of the heavenly expanse, when I became aware that somebody was approaching. I saw that this somebody was my Sheridan Road friend and neighbor, Treese Smith. He was whistling softly to himself an air which I did not recognize, but which my daughter Fanny (who is a music connoisseur) identified as "My Pearl Is a Bowery Girl." Presuming that he was coming to pay me a neighborly call, I arose to meet him. Fancy my amazement when upon beholding me Mr. Smith burst into tears. I do not remember ever to have been more astounded than by this sudden transition from gayety to grief. I could hardly 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 of mind to associate with my fellow-beings."
"It is evident," I interposed, "that some great sorrow has come upon you; surely you would not hesitate to come to me for sympathy."
"You are right," said Mr. Smith, making a heroic effort to gather himself together. "It would be selfish of me not to give so dear a neighbor as you a chance to share my misery. Read this."
He handed me a bit of printed stuff which he had evidently cut from a newspaper. I stood under the street lamp and read it in this wise:
KANSAS CITY, May 23.--During the thunder-storm to-day Mrs. Bolivar Bowers, wife of the well-known scientist, was struck and destroyed by lightning. Deceased leaves a husband and five children; no insurance.
"Ah, I see," said I in my gentlest tone; "she was a dear friend--perhaps a relative of yours."
"No, not that," said Mr. Smith, still sobbing; "you misinterpret my grief. This party was in no way akin to me except under that common descent from the old Adam which makes all humanity brothers and sisters. I did not know deceased, nor did I ever see her."
"Then why," I asked, in some astonishment, "why are you so moved by the news of her death?"
"To one of my nature," exclaimed Mr. Smith, "the circumstances detailed in this item are most painful to contemplate. We find here recorded the sudden demise of the sole support of a husband and five children--a wife and mother snatched away by death, leaving a helpless family without 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 is therefore by nature and by occupation disqualified for earning a livelihood."
"Surely enough," said I, "that is quite true."
"Can you picture a more distressing scene," continued Mr. Smith, still in tears, "than that of this helpless father and his five little ones standing above that lifeless lady and wondering where their food and raiment 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 the future. Had Mrs. Bolivar Bowers taken out a policy in my company, the International Mutual Tontine Life Insurance Company of Paw Paw, Indiana, the aspect to-day would have been different, and Bolivar Bowers and his callow brood of little Bowerses would have reason to bless the rod that smote them. Ah, friend Baker, the International Mutual Tontine has done a glorious work toward mitigating the wrath of the grim destroyer; under the grace of its soothing balm bereavement becomes an actual pleasure, death loses its sting, and the grave its victory."
From this small, casual beginning followed that train of explanation and argument upon Mr. Smith's part which led to Alice's taking out a life policy in the Indiana company. Mr. Smith is a man of broad and deep human sympathies. Had he not happened upon that newspaper item, had his heart not gone out in passionate sympathy toward the bereaved Bolivar Bowers and his little ones, had he not wandered in an irresponsible paroxysm of grief in the direction of my house that evening, and had he not confided his sorrow to me--why, then we should not have known of the greatest of human benefactors, and Alice would not now be safe (so to speak) in the bosom of the International Mutual Tontine Life Insurance Company of Paw Paw.
I do not regard these things as accidental; they are special providences. _