IN PRAISE OF WASHING DAY.
" Rain, rain, go away ! To-morrow will be Washing Day ! "
" Wanted, General Servant, no washing. Lady Help wishes situation, no washing." —(Daily papers.)
THE old grandmother had obtained the three golden hairs for the miller's son and the answers to the questions which he had promised to give the City fathers upon his return journey, when it occurred to her that she would like an answer to a question which had been in her mind for some time, so she pulled another of the golden hairs from the head of the Gnome of the Mountain.
He arose in fury at this further disturbing of his rest. " How now ! " he raged, and turned as though he would kill the aged dame, but she again blamed her dreams. " What did you dream this time ? " " I dreamt that all the rosy-cheeked girls had become pale and listless, always tired, white-checked and white- lipped, and it so distressed me that I must have pulled your hair by mistake. Can you give me the reason _ for the change in their looks ? " " Oh ! if the silly things did but know," he roared, " it is because they have done away with washing day in their homes, and send everything to the big laundries."
The woman colonist of fifty years has many memories of washing days. The earliest is very dim, and has for central figure a peculiar barrel-shaped vessel called by one , a " Peggy tub and by another a " Dolly tub." This tub could not have been a success, for it soon was used for growing water-cress with varying results, too often failures.
The second great recollection is that of a delightful idyll • even after the lapse of forty-five years it stands out as almost the earliest glimpse which the child had yet' obtained of that simple life, yet grand, a parallel being found for it in Homer's account of Nausicaa going to the river to wash the clothes for herself, her father, and her- five brothers. Here it may be remarked that- men like Charles Kingsley, who have used this incident of Nausicaa for illustration of a point, have always appeared-to lay more stress on the game of ball which was played while the clothes were drying than upon the actual washing. itself. Yet :- " The vestures cleansed o'erspread the shelly sand, Their snowy lustre whitens all the strand."
Our washing place, like that of Homer's princess, was on the margin of a river, with a sandy bed and strand on the one side, the opposite bank being steep and clothed with lovely scrubs and native flora. On the sandy beach was a mia-mia overgrown with the sarsaparilla vine ; there was a long bench for the tubs to stand on and a big boiler was built securely round one side, the water-casks waiting ready filled (the sons of the family always saw to this last). The rinsing was done in the creek itself. All the three girls took part, even the youngest who rubbed her own little white socks in a hand-basin. The washing done and spread out to dry on the bushes, the best part of the day followed—not Nausicaa's game of ball, but a bathe in the limpid waters ! Oh, what washing days were these always on a Saturday (in defiance of the rhyme : " Wash on Friday if in need, Wash on a Saturday wrong indeed "), for the children's sake, whose education in " book learning ' engrossed the other five days of the week. When the robes had imbibed the solar ray and were dry, then came the folding and damping in the open air, and when " towards Heaven's descent the sun had sloped his westering wheel," all concerned in the work drove home in the big wagon sent from the farmhouse.
The old colonist's memory next recalls a picture of the great Riverina plains all dry and parched up, the colour of the sandy desert one sees on the Eastern shore of the Suez Canal. The homestead, in spite of drought, was an oasis of beauty with its vines, its fruit trees, the verandah covered with passion fruit, the great oil-cans with Arum lilies and the geraniums and the Hoye. The washing day there was -a day of self-denial, for we washed and scrubbed the clothes upon the laundry table instead of sousing and sluicing them up and down in tubs of water. Then we wrung them BO tightly that the fibres cracked, to extract for a second using every drop of that precious water (carted for miles and cleared with wood-aches). But it was not always so even there. There were times when the " former and the latter rains " descended in such copious showers that all the tanks and streams were full and there- was no need for extreme carefulness. In such • times, to ease the burden of the cook, who with housemaid and nurse formed the indoor staff, the house- mother would arise before the day broke, steal away without disturbing the sleeping husband and baby, light the copper fire, put in a good two hours' work, and be well rewarded for the loss of those two hours of morning sleep by the vision glorious of the purple and gold and rosy red which heralded the approach of the rising sun. At such times curtains and counterpanes, even the very sheets which covered the wool tables when the lambs' wool was being sorted, were hung on the lines. No one grumbled or called it Black Monday—rather was it a Whit Monday. The governess, if there were one, loved to help fold the linen in the open air.; and all these pleasing sensations were experienced by women who read Dante in the original, played upon the harp, sang operatic airs, and often made and mended for their children—without a sewing-machine, too !
How great a saving of energy there would have been had we but known in those bygone days of the simple recipe whiCh now robs washing of real hard labour ! When Miss Isabella Bird was on her travels through the Rockies she observed that the wives of the miners need kerosene to clean their husbands' very dirty garments, never rubbing them. She asked for and obtained the proportions, which are : 8 gallons of water, 8 ounces of soap, 4 tablespoonsful of kerosene. The method of using : cut up the soap and let it dissolve in the water in the capper ; when the water is boiling add the kerosene and put in the clothes quite dry (only blood-stains require-to be-first- washed) ; rinse and use a second rinse water. The. first rinse water may be returned to the copper as containing a good deal of the soap. No rubbing to-destroy the surface-I Where a wringer is, used the life of fabrics is very- - considerably- prolonged: That method has been used for fifteen years by one- who adds to. the-- " Song of Thanksgiving," " Blessed be Kerosene ! " as- well as " Blessed be Drudgery ! " This praise of washing has been written with the distinct purpose of showing that it is possible to live a happy, healthy, cultured, and independent life while performing- the duty of ordinary households— that domestic work which requires no long probation or costly training, .which lies at the hand of each girl and has not, as so many callings have, to be relinquished on becom- ing a wife. The daughters - of the house should be early taught that the common round, the trivial task contains nothing degrading- or mean, and the number of young people growing up- ignorant- of the simplest necessary domestic duties will be- greatly lessened.
The pale and listless girls of the old grandmother's dream are not found where the washing is done at home. To a fairly healthy woman washing day is the least trying of all her working days ; the hanging out and bringing in of the clothes is as good as a half-day. out, while the steam arising from the copper clears the skin of the face. Many girls are absolutely at their best on a Monday evening, the work of a beauty parlour having been vicariously performed. " Hanging out the clothes " the maid had a better chance of health and beauty than the king in his counting-house, or the queen in the parlour
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