THE SWAMP ANGEL by Prentice Mulford

Author:Prentice Mulford [Mulford, Prentice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788027202881
Publisher: Musaicum Press
Published: 2017-08-05T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER X.

A P LACE FOR EVERYTHING.

Table of Contents

One of the greatest troubles in my house, is the endeavor to carry out the law, “A place for everything, and everything in its place.” I am afflicted with a tendency to have two, three, sometimes a dozen, places for the same thing. Mine over my domestic utensils is still an incompetent governorship. I appoint places for things, but forget the places. I hang my frying-pan on six different nails. Again, I bring in things, as helps, to the domestic economy, and do not appoint them places at all. A cup, a spoon, a rag, a bottle, even a tack, with no fixed habitation, is sure to be in the way of some other article, perhaps a dozen articles, and hence comes to be in a chronic state of rebellion against the household peace.

The more things with no set places, the greater the war, and the harder it is to put down the rebellion. There is one particular spoon, an iron cooking spoon, between which, and myself, a lively quarrel has been going on, for the last two weeks. Half a dozen times have I given it a fixed place, and then forgotten the nail on which it should hang. The result is, it hangs everywhere. When not hanging everywhere, it is lying around everywhere. It is a culinary Ishmael. It has no fixed use. I have forgotten what I did set it apart for. It is now a tramp in the house. There is an empty glass jar in a similar state of vagrancy and rebellion.

I have not given it any occupation, or any fixed station. Consequently it is forever wandering over the house, now here, now there, and in more or less difficulty with all the peaceful and orderly jars, which have a business to look after, are minding their business, and want to be let alone.

One cause of this trouble is my tendency to get and accumulate all sorts of things, for which, at the time of getting, I have no defined use. I have a wonderful and covetous eye. I am, when in town, always seeing things, and saying to myself, “That’s a good thing to have.” It may be a tub, a table, a teapot, a cup, a tin pail, a second-hand chair, a carpet, anything, everything. “A good thing to have.” Have for what? I don’t know. I refuse to press that question home. I dare not. I evade, at such times, my more thoughtful and considerate self. If I see him coming, I run round the corner. The fact is, I want the needless thing simply for the pleasure of getting it. It is an instinct for accumulation born in me. Perhaps I was once a magpie, and revelled in heaps of old bones, rags, and scraps. I bring my treasure home, which I have bought only for the pleasure of buying. Then comes the trouble. It must be cared for. It must have a place made for it.

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